Ganis And Huang Will Make 'Substantial Money' Available To Liverpool

Kenny Huang has delivered an outline takeover proposal to Liverpool's chairman, Martin Broughton, pledging to erase the club's debt, build a new stadium and to provide significant funding for player transfers.

Marc Ganis, Huang's long-term associate and a sports consultant who lives in Chicago, today confirmed that he made contact with the Liverpool board on Monday on behalf of the Hong Kong-based investment vehicle, QSL Sports.

"We haven't submitted a formal proposal but we submitted the broad parameters of what a proposal would look like to see if it would be welcomed, and it was," said Ganis. Preparing to fund the deal, as revealed by the Guardian yesterday, is the China Investment Corporation, as a "passive investor".

Ganis promised that substantial money would be available to the club. "Liverpool is and always should be one of the highest-spending clubs in all of football," he said. "And our financial models presume Liverpool will be at or near the top in spending on players every year."

Also involved in QSL alongside Huang and Ganis is Guang Yang, a senior investment-fund manager with Franklin Templeton. Huang and Yang would oversee the day-to-day operations at the club, however Ganis reassured fans that the current executive structure, led by the managing director, Christian Purslow, and commercial director, Ian Ayre, would remain in place.

"From what we have seen from afar, many of the people currently running Liverpool are doing a good job," said Ganis. "There shouldn't be an expectation there would be a mass upheaval if we submit and are approved."

However a deal would see the departure of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. The pair are known to believe the club is worth £800m but Huang's consortium will not stretch beyond repayment of the loans they have invested in the club, and would provide no value for their shareholdings.

"What is not one of our goals is the enrichment of the existing owners," Ganis said. "If we submit a proposal and it is accepted, it would be focused on the future and not the past.”If anybody wants to [pay for the Hicks/Gillett shares], good luck. We know what we would be prepared to do. If somebody else wants to look at it in a different way, it's their money. That would be their business, not ours."

There will be little Hicks and Gillett can do about that. It is Broughton and his co-directors Ayre and Purslow who hold sway in the takeover battle surrounding the Anfield club. Although Hicks and Gillett remain on the board, under the terms of the latest refinancing agreement on Liverpool's £237m loan with Royal Bank of Scotland, they cannot determine who takes over if Broughton, Ayre and Purslow vote en bloc in favour of any particular bidder.

Since their principal motivation is the future stability of the club, Ganis and Huang thus made great play of the potential for huge revenue growth if the club taps in to the Chinese market, which QSL would be uniquely well-placed to achieve.