Administrator confirms more Rangers bids

18 March 2012 14:06

Paul Clark, the joint administrator of Rangers, has confirmed that there have been more bids for the club than the three reported on Friday.

The Blue Knights consortium, Brian Kennedy and a group based in the United States were all established as bidders on Friday, meeting the deadline for expressing interest in buying the club.

"I won't name names but there are extra parties whose names have not been in the media that we have been in contact with," Clark said.

"At least one of those parties have made a bid and they have not been mentioned anywhere - and it might be more than one. There are parties that are keeping themselves to themselves and getting on with it."

Clark explained that a foreign consortium has been in talks but no bid has been made.

"A new party appeared overnight on Thursday and they are speeding themselves along over the weekend and they expect to make a bid early next week," he said.

"Overnight on Thursday it happened and we swapped non-disclosure agreements with them on Friday. They had access to our online data room during the course of Friday and they made it clear that they wouldn't be in a position to make even an indicative bid by the deadline."

"They asked: 'Does that mean we're out?' We said 'No'. We're happy to speak to people until we're in a closed out period."

"They're not people I have dealt with before. They appear to be a credible party and we'll see what their work over the weekend brings. It's always the case that even if you set a deadline, if somebody comes along that can't meet it you're still going to consider what they produce."

"If anybody new came along we'd still listen to them. It's not too late. What we don't want to do is have a false start. We don't want to pick one bid and for it to stall and then we have to move on to somebody else."

The position of Craig Whyte as the club's majority shareholder has been a big concern for everyone at the club but Clark is confident this will not hinder the sale of the club.

"We've had ongoing discussions with Craig and, in fact, I met him earlier this week just to try and finalise some of these issues," Clark said. "I remain confident that Craig Whyte's position will not be an impediment to a sale. I won't say exactly what that means but we've had discussions and we think it can be resolved."

With a number of ongoing cases against Rangers, Clark was keen to keep everyone aware of the situation regarding possible punishments.

"It's unfortunate that there are so many issues," Clark said.

"It would have made our life easier if they didn't exist, but we understand why they exist. I don't think any bidder has been warned off by it, but they're asking if there is any more to come."

"At some point we'll have to go to the football authorities and say: 'Is this it or is there other things coming round the corner?' It's noise we could do without, but it's necessary for the football club. We need to go through this."