ANTI-GLAZER PROTEST AT OLD TRAFFORD
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The Glazers have turned down several offers for United, each of which values the club at more than £1bn. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
A secretive Middle East consortium has bid £1.5bn for Manchester United only to be firmly rejected by the club's owners, the Glazer family, it emerged last night.
According to information passed to the Guardian this was one of several covert offers which have been made for the club, all valuing United at more than £1bn and all of them rebuffed.
Despite the antagonism facing them from United fans, the rejection of the bids appears to signal the Glazer family's seriousness about not selling the club – at least for the medium term. The Glazers are now talking about staying at Old Trafford for another 10 years.
The news will come as a blow to the Red Knights, the group of businessmen who have been preparing a bid for United and have carried out their activities more publicly. The biggest concern will be that the apparent valuation that others put on the club far exceeds their own, which has been put at around £800m.
The offer from the Middle East that valued the club at £1.5bn was made towards the end of last year. It was flatly turned down and the bidders were discouraged from returning with a second offer, despite being willing to pay significantly more than United's £1.19bn valuation in the Forbes football rich-list.
The revelation represents depressing news for those fans who have been campaigning for the Glazers' removal and had hoped that the hostility shown towards the Americans would help to persuade them to sever their ties with the club. More than 150,000 people have joined the Manchester United Supporters' Trust, the group co-ordinating the anti-Glazer movement, and the protests have become increasingly voluble since the release of a bond prospectus in January that laid bare the Glazers' business model.
The Glazer family are said to be unmoved by the animosity and thick-skinned enough not to allow it to affect their planning. They are described as enjoying the prestige of being associated with a winning team. That paints a bleak picture for the former United director Jim O'Neill, now the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, who had been hoping to move into power at Old Trafford via the Red Knights, the group of "high net value individuals" that also includes the former Football League chairman Keith Harris.
An offer from the Red Knights is anticipated in the coming weeks but, even if it is substantially higher than the £800m initially discussed, the Glazers will reject it out of hand and offer no indication of a price that might tempt them to consider a sale. This could be seen as a negotiating tactic, but the Glazers' message is "thanks but no thanks".
O'Neill and his associates have already inquired about the Glazers' position via Rothschild, the investment bankers who helped the Americans with their takeover in 2005, and were told that the club was not for sale. That position is unlikely to change. "It's like having the most beautiful house," according to one top-level source. "They could sell that house but why would they want to sell it if it were the most beautiful house around?"
On the contrary, the Glazers are already thinking far enough ahead to be talking about refinancing their debts in 2017. They accept they could have been more open with the supporters and are aware of the misgivings about the £700m worth of debts they have brought to the club. They also hope to be at Old Trafford more next season. Avi Glazer has been a regular visitor but his brother Bryan has found it harder because his children are younger.
But they reject criticisms about the average 48% rise in season-ticket prices, pointing out that Old Trafford sells out for every game and is cheaper than Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. Many supporters are planning to boycott the club next season, effectively going on strike until the Glazers have moved on, but the Florida-based owners are said to be relaxed about the possible financial implications, believing it will make little difference to their annual results.
They have also reiterated to Ferguson that he can spend significant sums in the summer transfer market if he wishes. High-ranking sources at Old Trafford have confirmed that Ferguson is satisfied with the financial position and is genuine when he says he has a strong relationship with the Glazers. However, he has resisted the temptation to pay exorbitant prices and has adopted a policy of bringing in young, up-and-coming players.
The Glazers, nonetheless, are satisfied with the financial backing they have given Ferguson during the last three title-winning campaigns, which also brought two Champions League finals, and believe they would not have come under such scrutiny had it not been for the huge sums of money being spent at Manchester City under the Abu Dhabi United Group.
They believe the criticisms of their regime have been exaggerated and have taken encouragement from the fact their bond issue, raising £504m, was twice over-subscribed. They are also unimpressed with the manner in which the Red Knights have waged an aggressive media campaign aimed at undermining their ownership and attracting support from the club's phenomenal fan base.
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Qatar considered a likely source of massive bid for Manchester United
The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, watches this year's Crown Prince Cup final with members of Qatar's royal family. Photograph: Stringer/EPA
Oil-rich investors from the Middle East have been among the most prolific deal-makers in recent years, collecting assets including Manchester City, the hotel chain Travelodge, Madame Tussauds and Aston Martin.
Royal families and state-backed sovereign wealth funds from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait have all completed high-profile takeovers and could be behind the Manchester United bid. But experts in the region last night speculated that the most likely candidates would be the state-backed Qatari investment fund, which owns a large stake in Sainsbury's, or Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family who owns the Savoy Hotel in London.
Although still off the highs it reached in the summer of 2008, oil prices have doubled in the past 18 months, bolstering the enormous wealth of some of the leading families and states in the gulf. States across the region are eager to reduce dependency on oil by building a portfolio of investments around the world. Some of the smaller states are also eager to put themselves on the map by acquiring trophy assets such as football clubs.
Abu Dhabi hopes to rebrand itself as a cultural oasis by attracting new Louvre and Guggenheim museums and a branch of the Sorbonne, France's most prestigous university. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan took control of Manchester City in 2008 for £210m. Until the 1960s, the tiny kingdom's main source of income was camel herding. Richard Thompson, the editor of the Middle East Economic Digest, said it was unlikely that Abu Dhabi would invest in another English club, although a takeover bid could come from a different investor in the state, such as Mubadala, which has a stake in Ferrari.
Instead Thompson said Qatar, which has some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world, was a good bet. "Qatar has for a number of years been looking to raise its profile, commercially, economically and politically, and they are very wealthy because they have been riding the boom in gas prices," Thompson said.
"They have a very aggressive investment approach and have been diversifying their revenue stream. Plus they are bidding to stage the 2022 World Cup, so clearly they have an interest in football. They have been building their presence in sport and host tournaments in tennis, cycling and golf, so they would be the prime candidate."
He said Prince al-Waleed, who runs Kingdom Holdings and is one of the wealthiest men in the world, should not be ruled out. Waleed, said to be worth $19bn (£12.75m), is not afraid of high-profile deals and one of his current projects is to build the world's tallest tower in Jeddah. Another Saudi royal, Prince Faisal bin Abdullah, was last year linked with Liverpool.
A year ago Dubai would have been an obvious candidate. The brashest of the United Arab Emirates has a string of investment vehicles and Dubai International Capital has tried to buy both Liverpool and Newcastle United. But the state is reeling from a financial crisis, and many of its investments have tanked. The main state conglomerate, Dubai World, which owns many of Britain's ports after acquiring P&O, is trying to restructure $24bn of debt.
Much of the money from the Middle East is now directed toward Asia, but "Britain remains a popular place for Middle East investors, " said Thompson. "A lot of wealthy gulf Arabs like coming to London and have done for many years and a lot of them went to school in Britain.
He said many states in the region had been burnt by investments in Dubai and by the real estate market across the gulf. "But the fundamental component of the economy is still oil and the general view is that oil will go higher long term. There is still a lot of self-confidence."
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A mass anti-Glazer protest took place at Old Trafford ahead of Sunday afternoon's Barclays Premier League meeting between Manchester United and Stoke.
With feelings running high on the final day of the season, hundreds of supporters congregated outside the directors' box and chanted venomous anti-Glazer songs before being moved on by police.
There were unconfirmed reports of at least one smoke bomb being let off inside the Megastore at the front of the stadium, and at least one injury being reported as a result.
Avram Glazer, the co-chairman of Manchester United, had been due to attend the game but didn't made the journey due to flying restrictions imposed because of the on-going ash cloud disruption.
The demonstration is the start of an escalation in the anti-Glazer campaign, aimed at driving the Americans out of Old Trafford.
A bid from the Red Knights group of wealthy United fans is expected in the next few weeks, although the consistent stance from the Glazer family has been that they are not interested in doing a deal.
The Glazers have never been welcomed by a minority of supporters, but those feelings have grown markedly this season as the full scale of the debts incurred in their controversial takeover have become clear.
A successful bond issue earlier this year highlighted the potential for the sale of both Old Trafford and the club's state-of-the-art Carrington training complex should the Glazers hit problems with the repayments.
Although he has backed the Glazer family, Sir Alex Ferguson has previously defender the supporters' right to protest, whilst chief executive David Gill admitted he would prefer to see fans wearing the club colours of red and white rather than the highly visual green and gold scarves now being worn by a vast majority of supporters.