Who owns Leeds United…do we honestly care?
Ken Bates, Forward Sports Fund perhaps even Santa Claus (although St. Nick and Bates do look rather similar) owns Leeds United, your guess is as good as mine.
In January 2009 the Leeds chairman came forward and said he held one “management share” in the Cayman Islands registered company Forward Sports Fund that owns the League One club.
However later in the year Bates U-turned and claimed he in fact owns nothing and that the earlier comments delivered in court were “an error on my part”.
All that is known about Leeds’ owners is that they are as holders of 10,000 shares in a Cayman Islands company. To add to the ambiguity, the identities of these shareholders are not being revealed without a court order.
This then begs the question, how can the owners of Leeds United pass the “fit and proper persons” test if it is unknown who these people are?
Having had Notts County’s mysterious Munto Finance owners come under scrutiny, the Football League are now under serious pressure to look into Leeds’ unknown offshore owners.
As one of the biggest Football League sides in the country, the notion that Forward Sports Fund’s takeovers in 2005 and again in 2007 when they bought the club from administrators may have never been ratified by the Football League is a serious allegation.
However the real question is that do football fans really care?
Obviously “Dirty Leeds” are not in the hearts of many outside West Yorkshire however the takeover has not exactly turned the fortunes of the fallen giant around.
Little money has been spent on the squad despite heavy figures being received from the sales of youngsters such as Fabian Delph and Luke Garbutt to Premiership clubs. The deadline to purchase Thorp Arch, the clubs training ground passed and who owns Elland Road is anyone’s guess.
You can’t exactly say that these offshore owners are of the Sheikh Mansour mould.
For the first time this season the three times First Division champions have glimmers of hope with a settled squad and an ambitious and talented young manager in Simon Grayson.
Plus any team that has Jermaine Beckford firing on all cylinders are bound to be successful.
This is a team on the up, trying to get back to where they belong amongst the big boys, a spot even the most hardened critic of Leeds wouldn’t deny them.
Let’s just hope the owners come forward and put this long running mystery to bed and let Leeds’ on field actions hit the papers for a change.
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As a leeds fan who goes home and away every week, i can honestly say that i don’t really care who owns us, as long as it is not someone dodgy. The football league have confirmed that the owners are ‘fit and proper’, so i guess they’re not dodgy.
Don’t think many Leeds fans care to be honest. Theres the odd people who seem to hate bates more than they love leeds, so they’re always gonna moan as long as he’s here.
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Premier league rules state all clubs have to disclose owners..What will Mr Bates do if this happens then.Never happen while he is Chairman..Something not right will this whole show..It simply is a cash cow for him no matter what division we are in as long as its not the Premier league..25 Mill plus turnover,3 Mill to lease the stadium and training ground,6 Mill on Wages..so 16 Million pound a year to run a league one club when most teams in this division do not even turnover LUFC’s wage bill…Wake up my fellow Whites and smell the coffee…We are being shafted !!!!
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“the takeover has not exactly turned the fortunes of the fallen giant around”
I really can’t see how you argue that, and even your own piece contradicts it.
Before the takeover Leeds Utd was going down in flames. It had debts that were so heavy they were likely to destroy it. It had a squad heavy on wages but light on ability or motivation. It was a disaster, in a steep downward spiral likely to end in extinction.
Now it seems to be free of debt, to be financially stable and profitable and it has a leaner squad that probably has enough in-built potential to do okay in the Championship.
The deepest part of the trough has been passed and the club’s on the way up.
At the time of the takeover the club was on the way down. Now it’s on the way up. How can that not be a turnaround in the club’s fortunes?
So money’s come is and not been spent? If we get promotion, as still is likely, we’re going to need to seriously and expensively strengthen the squad at Christmas. If Bates and Grayson choose to keep the money until it’s really necessary, that may be very wise.
Just because money hasn’t been spent on strenghthening the squad does not mean it’s been given to shareholders instead.
I don’t give a damn who the shareholders are, so long as Leeds Utd has a healthy financial foundation and is on the way back to the top division at a sustainable rate.
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As someone who’s been going down Elland Road for almost forty years I have to say I totally agree with Alan of Skipton. You may argue that it’s wise not to spend on the squad until we have to but where’s the logic in not buying back Thorpe Arch? Bates is at Leeds for one reason only in my opinion and that’s to milk the cash cow dry. As for the club being on the up well he couldn’t have taken us much further down could he. It was under his chairmanship that we were relegated from the championship and it was down to his arrogance that we were docked a further 15 points. Meanwhile neither the football league or the FA have lifted a finger to support the fans. In fact if I was invited to a P**s up in a brewery by either I’d give it a miss in the sure knowledge that it would be alcohol free lager followed by a collection.p
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HEADLINE STEALER!
http://dirtyleedscom.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-actually-owns-leeds-united-who.html
As you can see though, I do agree with you
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Oh, we could have gone a lot lower, York White. Into oblivion, in fact.
Bates didn’t ‘take us down’. We were inevitably going down, forced down by the weight of the debt and the legacy of years of incompetent management. It was a matter of how far down, would we survive at all, and would we ever be able to rebuild. Without tough business management and outright brass neck the answers would have been all the way, no and no.
The points deduction was because the club ruthlessly shed its enormous debts, which was the only way it could survive with any hope of rebuilding. It was a harsh price, but that’s the way the authorities have always treated Leeds. Personally, I detest Mawhinney at least as much as any Leeds fan hates Bates.
And even the 15 points might not have been so severe. The first half of that season was extraordinary and we’d have been promoted if we’d kept that up. And the dominant reason we didn’t wasn’t anything to do with Bates, it was because Poyet let us down by going to those slimeballs Spurs.
Look, you have no way at all of knowing that Bates is milking the club, and I don’t know he isn’t. But you’re making heavy accusations without proof, and I think your dislike of Bates is preventing you seeing evidence of real essential improvements at the club since he took over.
Under Bates, Leeds Utd survived against the odds and is rebuilding sustainably. I think that’s excellent, because the club was teetering on the edge of a bottomless chasm, and I dreaded having no Leeds for the rest of my life. Bates has done what needed doing, and I don’t give a damn if he makes money out of that because he’s bloody well earned it.
And I think all that despite being worried about Thorp Arch, and not understanding why the money wasn’t found. But I do strongly suspect that there was some very dodgy political and financial manipulation of the situation against the club’s interests, involving council members and MPs, some of whom may have had significant vested interests in the buy back not happening. I wouldn’t trust Leeds Council or its MPs as far as I could spit, and they seemed to be very much more involved than was necessary or even proper.
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