Sir Jim Ratcliffe gave this ultimatum to the Glazers on the takeover

Ratcliffes patience was wearing thin and was 24 hours away from pulling out the deal

17/01/2024, 07:45 PM +00:00

The partial ownership deal was almost a day away from not happening

November 22nd, 2022. That was the day that the Glazer family put out a statement that they were exploring the sale of Manchester United. October 14th, 2023, that was the day it was announced that Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS were the chosen candidates for the new partial ownership after Sheikh Jassim and Qatar withdrew from the negotiations. December 24th, 2023, that was the day that the deal between Sir Jim and the Glazers was finally agreed upon after two months of exclusive negotiations.

Sir Jim was not the only major contender during the United takeover process, as Sheikh Jassim and Qatar were heavy favorites throughout the process and at one point it seemed they were going to win the race. Today’s SEC filings however show that Jassim and his team were never really quite close as the directors were not appreciative of their portion of the shares and the fact that Jassim never provided proper financial commitment letters.

A year plus long saga that had kept getting pushed back weeks and weeks from reports, finally ended the day before Christmas. However it has been revealed as to why the saga ended on that specific date. SEC filings show that Sir Jim Ratcliffe had given the Glazers and Manchester United a Christmas Day deadline to agree to his 25 percent offer.

Despite the Glazers usually calling out the bluff in several negotiations in the past, the bluff was not called upon this time. United’s board of directors met on December 22nd to discuss Ratcliffe’s ultimatum, and they gave in to his demands deciding it wasn’t worth the risk to reject him again. The deal would of course be processed 2 days later on Christmas Eve. In the filings it has been reported that in October there was some hesitancy from non-affiliated directors regarding the prices of the shares.

The final details on the deal between Ratcliffe and the Glazers

The eventual details on the deal would come out on the share prices and money paid which was Ratcliffe bought 25 percent of the Glazers class B shares and up to 25 percent of the class A shares and has pledged to invest 250 million pounds into Old Trafford. The SEC filings released all the details today.