12/09/2013 00:00
TW
0
By Humphrey Carter

PALMA
A new chapter in Real Mallorca's history opened last night when British businessman Paul Davidson's offer to purchase a 93 percent controlling stake in the club was officially accepted.

The millionaire engineer and entrepreneur had been locked in negotiations with the club and the chairman Vicente Grande, whose shares he is buying, for the past six weeks but yesterday, two days earlier than expected, all the parties involved met for over two hours in Palma to finalise the deal.

Construction tycoon Grande filed for insolvency two months ago, hence the process has been long, drawn out and complicated - the Davidson camp had over 90 pages of documents to study, and the all-important administrators were also understood to have been present at last night's meeting which started at 5pm and ended at 8.07pm - when Paul Davidson called the Bulletin.

Davidson said “it's finished. The offer has been, signed, sealed and stamped and the only person who can stop it now is the judge (handling Grande's insolvency case). “Other offers can still be made but they would just throw the whole thing into an auction and we all wanted to get this resolved as quickly as possible,” he said. “The documents will be submitted to the courts tomorrow (this morning) so that they will all be in order for the judge to examine when he gets back from holiday on Monday,” added Davidson.

The administrators are also understood to have been issued with copies of the documents for further examination last night.
Davidson had until Thursday to make his final offer after he and Grande agreed on a price last week and that figure, according to Davidson, “is huge. The Russians and Red Bull will have to club together to beat it,” he said en route to Palma airport.

Davidson said that he and Grande agreed on a due diligence-pending figure when they opened negotiations and that figure of between 38 and 40 million euros is what is apparently going to be paid. Although last night, there were claims that the final price is even higher.

However, Davidson appeared a happy man. So too is Grande because Davidson wants to honor his agreement with the current chairman and keep him on for another five years - despite growing calls for Grande to step down. “Three wins on the trot and he'll be the hero again.” said Davidson before jetting off to London. He will be back in time for Sunday's game.