Coventry City CEO Paul Clouting has told Gary Hoffman to show the board that they have the funds to take over the club.
In an Question & Answer session with the CT's Andy Turner, who asked about the club failing in it's duty to listen ot offers from potential investors by dismissing the Gary Hoffman bid, Mr Clouting replied: "Without getting into semantics, there is a process that any business has to go through when it is approached and any approach to a business has to be formal. You can give an indicative offer.
"For example, if I wanted to buy your house I might say to you I want to make you an offer for somewhere in the region of such a figure. You might say ‘that’s not in the right ball park but make me a formal offer’ and then I might consider it.
"I would then go to the estate agent and they might say ‘before you make a formal offer, have you sold your house and have you got finance in place?’ And in some senses, it is the same situation with business.
"Ken Dulieu has met with Gary a couple of times and was given a letter that was what I would call, an indicative offer – ‘here is something that if we ever turn into a formal offer, what do you think?’ And Ken said he’d give it some thought.
"But the point is, it wasn’t signed and it doesn’t indicate who the potential purchasers might be, and if we are to consider something seriously you need to ask whether it is something that we think we should be considering.
"The point to any purchaser is, if you want to be serious, come to the board of the football club and say ‘I want to buy it, this is who will become the owner and this will be a formal bid,’ and then the board of directors – there are two shareholders in Sisu, who are the majority shareholders, and Leonard Brody, a minority, and hold two seats on the board – and they will consider it.
"The other point is that at the moment, as of July 1, Gary wrote to either Ken or Onye Igwe and said that he was really disappointed that the club have not considered this offer and that any offer is now off the table. So at the moment there is no offer for the football club.
"However, if you want to make an offer – and for me it is a very straight-forward process – and that is that you have to provide proof of funds.
"That is one thing but in order for the football club to seriously consider something we need to know who it is.
"Gary has told Ken that but Gary asked Ken not to disclose the name of the company. Gary’s interview said that ‘they know who it is’ but I phoned two other directors and asked if they knew, and both – one of whom is a shareholder – confirmed that they didn’t know. So Ken kept his word."
For more on Andy Turner's interview with Paul Clouting, please click on http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/coventry-city-fc/coventry-city-fc-news/2011/07/15/paul-clouting-q-a-show-us-the-money-gary-hoffman-92746-29058865/