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Saints are the goal for secretive hedge fund
Robert Lea, Evening Standard24.10.07
The mystery bidder for Southampton Football Club can be named today as Mayfair hedge fund Sisu Capital.
If the deal goes ahead, Southampton, currently mid-table in the Championship would become the first British football club to fall under the control of a hedge fund.
The Evening Standard can reveal that Sisu Capital, a firm that has been criticised in the High Court and which is said to be one of London's most aggressive traders in debt-laden businesses, is the unnamed "investment company" which has made an on-the-cheap bid for Saints' quoted parent Southampton Leisure.
Southampton has told investors the bidder is making "a long-term commitment" and will be a "strong and supportive shareholder." It has also said it would be "injecting a substantial sum".
Sisu aims to take at least 55% control of Southampton through the placing of 30 million new shares.
But the placing is priced at 40p a share, a discount of more than 20% to last Friday's closing price, raising just £12 million for a loss-making club that is £24 million in debt.
The offer has been agreed by Saints' chairman Ken Dulieu and chief executive Jim Hone with the backing of 29% shareholder and former chairman Rupert Lowe, who is likely to sell some of his stake to Sisu.
However, Sisu's offer compares poorly with the 65p a share put on the table by Microsoft tycoon Paul Allen in the spring.
Allen was prepared to make a major investment to get Saints into the Premiership, but walked away after witnessing the internecine war on Southampton's board and among major shareholders.
The Standard can further reveal that Sisu has won the agreement of the Southampton management team led by Hone after offering a bonus of £300,000 for doing the deal, the promise of further bonuses and "significant" increases in salary as well as seats on the new board.
The offer for Southampton is Sisu's third attempt to take over an English football club, having failed to land Derby and then being outbid by ex-Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra last summer for Manchester City.
On each occasion the Sisu offer was fronted by Ray Ranson, the ex-Manchester City full back-turned-businessman who Sisu is proposing to put on the Southempton board.
Sisu will also demand a seat for its director masterminding the deal, the Swiss-educated Nigerian Onye Igwe, a sometime accountant and commodities trader.
Sisu keeps a determinedly low profile but was catapulted into the limelight two years ago when its chief executive Joy Seppala, a 46-year-old Finnish-American, was accused of lying in a High Court wrangle over bust electricity company TXU.
Seppala who is described by rivals as having "balls of steel", was criticised by the trial judge over her "distorted recollection of events" and for being "prone to exaggerate".
Since then Sisu has emerged as an aggressive punter in takeover situations, taking positions in the battle for the London Stock Exchange and most recently in Burren Energy.
