The 12-member board of Manchester United is set to convene this week to vote on whether to approve Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s bid to secure a 25 percent stake in the club.
This comes after the INEOS founder reached a preliminary agreement with the Glazers on Saturday to purchase a minority stake.
According to The Athletic, the board meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday, however, the vote itself will depend on the six Glazer siblings agreeing to the deal and subsequently putting it to a vote.
The Peoples Person revealed yesterday that Ratcliffe is seeking to take full control of footballing operations at the club in exchange for his estimated £1.35 billion investment.
Should he emerge successful in this regard, Ratcliffe is expected to conduct a 100-day review at Old Trafford in order to prepare for his new role.
While the Glazers may have agreed in principle to Ratcliffe’s latest bid, this is not the first offer from Britain’s richest man to make it to board level at United.
Previously, Ratcliffe had launched a bid for 51 percent ownership of the club. However, the plan of exclusively buying Class B shares, which have more voting rights, did not go down well with the Class A shareholders.
The Athletic claimed that the six non-Glazer board members decided to vote against Ratcliffe’s previous bid due to his desire to purchase only Class B shares – the type held by the Glazers – and no Class A shares as traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
With Class B shares holding 10 times more voting power, it was believed that Ratcliffe could get his bid approved by agreeing to take portions of both Class A and Class B shares.
The six Glazers that will vote on Ratcliffe’s latest bid include co-chairs Joel and Avram Glazer.
Joel is the Glazer sibling most involved in the day-to-day operations of the club, with a 19 percent stake in United.
His brother Avram holds 14 percent voting rights after selling five million United shares worth more than £70 million in 2021.
Kevin, Bryan, Darcie, and Edward are the other four Glazer siblings on the board, however, they mainly focus on maintaining other parts of their family’s business empire.
According to United’s ‘articles of association’, Ratcliffe’s bid would be passed so long as a majority of United’s board members approve the deal.
In the case of a deadlock, the casting vote would fall to co-chairs Joel and Avram.
However, it remains unclear how the deal would proceed should there be a disagreement between the co-chairmen.