Liverpool co-owner Tom Hicks claims there is a large number of "interested buyers" in the club he and George Gillett put up for sale last month.
Having leveraged huge debt on the club - parent company Kop Holdings' were £351million in the red last summer with annual loan repayments of £40million - the Americans decided to end their tumultuous reign at Anfield. Liverpool are up for sale with an asking price of between £600million to £800million.
"Liverpool has a really big universe of interested buyers," said the Texan. "There are a number of wealthy people all over the world, particularly in the Middle East and Asia, who are enormous Liverpool fans."
The 64-year-old admits he has had enough of owning clubs and sports franchises and is trying now to sell all his interests.
His Texas Rangers baseball side filed for bankruptcy on Monday some 13 months after its parent, HSG Sports Group, defaulted on £360million of debt.
The Dallas Stars ice hockey franchise is also being sold. Liverpool will be the last of his three main sports investments to be offloaded.
And Hicks, who has been the target of a sustained and often vitriolic fans' campaign to sell up at Anfield, admits the high-profile nature of ownership had taken its toll.
"Sports has never been my primary business," Hicks told Bloomberg BusinessWeek. "We are systematically selling our sports assets to focus on our core businesses like private equity and real estate.
"The lack of privacy in sports is something that my family and I aren't willing to undertake any longer.
"We'll always be big fans but we want our privacy back."
Source: PA
