WEST HAM ACCEPT BID

Last updated : 21 November 2006 By Ed
From the Times

West Ham United will make a formal announcement to the Stock Exchange today that they have agreed a deal to sell the club, ending one of the longest family ownerships in football. Eggert Magnusson has agreed to pay £85 million, £5 million more than the price at which Terence Brown, the chairman, had valued the club, who lie sixteenth in the Barclays Premiership.

Magnusson, the Icelandic businessman, has assured Alan Pardew that he will continue as manager, but Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano, the Argentina players who have been blamed by some for the team's poor form this season, are likely to move on in January, probably to Spain.

Magnusson has offered Pardew a transfer budget to bring in a right winger in January, but the new owners face a fight to keep Nigel Reo-Coker, the midfield player who is keen to leave for a bigger club.

Magnusson, 59, will have a controlling interest in the club, having agreed to buy the shares from Brown and Charles Warner and Martin Cearns, two descendants of the men who founded the club in 1895. Brown, Warner and Cearns own about 70 per cent of the club, so the remaining shareholders will not be able to prevent a takeover. Magnusson intends to make the club a private company.

West Ham were dismissive of Magnusson when he first approached the club with an offer of about £60 million in late September and for several weeks they refused to engage in dialogue. That changed little after Magnusson made a revised offer of £75 million three weeks ago, when he also changed the way that the deal was financed.

With West Ham on the verge of agreeing a deal with Kia Joorabchian, a rival bidder, two weeks ago, the club, in a surprise move, gave Magnusson permission to look at the books. Joorabchian had agreed with Brown to pay £75 million for a takeover but then decided not to join in a bidding war.

Magnusson, who will also take on the club's debt of £22 million, will list his backers today. They include Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, the main financier, and Sighvatur Bjarnason, who claims to be a West Ham supporter and who made his fortune in the fishing industry. He was named Iceland's Businessman of the Year in 1994.

In 1991, Gudmundsson, the chairman of Landsbanki, the Icelandic bank that conducted the due diligence process, was given a 12-month prison sentence suspended for two years after being charged with 450 criminal counts, from embezzlement to fraud. He was cleared of most of the charges and claimed that the prosecution was politically motivated. Gudmundsson has spent the time since redeeming his family's reputation.

Magnusson intends to bring new people on to the West Ham board. He has offered Brown the role of president, but Paul Aldridge, the managing director, is unlikely to stay at the club. Scott Duxbury, the highly rated legal director, could be offered the role of chief executive, but he is also wanted by several other clubs.