LONDON - NEW England Sports Ventures (NESV), owners of baseball's Boston Red Sox, completed their acrimonious 300 million pound (S$622 million) takeover of Liverpool Football Club on Friday.
John W Henry's NESV group were able to take control after previous co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett were defeated in their legal battle to stop the takeover, withdrawing their temporary restraining order to block the sale.
Liverpool chairman Martin Broughton brokered the deal despite fierce opposition from Hicks and Gillett, who believed the sale to NESV undervalued the Premier League club and was 'illegal'.
Broughton was delighted to have finally brought the sale to a conclusion after a dramatic week of court battles in England and the United States.
'As every Liverpool fan knows, the most nerve-wrecking way to win a match is in a penalty shoot-out but in the end, as long as you get the right result, it is worth the wait. And we have got the right result,' he said.
Standing alongside Broughton in London, Henry drew cheers from Liverpool fans as he said: 'I am proud and humble. We have a lot of work to do and I can't tell you how happy I am that we have reached this point. We are not going to have a lot to say, we are going to do a lot of listening and we have a lot to learn. Obviously we are here to win. We have a tradition of winning. We are here to win and we will do whatever it takes.' -- AFP
