NEW OWNERS OF LUTON TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB REVEALED

Luton Town's new owners have today been announced at a press conference. As expected, Bill Tomlins has been announced as chairman, while former director John Mitchell has returned to the club – once again as a director.

Tomlins and Mitchell have both been involved with the club before – Tomlins as general manager in the 80s and Mitchell as a director during the Mike Watson-Challis reign.

Mitchell also played football professionally, a spell at Fulham arguably being the highlight of his playing days. He also won one England cap.

In addition, two other directors were announced – Derek Peters, a former financial director at Tottenham Hotspur Plc and the football club, who joined the White Hart Lane-based club in the 1980s and floated the club onto the stock market – making Spurs the first British club to ever be floated on the stock market, and Richard Bagehot, a lawyer who has worked in the sports and entertainment industry specifically for 27 years.

There are also two investors currently – while talks are ongoing to bring a third investor on board. The two currently involved are Malcolm Gold, who has worked in the hotel industry, and Ken James, a banker who worked for eight years in New York.

Tomlins said, "Football is not the flavour of the month and at the moment, getting funding for a football club is very difficult and you either need to be someone who will throw money at a club or be a group of people who will do that. But even when you have the money, the football isn't always good and the club can find itself in debt and that isn't a route we tend to go down and we will run this club within it's means and the funding difficulty was overcome because we saw the future was relocation and it has to be in a new stadium. As nice as it is to have been at Kenilworth Road and the history surrounding the place, the most important thing is the future. This club now, with it's restricted capacity, is very difficult to make it commercially viable and the Watson-Challis' had the vision to buy a piece of land with the purpose of relocating the club and we've made an agreement with them to use that land.

" Mike Watson-Challis we have had a long involvement with and in my time, Mike was a director on the board in the 1980s and we felt it was important to give him some sort of life presidency, which he has accepted. At the end of the day, this club, even as we speak, is losing £200,000 a month and this club was budgeted, even during the time of the receiver, to lose £400,000 a month and the receiver made decisions to reduce the wages and reduce the squad and part of our route will be picking up that deferment so the players get paid again and that is another £250,000 straight away.

"The two investors are Malcolm Gold, the owner of the Regal hotels, and he lives reasonably close and he is a football person as well, so he is a lovely addition to us here.

"Ken James is a banker, with eight years in the New York banking structure, so we have someone from the banking world, which will help us with relocating and further on."

John Mitchell added, "We wanted football people from day one, we didn't just want people here because it is a property.

"In terms of finance, the first part was to promise we had the finances to take the club over the next year and secondly the relocation. When we first presented to the Football League, they said we needed to raise £3.7 million to take the club forward and we've done that.

"We've been working very closely with the manager, Mike Newell and director of football, Mick Harford, and our ambitions are unchanged with wanting to offer all of the out-of-contract players new deals. Mike has released one player (Morten Hyldgaard) and has offered the other nine players new deals.

"We feel we can reduce the losses, maximise our income while still maintaining our ambitions. We have a relocation programme which we feel can take the club forward and I felt considering what the club went through last season, it was a remarkable achievement where they finished in the League, and under the circumstances it was an incredible job.

"Other good news is that Steve Robinson and Chris Coyne have signed and some young players Mike brought in and played first-team football have confirmed they'll be coming back.

"It has been a very difficult time for the football club, and not just in recent times, but probably if you look back over the last ten years and we want stability and living within our means and we want to provide as much value and benefit to the management team so they can take the club forward.

"We have purchased the club effectively and we have set up a new company which is now up and running. The old company will see the receiver finalise the issues he's got, and then once he's done that, he'll put it into liquidation.

"The company is called Kenilworth Road Football Club Ltd., but we will change that name to Luton Town Football Club Ltd.

"The new stadium our aim is for two years and we will extradite things as quickly as possible and we've been working with two developers, so with a bit of luck, we can achieve our objective, which is the relocation within two-years.

"The planning process is what takes time and to build a 15,000-seated stadium and to give us the ability to go another 10 or 11 thousand so we can fulfil the ambitions of the club in the future, that situation comes back down to planning and it does require the support of the council and the big issue is getting the full support from the three political parties and things are looking good. The location of that land is going to be very much dependant on traffic and that is something the developer and consultants will hopefully address to take the club forward. The funding is in place and the land is there and if we can resolve the planning issues, moving within two-years is a possibility.

"We wish to assure fans that John Gurney has no hold over the club, this is a brand new company. We have no association with the old company. Our understanding having seen the agreement is he has no hold on the land for the new stadium either."
Story date: Wednesday, May 26, 2004