Swans Takeover Will Involve More Than Kaplan And Levien

The Liberty Stadium, Swansea, home of the Ospreys. Pic: Getty Images.

Swans Takeover Will Involve More Than Kaplan And Levien

The planned £100m takeover of Swansea City will involve more than just Americans Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, according to the club’s Supporters Trust.

Members of the Trust met with Levien last Saturday, before the Swans’ 1-0 victory over Chelsea which has virtually guaranteed another season in the Premier League.

Levien told the Trust that others are being invited to join the consortium seeking to take over the club, but he refused to give more details.

Neither did Levien provide evidence to prove no debt from the purchase would subsequently be loaded onto the club, suggesting instead that he and Kaplan would be supplying most of the funds for the share purchase.

The Trust remain concerned that they were not kept informed about months of talks held between chairman Huw Jenkins and the Americans – even though the Trust hold 21 per cent of shares and have a director, Huw Cooze, on the board.

The Trust plan to give more details about their meeting and their concerns over the deal in a question and answer session for Trust members on Thursday.

In a statement, they said: “As mentioned previously there is no offer on the table for the Trust’s 21.1% stake so there is no decision for the members to make. However, we appreciate that our Members will have a lot of questions at this time.

“As with the previous American interest, we will also be performing our own due diligence on those looking to take over the club. This will take many forms, part of which will be following up with supporters groups from Mr Levien and Mr Kaplan’s other clubs in the USA.

“As a Trust we have an open mind on the interested parties and investment in general so we will also seek to engage with Mr Levien and Mr Kaplan in order to more fully understand their plans regarding our football club.

“Ultimately, we will only ever seek to ensure that anyone interested in taking over our football club has the long term interests of our club at heart and will help continue the remarkable success story we have enjoyed in recent years.”

 

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