by the Financial Times

Chinese fans may lament the low calibre of their domestic men’s football teams, but that does not mean the Chinese government would consider buying debt-laden Liverpool Football Club.

A spokesperson for China Investment Corp, the country’s main sovereign wealth fund, told the Financial Times on Thursday they had never heard of a plan to buy Liverpool or of Kenneth Huang, the man widely reported to be fronting a Chinese bid to buy the English Premier League club.


UK media have reported that Mr Huang, owner of a small sports marketing company with an office in Beijing, is bidding for the club with backing from CIC.

But Mr Huang himself issued a statement on Wednesday night saying that although he has registered interest in investing in Liverpool, he has not made a formal bid.

“There has been much speculation and commentary from a wide array of people, many of whom have little knowledge of the facts,” Mr Huang said.

A person who has worked closely with CIC said there was “no way” the fund would get involved in such a high-profile, symbolic and potentially risky deal.

“Next they’ll say CIC is going to buy Playboy,” this person said.

A person close to Mr Huang told the Financial Times on Monday that his bid was backed by a “sovereign wealth fund from the Far East” but declined to name the fund.

There had been no suggestion internally at Liverpool that CIC was involved in Mr Huang’s bid, another person close to the situation said.

Portrayed in the UK press as a Chinese billionaire tycoon, Mr Huang runs QSL Sports Limited, a sports marketing company that is trying to develop a new basketball league in China and promote Little League (youth) baseball in a country where most people know nothing about the sport.

QSL’s website says the company is based out of Hong Kong and located at a prestigious address. However, when the Financial Times visited the office there was no sign of QSL and the management company of the building said no company by that name rented an office there.

A person who answered the phone at QSL in Hong Kong at first said the company was still at the address listed on the website, but when told that the management company of the building had denied this, then said the company had moved and its new address was a secret.

At QSL’s small office in central Beijing, company employees were still unpacking boxes having recently moved from a much smaller office. A staff member said the company employed around 15 people in Beijing but he had not heard about a plan to buy Liverpool FC.

After repeated questions to Mr Huang’s spokeswoman, the office addresses were removed from QSL’s website on Thursday afternoon.

An official biography of Mr Huang says he is an investor in a Chinese basketball team and in 1988 became the first Chinese college graduate from mainland China to work at the New York Stock Exchange, where he “started his career in public relations”.

He also founded an investment company called Rocket Capital with Leslie Alexander, owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team, and has made a number of investments in Chinese companies. Mr Huang’s spokeswoman could not confirm whether he was still involved with Rocket Capital.