NESV seal ‘Pool takeover

New England Sports Ventures (NESV), owners of baseball’s Boston Red Sox, completed their acrimonious £300 million ($480 million) takeover of Liverpool FC yesterday.

John W. Henry’s NESV group were able to take control after previous co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were defeated in their legal battle to stop the takeover.

Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton brokered the deal despite fierce opposition from Hicks and Gillett, who have claimed they will sue for $1.6 billion in damages because they believe the sale to NESV undervalued the Premier League club and was “illegal”.

Broughton was delighted to have finally brought the sale to a conclusion after a dramatic week of court battles in England and the United States.

He said: “As every Liverpool fan knows, the most nerve-wracking way to win a match is in a penalty shoot-out but in the end, as long as you get the right result, it is worth the wait. And we have got the right result.”

Standing alongside Broughton in London, Henry drew cheers from Liverpool fans as he said: “We have a lot of work to do and I can’t tell you how happy I am that we have reached this point.

“We are not going to have a lot to say, we are going to do a lot of listening and we have a lot to learn.

“Obviously we are here to win. We have a tradition of winning.”

Hicks had been trying to sell his stake to Mill Financial, a US-based hedge fund, so they could pay the £280m debt to the Royal Bank of Scotland and scupper the takeover.

Mill Financial had approached the Premier League to take the mandatory owner’s test on Thursday, but were rejected when the league told the fund they could only take instruction from the Liverpool board, led by Broughton.

That was the last straw for Hicks, who had already seen two High Court rulings about the takeover go against him in London this week.