Man U Valued at $1.5 Billion -- American takes control

[JohnT]

I thought ManU was "about" buying the best players, competitive balance be damned.

Sorta like the NY Yankees.

[child of Thor]

Well i dont know the details(being a swans fan), but its got lots of football history(plane crash, historicaly some of the best british players etc). But i know you know this and are just playing at being an 'ignorant millionaire yank'

Not much in the news recently about this - i was expecting riots in Manchester etc.

[Agathon]

All together now!!

"WHO'S THAT BURNING ON THE RUNWAY..."

[DanS]

Perhaps most Man U fans have decided to give Glazer the benefit of the doubt for now.

[Az]

Originally posted by Agathon
All together now!!

"WHO'S THAT BURNING ON THE RUNWAY..."

[child of Thor]

Thats no fun - they were getting all fighty and everything.
If they just lay down now....well its not very 'football' of them, and they would probably loose a few pegs on the 'hardest supporters' hall of football fame.

A sorry state of affairs

[DanS]

What, you mean football fans might not be the religious zealots willing to become martyrs for football that Locutus makes them out to be? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

That said, doesn't the FA cup this weekend offer the refuseniks a chance to make their feelings known?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by DanS
Perhaps most Man U fans have decided to give Glazer the benefit of the doubt for now.

Yeah, right. How naive do you have to be to say something like that....

We'll be hearing about this at least until mid-next season. Maybe, juuuuust maybe, if ManU performs really well and starts kicking everybody's butt in the EPL and CL next season, things will blow over and fans will give Glazer the benefit of the doubt. Until then, and if that doesn't happen, ManU fans will be protesting this every chance they get. Just because the haven't burnt down the city yet doesn't mean they're gonna sit this one out. They've announced actions for the FA Cup final and are organising for that.

I think the FA Cup final will give us an indication of how badly things are going to be in the next months. If that is relatively quiet, things will probably eventually more or less return to normal. If it's gonna be a huge affair, we may never see the end of this -- well, until the Glazers leave...

For our entertainment, let's hope for the latter

[DanS]

Just because the haven't burnt down the city yet doesn't mean they're gonna sit this one out. They've announced actions for the FA Cup final and are organising for that.

This is an indication regarding only a small minority of opinion.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, right. How naive do you have to be to say something like that....

'DanS naive', apparently.

And saying it is a 'small minority of opinion' shows even a greater naivety.

[DanS]

You are misconstruing what I wrote. I said what happens at the FA cup is only one indication of what a small minority of Man U fans think. Other indicators (merchandising, etc.) will demonstrate what a much broader range of fans think of the matter in the end.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by child of Thor
Also i think the whole agressive approach is what upsets the ManU fans most, to them he's a 'flash yank' with all the money but no idea of what ManU really is about(this may not be true, but i think its how it seems to the majority of fans/onlookers).

If Glazer was the flash Yank with all the money, why is he needing so much debt financing?

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Agathon
All together now!!

"WHO'S THAT BURNING ON THE RUNWAY..."

[reds4ever]

BTW whats a 'poision pill' in the context of preventing takeovers? Someone mentioned the term a few pages back.

[JohnT]

Poison pill is a term used to describe a variety of potential strategies to fight off a hostile takeover. One strategy is to dilute the stock - a simplified example is if somebody buys 10% of a company, you issue more shares to knock that percentage down to, say, 5%. Another strategy is to issue a new class of preferred stock, with increased voting power, to a select group of shareholders that will align themselves against the raider. Yet another strategy (especially used in fighting off a hostile LBO) is to burden the company with debt levels that will make the LBO unsustainable.

"LBO" stands for Leveraged BuyOut (I capitalized the "O" to show where the acronym comes from), which is what Glazer did - use the companies assets and earnings to sustain the both the carrying costs of the debt and the repayment of it.