Liverpool’s Tom Hicks Defaults on $525 Million Loans

Via Unprofessional Foul and the Guardian: Tom Hicks, the charismatic and widely beloved co-owner of Liverpool, has defaulted on the monthly interest payments on three separate loans worth a combined $525 million. Actually, since we may as well be precise in the face of gigantic pretend numbers, it was his sports investment company, the Hicks Sports Group, that missed the payments, but it’s more or less all the same thing. The HSG, which is not only an acronym but also the sound Liverpool fans tend to make in their throats when Hicks comes on the TV, is actively searching for investors for the Texas Rangers and the Dallas Stars, Hicks’s baseball and hockey teams. And Hicks swears that the banks won’t take over the teams.

This does and doesn’t affect Liverpool: It doesn’t, because Liverpool isn’t connected to HSG; Hicks owns his share of the club through Kop Investment LLC, which is the parent company of Kop Holdings, which owns Liverpool, which has a thing in it called the Kop. But it does, because Hicks and his co-owner George Gillett are just four months away from having to refinance a £350.5 million loan for Liverpool through Royal Bank of Scotland and Wachovia, and this news is bound to freak them out. It’s too soon to say what that will mean, but the clouds on the horizon for Liverpool are starting to look a little ominous. And I’m not just saying that because they’ve just re-signed Dirk Kuyt.