Financiers plan £1 bln bid for Man Utd - reports

02/03/2010 11:59:08

A team of British financiers is working on a 1 billion pound bid for football club Manchester United, but the club's owners are not interested in selling, media reported on Tuesday.

Newspapers said a group calling themselves the Red Knights and including Keith Harris, former chairman of the Football League and executive chairman of investment bank Seymour Pierce, met on Monday at lawyers Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to discuss a possible bid.

Other members of the group include Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, Freshfields partner Mark Rawlinson and Paul Marshall, co-founder and chairman of hedge fund Marshall Wace, they said.

The Daily Telegraph, however, said Manchester United's billionaire U.S. owners, the Glazer family, were not interested in a deal.

"Manchester United is simply not for sale. Nothing has changed," it quoted a spokesman for the family as saying.

The Glazers bought Manchester United in 2005 against a wave of opposition from supporters and have attracted fresh criticism as the club's debts have swelled to 716.5 million pounds.

A growing number of fans have been protesting by shunning the side's red and white colours and sporting green and gold, worn when the team was known as Newton Heath in its early days.

None of the parties mentioned were immediately available for comment.