| Just doing a bit of research suggests you really are letting yourself in for a fall if you think it's going to be boom time at The SoL Mikkster....
Michael Walker
Thursday June 29, 2006
Guardian
Sunderland are expected to announce today that Niall Quinn's consortium has bought the Wearside club and will take control of it within the next two weeks. The fee is understood to be £10m, some £6m less than had been expected, but the consortium inherits debts of £40m - the total liability is £50m.
The Sunderland chairman, Bob Murray, began clearing his desk at the Stadium of Light yesterday. He will finally depart tomorrow with around £6m.
Quinn is still bound by stock market rules and cannot comment until every document is signed but the 39-year-old former Sunderland captain can set about recruiting a manager now that he knows he has a concrete position to offer.
The negotiations have dragged on longer than Quinn would have liked, with Murray believed to have twice asked for extensions in the last few weeks, but the consortium of Irish businessmen have remained determined to see the project through and are expected to make funds available to the next manager quickly.
The price they have paid for the club for will be seen as a bargain by some but the debts have to be dealt with. Interest payments alone are approximately £4m a year and there will be no Abramovich-style plunge in the transfer market.
One source close to the consortium said last night: "The hard work starts now for everybody. Nobody is underestimating the task but Quinn and his backers are desperate to make Sunderland important again. These people are not viewing Sunderland as an investment opportunity."
Murray denied he had been holding out for more money. "The suggestion is quite hurtful as the truth is actually the opposite. I've always put the club first. I've spent millions acquiring my shares as well as investing, and also given more than 20 years of my life to the club."
Property developers Sean Mulryan and Sean Dunne are the star players in Quinn’s bid team. Mulryan’s company, Ballymore Homes, has a €22 billion property portfolio spreading from Ireland to London and eastern Europe. Dunne is spending tens of millions of euro on swathes of the most expensive land in Ireland, in Ballsbridge, and is embroiled in a High Court case over the Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare, not far from Quinn’s home outside Naas.
Mikk, two of the "players" combined seem to have quite a big company they own which has a value of around £15M plus. This is the market value of their company and not their personal wealth (unless of course they choose to sell up all their holdings to invest into Sunderland.....this doesn't seem likely!!). Abramovic sold off nearly all his company assets and lives off his personal wealth. It's a huge discrepancy between the listed value of these guys companies (their assets, not Sunderlands) and Roman's personal wealth (which he devotes to Chelsea).
It should all be a lot better than what you have there, but I'd suggest fans believing their in for the kind of investment Chelsea have had are in for a shock!! |