Record Sport broke the stunning news last month that a US consortium was planning a stunning takeover and it's edging closer
14:11, 25 Mar 2025
Investment banker Les Allan
Investment banker Les Allan
Investment banker Les Allan has claimed that he is the man that sparked a bold takeover of Rangers.
American tycoon Andrew Cavenagh - who is the leading force behind the Rangers takeover - and San Francisco 49ers Enterprises are inching closer to a controlling stake in the Scottish Premiership club.
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And Allan, who is a Hearts fan from Edinburgh, has revealed he played a key role in introducing the parties to begin negotiations over a takeover
He told The Warm-Up: "Hopefully the deal concludes successfully. At this moment in time, the deal I think is a groundbreaking one if it happens for Scottish football.
"My involvement; I wish I could tell you I had this grand plan of becoming an investment banker and buying and selling football clubs and other sports businesses but it is not the way it happened.
"It's just decades worth of relationships on both sides of the transaction. We did some work with Andrew Cavenagh and finding a club for Andrew specifically.
"He was very detailed in what he was looking for. He has done a lot of work in looking for something that would meet his requirements and ambitions.
“In the last few months, he teamed up with the 49ers and that changes the game a little bit when you’re starting to work with an organisation quite as established and at the very top table of the top sports in the world with the top commercial relationships.
“Can Rangers and Scottish football expect to see an uplift in the overall commercial profile of Rangers and the rest of Scottish football? Yeah.
US health tycoon and prospective Rangers investor Andrew Cavenagh
US health tycoon and prospective Rangers investor Andrew Cavenagh
"They own very serious professional sporting assets, when you look at how they run those assets, you’re looking at a high degree of professionalism, top tier, top table commercial relationships and sporting acumen, that’s what I’d expect to see.”
And with NFL giant the 49ers on board he reckons it is now time for the Ibrox diehards - and the rest of Scottish football - to get excited: “Investors, whether they’re billionaires or not, want to have fun too.
“Rangers fans should be super excited, but as Scottish football fans; you’ve got to think, that’s going to draw the eyes and the attention of other American sports owners at that level, and that’s what’s happened over a period with the premier league in England is that suddenly, you’re in that room.”
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