The Dark Blues Business Trust has withdrawn its counter offer of investment in Dundee, clearing the way for American investors to succeed with a bid to buy a controlling stake.
The group had been prepared to make £250,000 available, but following discussions with Football Partners Scotland, fronted by the Texan, Tim Keyes, they will no longer offer an alternative to the Americans.
The DBBT is a group of around 40 businessmen, with Peter Marr, the former Dundee owner, and Martin Donnachie as its trustees. It will now focus on raising enough to buy Dens Park from John Bennett, the former Dundee United director, who is thought to be looking for £850,000 for the stadium. With the lease payments due to increase significantly within the next three years, DBBT want to step up attempts to generate money.
The Texan bid is reported to be worth £1.5m. Of the £300,000 invested in the first season, £150,000 would be for the first-team squad, £100,000 for the youths and £50,000 on improving the stadium. A further £350,000 would be invested in the second season. It is backed by three former directors, Bill Colvin, Ian Crighton and Steve Martin but needs to be supported by the Dundee Football Club Supporters Society, who hold a 51% stake. The fans group to hold a special general meeting next Monday to vote on the proposal, then the Dens directors will meet the next day for a formal vote.
"The Trust's decision allows the DFCSS members to focus on FPS's takeover proposals," read a DBBT statement. "It will also enable the Trust to focus on addressing the matter of stadium ownership. To this end the Trust believes that it would be in the wider interest of Dundee for the proposed cash injection to be targeted towards a stadium buy-back initiative rather than the purchase of DFC shares in exchange for a reinstated seat on the club board."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article