Abangkuraden's Blog

Kuala Lumpur: English football club Manchester United has hired a slew of banks including Malaysia's CIMB Group for its planned listing on the Singapore stock exchange, according to news portal FinanceAsia.

Read more: CIMB among banks hired for planned MU listing http://www.btimes.com.my/articles/mubank/Article/#ixzz1VulMK3NX 

The portal, in a report yesterday, cited sources as saying that the US-based Glazer family, which owns 100 per cent of the popular club that has a strong Asian fan base, last Friday mandated JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley as joint bookrunners for the initial public offering (IPO). The two US investment banks will work alongside Credit Suisse, which had earlier been hired as the global coordinator. It will also be a bookrunner. According to the report, the Glazers have also hired Hong Kong-based BOC International, Malaysia's CIMB, Singapore's DBS and pan-Asian investment bank CLSA as joint lead managers, in a move that suggested the owners are keen to get a well-diversified regional spread of investors. It said the Glazers have already filed a listing application with the Singapore bourse. The portal's sources said MU had an aggressive timetable in mind for its IPO and investor education may start as early as the second half of September. They said the Glazers went for Singapore instead of Hong Kong as they want to be able to list shares with "different" voting power, which is something Hong Kong's listing rules no longer allow. "It is still unclear exactly what kind of share structure the company is planning, but supposedly the current owners want to ensure that they will be able to retain control of the team even if some family members choose to sell," the portal reported. Previous news reports have suggested that it could be a US$1 billion (RM2.98 billion) IPO, with up to 30 per cent of the company being put up for sale. - By Adeline Paul Raj