Kieran Maguire believes the downgrade in 777 Partners’ credit rating from excellent to weak doesn’t look good as it looks to complete a takeover at Everton.
Speaking on The Price of Football podcast on Thursday (22 February, 39:47), the football finance expert said a weak credit rate means people are less likely to lend to the US investment firm and that it is likely to be charged a higher rate of interest on any loans.
After the company has also paid the wages late for the last three months at Belgian side Standard Liege, who it owns as part of its portfolio of clubs, he believes these developments are “red flags” and that the Premier League is right to demand information from the group.
“Its credit rating has gone from excellent, to fair and it’s now weak, i.e. junk status if they were trying to issue the bonds or worse,” said Maguire.
“If you’ve got a weak credit rating, two things tend to happen. First of all, there are fewer people who are willing to lend to you and, secondly, because you’re a higher credit risk, they are going to charge a higher rate of interest on the back of that. So none of that looks good.
“We’ve also seen information come out in the 777 stable of clubs, we have Standard Liege. For the last three months, they have paid their wages late. These are red flags, upon red flags, upon red flags. While the Premier League is being given a lot of stick for not giving a definitive answer, they are right to demand from 777 information.
“If there’s nothing of issue and it’s all just smear stories, 777 should be in a position to provide the evidence to stand up and allow the Premier League to approve, as we’ve seen with Jim Ratcliffe. He’s whizzed it through in a fraction of the time we’ve had the Everton offer.”
Everton fans deserve 777 Partners update
It’s pretty clear that the jury is very much out on 777 after all of the news that has come out on the company over the past few months.
It was thought that it could take a reasonable period of time for the takeover to be completed once the deal was agreed with Farhad Moshiri, but there hasn’t been much clarity provided lately.
While there are obviously several matters for the Premier League to get to the bottom of before it can make a decision, the Everton fans deserve to know what’s going on.
The fact of the matter is, though, that the Toffees need investment soon and they are already at the mercy of 777 after taking out huge loans with the investment firm.
There seriously needs to be some movement on this matter soon as the Blues need to know where they stand so they can start moving forward at Goodison Park.
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