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Peter Kenyon still well short of raising the money needed to meet Mike Ashley Newcastle asking price – New report

5 years ago
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Peter Kenyon was first revealed as an interested party in buying Newcastle United back in September.

The one-time Chelsea and Manchester United Chief Executive was an interesting name put forward.

Newcastle fans have obviously wanted Mike Ashley to sell up for over a decade but on top of that, they have also been desperate to have somebody running the club on a day to day basis who knows what they are doing.

If successful in helping to buyout Mike Ashley, Peter Kenyon would appear to be then able to kill two birds with one stone, in terms of also being able to come in and put together a proper management team to run the business side of the club.

Almost two weeks ago Mike Ashley appeared on Sky News and told fans that a deal to buy Newcastle could be completed as early as this month (December).

The NUFC owner said that whilst there was interest from other potential buyers, one of them had already progressed further than any other previous interested party, leading to his belief/claim that the club could be sold before the end of the year.

Since that point, it has been widely reported and accepted that he was referring to a bid Peter Kenyon was putting together and that after being allowed to see the books, he (Kenyon) was putting investors in place to fund the deal, with the help of Rockefeller Capital Management.

Following his TV appearance, Mike Ashley’s surprise move to go public with this claimed imminent Newcastle United sale, was widely reported to have been a ‘hurry up’ message for Peter Kenyon to show he had the funds in place to buy the club.

However, Friday morning, three months after Peter Kenyon was revealed to be putting together investors to buy the football club, an exclusive reports that he is still nowhere near raising the amount that Mike Ashley is asking for.

Whilst Ashley is looking for £300m and said to not be prepared to negotiate in any circumstances on that figure, Kenyon is now said to be still at least £100m short of that asking price.

The exclusive has been ran by The Sun and they say their information is that Peter Kenyon is stuck at £200m and so far can’t come up with the rest of the money.

We are now well past the point where any minute chance of a sale being completed in December is possible, with Newcastle fans naturally sceptical as to whether any deal is remotely likely at all.

For all that Mike Ashley claimed there were other very interested parties as well as Peter Kenyon, and the media have backed up those claims from the NUFC owner, Kenyon is the only name that is being put forward by the newspapers.

It all sounds a rerun of 2017, when Amanda Staveley went public with interest in buying the club by fronting a bid.

Last year Mike Ashley and his people claimed that there were other serious bidders involved and if Staveley didn’t follow up with hard cash, then these others would be set to buy Newcastle United, Back then all the media backed up those claims, saying they were aware of interest from these other supposed parties via credible sources.

Of course, as we know, there were no credible bidders and/or Mike Ashley in reality had no interest in selling the club.

Is it any different this time?

We will believe it when we see it.

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