Exclusive: What the new PCP Partners and St James Holdings charge really means for a Newcastle United Saudi takeover

In an exclusive interview with the Gazette, Kieran Maguire of the University of Liverpool revealed what the latest takeover documents lodged at Companies House really mean for talks between Ashley and the Amanda Staveley-led Saudi consortium.

Staveley, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia and a group with connections to the Reuben Brothers are in talks over a deal to buy Newcastle United.

And a new document – which was filed on April 8 – got tongues wagging on Tyneside today.

The document shows a charge registered to PCP Partners, one of Staveley’s companies, with St James Holdings – the ultimate owner of Newcastle United – listed as the lender.

If nothing more, it shows that talks have taken place.

“If you want to take some positives, this document shows that clearly there is some form of communication between Mike Ashley and Amanda Staveley,” said Maguire.

“This document says that St James Holdings is a lender, and Amanda Staveley is in effect the borrower.

But if we delve a little deeper, what does it really mean?

Maguire believes that while there is much still uncertain, this document could be a sign that Ashley is essentially helping to fund Staveley’s bid to purchase the club.

Section 4.14.5 of the charge document shows that St James Holdings is agreeing to loan a sum of at least £150million to Staveley’s company – which could be Ashley’s way of helping to fund a deal.

The Sports Direct Tycoon would retain money in the club – although it would be paid back in the future – but would have no voting rights or control over the day-to-day running of the club.

This is fairly common practice, as Maguire explains.

“The claims are in an amount of £150million, which is an eye-watering sum of money.

“Effectively, in the best case scenario this looks to mean that PCP are in takeover talks and that Mike Ashley is lending them £150million to fund the deal.

“Let’s say they’ve agreed a price and they can’t afford it in cash, this essentially means that Ashley is somewhat bizarrely lending them the money to buy the football club.

“It could be that Ashley is saying that he won’t take all of the money now - similarly to what we saw with Sunderland and Ellis Short – and he retains some form of cash investment in the, but that gives him no power as you need the stake to hold the power.

“You could then be left with a scenario, which is similar to what we’ve seen at other clubs, where the original owner still has money in the club but they don’t own the shares so they can’t run it on a daily basis.”

“That would be paid back on some basis,” he continued.”

“It’s just guesswork, but it’s intriguing.”

There have also been claims that the document grants Staveley exclusivity, and Maguire believes this is possible given a £13million deposit looks to have been paid by the purchasing party.

“There is talk of a £13million deposit being paid.

“That would suggest that some form of deposit has been paid into a bank account, and what the purpose of that is, we don’t know.

“But you wouldn’t usually pay a deposit unless you were confident of buying something.”