Irish duo set to make £70m

IRISH horseracing tycoons John Magnier and JP McManus could make a clear profit of nearly £70m on their shares in Manchester United if the soccer club gets a full-blown takeover offer from the American billionaire Glazer family. United shares raced ahead 5% today to a three-and-half-year high of 280p, valuing the club at more than £730m.

Yesterday's latest raid by the family trusts of Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers American Football team, took the Glazers' stake to 16.3%.

The share-buying - as revealed by the Evening Standard in December - is being driven by Glazer's 36-year-old soccer-mad son Joel.

It is understood that Glazer junior is working on the structure of a takeover bid with Mehmet Dalman, the United-supporting head of investment banking at Commerzbank.

An offer could be pitched at about £800m, valuing United's shares at about 305p each, a premium of about 10% to today's price.

If Magnier and McManus were to sell - and reports suggest they are close to ending their dispute with the club's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, over ownership of the Rock of Gibraltar racehorse - their 28.9% stake would be worth more than £230m.

That would deliver a profit of nearly £70m on their £163m multiple share purchases since early 2001.

Stock Exchange filings show that by October of that year, the duo, through their offshore vehicle Cubic Expression, had spent about £36m acquiring 8.65%, at prices between 120p and 200p.

Last March as the Glazers' interest in United's stock began to ferment, Cubic raided again, spending £11m on shares at about 120p.

Further acquisitions during 2003 were dwarfed by their £62m capture of BSkyB's 10% stake at 239p last October. Over the past two months Cubic has spent another £40m acquiring more shares for between 250p and 260p.