Ricketts consortium give up at last, do not submit final bid for Chelsea

We are set to find out soon, perhaps as early as Monday, who will be Chelsea’s next owner.

But in a surprise development, the winners will most certainly not be the Ricketts Family, and their consortium consisting of Ken Griffin and Dan Gilbert, and probably a few others. They have removed themselves from the running, as confirmed in a statement sent to the Press Association.

“The Ricketts-Griffin-Gilbert group has decided, after careful consideration, not to submit a final bid for Chelsea FC.

“In the process of finalising the proposal, it became increasingly clear that certain issues could not be addressed given the unusual dynamics around the sales process.

“We have great admiration for Chelsea and its fans and we wish the new owners well.”

-Source: Yahoo! UK

One does wonder what it was all about then, to go through this entire process, deal with the backlash against (or at least ignore it), gladhand anyone and everyone they could find, engage architects for stadium planning, and so on, only to give up at the last minute.

As per the report, the primary reason is “understood” to be about not being able to agree the “final composition” of their offer, which is ironic given that they had the most money to bandy about out of any of the four groups.

So, this leaves us with three groups still in the race, with the Boehly-Wyss consortium now presumably alone in their lead. The other two remaining bids are led by Sir Martin Broughton, and Atalanta co-owner Stephen Pagliuca, who’s also earned support from the True Blue Consortium.

All three have been confirmed as having submitted a final offer.