Former West Ham owner Brown plans secret bid for Leeds By David Bond Last Updated: 1:59am BST 05/05/2007 Football fans' forum The former West Ham chairman, Terry Brown, has been plotting a secret takeover bid for Leeds United which could still succeed despite Ken Bates yesterday placing the club in administration and agreeing a deal to buy it back immediately. Just six months after selling West Ham to an Icelandic consortium fronted by Eggert Magnusson in a £108 million deal, The Daily Telegraph has learned that Brown held discussions about rescuing Leeds with Bates in Monaco last month. Despite being blamed by Magnusson for landing West Ham with a £5.5 million Premier League fine over the Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano scandal, Brown is keen to make a return to football. He wants to use some of the £33.4 million profit he made from the sale of his shares in West Ham to buy a new club, even though he is a lifelong supporter of the East End side. It is understood his plan for Leeds involves installing his former managing director at Upton Park, Paul Aldridge, as the new chief executive at Elland Road. Aldridge was last week accused by a Premier League commission of failing to disclose contracts which proved that Tevez and Mascherano were not owned by West Ham but by offshore companies. He has threatened to sue the League over the ruling. Yesterday Bates left Leeds' long-suffering fans and the rest of football scratching their heads as he made full use of British insolvency law to effectively write off £35 million of debts at the same time as retaining control of the club. At 3.15 yesterday afternoon KPMG were appointed administrators to the club. A statement released by the accountants revealed how a winding-up order from HM Revenue and Customs over £5 million had left Bates facing liquidation unless he paid up by June 25. With Leeds all but relegated to League One going into tomorrow's final day of the Championship season against Derby, the club knew they would face an automatic 10-point penalty if they went into administration after the weekend. By going into administration now the 10-point penalty applies to this season, confirming they have been relegated. But at the same time Bates won the backing of the administrators to buy the company back for an undisclosed fee. The process is legal and allows directors to run a company into the ground, only to buy the assets back from an administrator, leaving the creditors high and dry. In this case it is the taxman who suffers the biggest blow. The deal must still be approved by creditors at a meeting before the end of May, which means other bidders, including Brown, still have a chance to buy the club if they can prove the deal is better value for the creditors. Bates yesterday refused to take any of the blame for Leeds's latest financial disaster.
I wonder if if paid a quid like he did at Chelsea. Brown, Ken Bates and Wisey running things with Aldridge, (and Gus Poyet?) in the backround? What a mix!
I'll buy the shares off of him at a big discount. You'll be the new kit man. Yaniv can sell programmes.