SOCCER:TOM HICKS, the embattled co-owner of Liverpool, maintained yesterday he will fight the high court action launched by the Anfield chairman, Martin Broughton, to force the American to sell the club to New England Sports Ventures, the owners of the Boston Red Sox.
In his fierce public onslaught against Hicks and the Texan’s fellow 50 per cent Liverpool owner, George Gillett, on Tuesday, Broughton said that by resisting, the pair had “flagrantly abused” undertakings they had given him and the Royal Bank of Scotland not to oppose a reasonable sale.
Broughton said they had abused the club’s articles of association, by seeking to sack the managing director, Christian Purslow, and commercial director, Ian Ayre, and replace them with Hicks’s son and his assistant, to give Hicks a majority on the board. Liverpool’s articles of association say only Broughton, as chairman, has the right to appoint or remove directors.
Broughton has been advised of his legal rights at every step by Liverpool’s solicitors Slaughter May and he took advice from them on Wednesday. On that basis he rejected Hicks’s attempted boardroom coup. Broughton, Purslow and Ayre approved the sale, then the chairman launched his public attack on Hicks and Gillett.
He is “confident” a high court judge will rule in the board’s favour when the case is heard next week, although he added: “You can never be 100 per cent confident when you go to court.”
Hicks’s spokesman in New York yesterday set out the arguments which will form the basis of the Texan’s legal defence. Of the undertakings, which Broughton says were given to him and to RBS, that Hicks and Gillett would not oppose a reasonable sale, the spokesman said: “There were no such undertakings given to Broughton.”
He did not respond to a question about whether Hicks, as Broughton says, had given the undertaking to RBS. The spokesman claimed Hicks did have the right to sack and appoint directors: “The board has been legally reconstituted,” he said of Hicks’s attempt, “and the new board does not approve of this proposed transaction.”
Broughton is relying on the articles of association. The key clause is paragraph 81a, which says: “Each director appointed to the office of chairman of the board of directors of the company may appoint any person as a director of the company and may remove any director (other than George N Gillett Jnr and/or Thomas O Hicks). Any appointment or removal shall be made in writing and signed by the then current chairman.”
