Sunday Times 29/7/07 Bates faces up to flower power The latest financial shenanigans at Leeds United leave many more questions than answers Ben Laurance, Sunday Times, 29/7/07 OUTSIDE Leeds United’s Elland Road ground flowers have been stacked around the statue of club legend Billy Bremner as supporters plead for an end to the three months of turmoil that have engulfed Yorkshire’s once-great footballing power-house. Fans have set up a “Love Leeds, Hate Bates” website appealing to tycoon Ken Bates to stand down as chairman of the club “and sell your controlling interest immediately to a party with Leeds United and football at its heart”. And now Bates’s key business partner finds himself embroiled in a bizarre legal episode. It stems from Bates’s successful move to buy the club back from administrators after it went bust. But this dispute is being played out not in Leeds, but in a court hundreds of miles away in Jersey. And Mark Taylor, a solicitor and long-standing ally of Bates, has a...
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Guardian 28/7/07 Bates won back Leeds without making biggest bid Matt Scott Saturday July 28, 2007 The Guardian Ken Bates won control of Leeds United despite KPMG being presented with bigger cash offers, documents released by the administrator showed yesterday. The bid on behalf of Bates's Leeds United 2007, the company demanding the transfer of the Football League share which would endorse its takeover, was for an unconditional £1.8m. A tender from Redbus Group and Simon Morris offered almost double that sum - £3.501m. What apparently swung the process in Bates's favour was that Astor Investment Holdings, an offshore company, stated its willingness to waive the £17.6m it was owed. Had any of the three rival bids won, Astor would have stood firm on the £17.6m. This meant the £3.5m offered by Redbus-Morris would have been spread much thinner, across £30.25m as against the £12.6m being demanded of Bates. "The key factor is the Astor waiver of the debt for one of the bidders,...
Leeds United: the unanswered questions With Leeds fans and players still in limbo, David Conn and Matt Scott pose 20 questions about the troubled club. The Guardian July 27, 2007 12:43 AM The Football League said yesterday it has received further details from the administrator, KPMG, about the sale of Leeds United to a new company, Leeds United 2007 Ltd, owned by the Cayman Islands-registered Forward Sports Fund and chaired by Ken Bates. The League has so far refused to sign over its "golden share" of membership to this new company, which was not bought via a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) agreement of creditors. In all, 41 other Football League clubs have collapsed into insolvency since the Premier League was formed in 1992, and in every previous case, the League has insisted on a CVA being agreed as a condition of transferring its golden share to the new owners. Ken Bates is now asking the League to treat his company as an exception. Leeds United is at an impasse, with...
Guardian 20/7/07 Leeds players hoping for resolution to pay crisis LONDON, July 20 (Reuters) - Leeds United's players said on Friday they hoped to be paid overdue wages by the time they return to England from a pre-season training camp in Germany. The players of the debt-ridden club have not received salary payments for June and a report in the Guardian newspaper on Friday said they would be free to break their contracts if the money did not arrive by a set date, which was not far off. "We're hoping the club, PFA (Professional Footballers' Association) and the Football League can resolve the situation," the players said in a statement on the club Web site (www.lufc.co.uk). "We're hoping the situation can be resolved by the time we return next week." Leeds responded by issuing a separate statement on the Web site saying that the deferral was in accordance with agreements with the club's administrators. "June's wages are due to be paid whe...
New pages uploaded at mightyleeds.co.uk Seasons – 2006/07 – The stuff of nightmares/Into the abyss United slump into one of the worst seasons in their history and Ken Bates sacks Kevin Blackwell as United are relegated to the third tier and go into administration Read the full story at http://www.mightyleeds.co.uk/seasons/200607part1.htm http://www.mightyleeds.co.uk/seasons/200607part2.htm http://www.mightyleeds.co.uk/seasons/200607fix.htm
Yorkshire Post 14/7/07 Healy's exit signals mass exodus at Leeds By Ian Appleyard KEN BATES opened the doors to the Leeds United summer sales last night – allowing striker David Healy to join Fulham and Robbie Blake to sign for Burnley. The departure of Northern Ireland international Healy, for a fee in the region of £4m, and former Bradford City striker Blake, for £250,000, will soon be followed by the exit of striker Richard Cresswell, a £2m target for his former club Sheffield Wednesday, and youngster Danny Rose to Tottenham Hotspur. Scunthorpe United will also look to sign striker Jermaine Beckford.Former captain Kevin Nicholls, who was frozen out last season by manager Dennis Wise, has already gone to Preston North End.Transfers out of Elland Road have been alarmingly slow during the saga surrounding ownership of the club.Yet as soon as administrators KPMG approved Bates's controversial buy back deal on Wednesday, any such block appeared to be lifted and now money from sal...
Leedsunited.com 13/7/07 ROBBIE DEPARTS Robbie Blake has joined Burnley in a deal worth up to £600,000. The striker returns to Turf Moor, where he previously scored 51 goals in 137 appearances between 2002 and 2005 and was a firm crowd favourite. Rob joined United from Birmingham City in the summer of 2005 and scored 20 goals in 87 appearances. The 31-year-old was the club's second leading goalscorer last term with nine to his name. Rob's final act in a United shirt was to score the opening goal in last weekend's 2-0 friendly victory against Shelbourne in Dublin. BBC 13/7/07 Striker Healy agrees Fulham move Northern Ireland striker David Healy has signed for Fulham from Leeds United in a £1.5million transfer deal. The former Manchester United and Preston player is the fourth NI star to team up again with former international boss Lawrie Sanchez. Aaron Hughes, Steven Davis and Chris Baird have all moved to Craven Cottage during the close season. Healy, Northern Ireland's ...
Guardian 11/7/07 Bates buys back Leeds Inland Revenue had challenged Bates's right to regain control of club Ken Bates's cunning and deeply unpopular plan to regain control of Leeds United came together today when administrators KPMG approved the sale of the club to a consortium headed by him. Other bidders had been in the running to buy the troubled League One side but KPMG decided that Bates' unconditional offer "represents the best result for creditors". Bates first bought Leeds in January 2005 but as soon as the team slipped to the brink of relegation last May he put the club into administration, incurring a 10-point penalty but, more importantly, effectively writing off debts of over £30m. Then he formed a new company named Leeds United Football Club Limited and immediately mounted a bid to buy the club back. Bates originally proposed paying creditors a paltry one penny for every one pound owed; an increased offer of eight pence per pound was then narrowly ac...
BBC 8/7/07 Pearson set to make Leeds offer Former Hull City chairman Adam Pearson is set to make a bid for Leeds United, BBC Sport understands. Leeds's administrators put the club up for sale on Friday and chairman Ken Bates has vowed to take legal action if the club is sold to a rival bidder. Ex-Leeds chairman Gerald Krasner told BBC Five Live the interested parties he is aware of are "domestic based but the money may well come from abroad". Potential buyers have until 1700 BST on Monday to submit an offer for the club. Bates confirmed he has re-submitted his offer for the club after a legal challenge was made by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) over his original takeover plans. The 75-year-old told Yorkshire Radio: "Our bid is the original deal that was done in the meeting of creditors when we placed the Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA) on June 1. "We have amended it twice to try to meet the Inland Revenue's objections and now we've withdrawn the conditi...
Yorkshire Post 7/7/07 Wise expects clearance to increase Leeds squad By Ian Appleyard LEEDS United manager Dennis Wise was last night uncertain as to who might be his boss in the coming season after administrators put the club up for sale. But, assuming the move meets with Football League approval, he could at least find himself able to sign three new players before the start of the campaign thanks to the probable lifting of the transfer embargo. Under existing League rules, clubs are allowed to stay in 'administration' for a maximum period of 18 months and are also allowed to sign new players if they have less than 20 professionals on the books. After the lengthy list of departures this summer, Wise has only 17 full-time professionals, a number that would be reduced further if star striker David Healy is sold to Fulham.Worryingly for Wise, five of his 17 players are still teenagers, a situation which is far from ideal going into a first season at League One level. Wise had boo...