Times Online - Sunday Times

Leeds study £20m bid as creditors hover
A NEW £20m rescue offer for Leeds United is being considered by the club and its creditors this weekend in a final, desperate attempt to prevent the company from sliding into administration, writes David Bond.
Leeds’s chief executive, Trevor Birch, has until tomorrow to raise new funds for the club or persuade the club’s players to take a wage deferral until the end of the season. He needs £5m, and if he fails, the club’s creditors, who are owed more than £100m, will pull the plug.
Selling players such as Alan Smith, James Milner and Paul Robinson is an option but Birch has already turned down offers and wants to keep the team together to try and fight relegation.
After a failed bid by former vice-chairman Allan Leighton early last week, a new consortium of four Yorkshire-based businessmen has emerged as the club’s possible saviour. Leeds are taking the offer seriously. One of Leeds’s main creditors, M&G —which, with two American banks, Teachers and Metropolitan Life, lent Leeds £60m in the form of a 25-year bond — said it was also considering the bid over the weekend.
Refusing to confirm whether M&G would extend a one-week stay of execution handed to the club last week, a company spokesman said: “We are still working hard on trying to find a solution.”
Advisers working for the consortium, which waited until last Thursday to make its move, have been talking to banks and leading City figures to try to raise money for the bid. They are understood to still be short of the target. But the bondholders might now consider a scheme whereby they receive less cash up front in settlement of the debts and instead take possession of Leeds’s Elland Road ground, which they would then lease back to the club, thus guaranteeing them a steady stream of income over the next 20-25 years.
“The offer is a very serious one,” said a source close to the club. “The issue is whether there’s a stadium deal or not.”
After months of uncertainty at Elland Road, this week marks a pivotal moment in the Leeds crisis.
The controversial decision by the playing squad, who are paid about £4m a month, to reject immediate wage cuts, has been a big blow for Birch. The chief executive needed his players’ backing in order to buy extra time to do a deal with new investors, and also to see if the club could avoid relegation.
But Leeds’s creditors — which include a finance company that lent £20m to the club to buy players, and the Inland Revenue, which is owed £10m — appear to have finally run out of patience.

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