Premier League chair Hoffman to quit amid fury over Newcastle deal
The chairman of the Premier League is on the brink of resigning following a backlash from clubs over its handling of the Saudi-led takeover of Newcastle United.
Sky News has learnt that Gary Hoffman, who only took up the non-executive post 18 months ago, is close to finalising his exit after coming under pressure to quit in the last few weeks.
An announcement about his departure could be made in the coming days, an executive at one top flight club said.
The consortium that took over Newcastle includes the financier Amanda Staveley
There remained a chance that Mr Hoffman could change his mind if a sufficient number of clubs sought to persuade him to do so, the insider added, although the likelihood of that appears slim.
All 20 top flight clubs are understood to have been briefed on the situation.
Mr Hoffman’s impending resignation follows weeks of unrest about the decision to allow the £305m purchase of Newcastle by a consortium spearheaded by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
It comes at a sensitive time for English football, with a wide-ranging review overseen by the former sports minister, Tracey Crouch, expected to be published next week.
Ms Crouch’s report will recommend the establishment of IREF (the Independent Regulator for English Football), which will assume new powers to regulate the ownership and governance of professional clubs.
The departure of Mr Hoffman, a business heavyweight who helped keep Northern Rock alive after its nationalisation during the 2008 financial crisis, is likely to provide ammunition to those who argue that English football’s power-brokers are incapable of self-regulation.
A review by Tracey Crouch is expected to be published next week
It is also likely to raise questions about the appetite of credible candidates to replace him, given the demonstration of muscle-flexing power by Premier League clubs which has heralded his exit.
Some senior figures in the game argue that Mr Hoffman is being unfairly left to carry the can over the Newcastle deal, and say the League’s board was put in an impossible position.
Reports last month suggested that a vote of no confidence in Mr Hoffman was a possibility amid anger at the Magpies’ takeover.
His imminent exit comes even as the Premier League is close to securing record sums from the sale of its US television rights and with its broader finances in robust health in the context of the pandemic.
Nevertheless, it has faced criticism from an array of clubs that they should have been kept more closely informed about the progress of the protracted Newcastle negotiations.
Some club executives have also argued that the deal should have been blocked because of the Saudi regime’s poor human rights record.
The clubs’ complaints were swiftly rejected by the Premier League on account of its confidentiality obligations during discussions with the consortium, which also includes the financier Amanda Staveley and Jamie Reuben, a member of the billionaire property-owning family.
Nevertheless, a meeting of the 20 clubs last month resulted in an overwhelming vote to ban related-party transactions, with the effect of preventing Newcastle from striking sponsorship deals with entities connected to the Saudi state or its Public Investment Fund (PIF).
Some club executives argued the deal should have been blocked because of the Saudi regime’s human rights record
Only Newcastle opposed the motion, while Manchester City, which is owned by members of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, abstained.
Mr Hoffman, who is a lifelong fan of Coventry City, the Championship side, has had a high-flying career in business and finance, as well as serving as chair of the Football Foundation.
A former Barclays executive, he chaired Visa Europe, ran the insurer Hastings and now chairs Monzo, the digital bank.
He took on the chairmanship of the Premier League in June 2020, prior to the resumption of top-flight fixtures that had been delayed by the first UK-wide coronavirus lockdown.
Mr Hoffman was also thrust into the row about Project Big Picture, the initiative led by Liverpool and Manchester United to reduce the number of Premier League teams to 18 while channelling a portion of top flight revenues to the English Football League.
His stiffest test, however, came in April this year, when six English clubs confirmed that they had signed a bombshell agreement to join a new European Super League (ESL).
The project imploded in less than 48 hours amid a torrent of criticism from fans, politicians and football administrators including the Premier League.
Mr Hoffman oversaw the subsequent imposition of multimillion pound fines on the six clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – and the removal of their executives from key Premier League sub-committees.
An executive at one club which was part of the ESL project said: “He [Mr Hoffman] was a robust figure over the Super League issue but I have no desire to see him step down.
“His has been a pragmatic voice in the governance of the Premier League at a time of unprecedented turbulence.”
Assuming Mr Hoffman does step down, it risks leaving a vacuum in the league’s leadership at a critical time.
It is run by Richard Masters, its permanent chief executive since 2019 and he stand-in chief since late 2018.
The Premier League had run two failed processes to recruit a CEO to take on many of the responsibilities of Richard Scudamore, who was its chief executive and then executive chairman for nearly 20 years.
The likely exit of the Premier League chairman also comes as the Football Association prepares to welcome Debbie Hewitt, a leading businesswoman, as its first female chair.
The Premier League refused to comment on Tuesday, while Mr Hoffman could not be reached for comment.
Cineworld’s hedge fund backers are drawing up plans to return the cinema operator to the public markets amid continuing uncertainty about the future of dozens of its British sites.
Sky News has learnt that the company’s owners are at the early stages of considering a New York listing for the business, with the first half of 2026 considered a likely window for it to take place.
City insiders said that a flotation was likely to encompass Cineworld’s operations outside the UK, with the group’s board expected to consider a sale of the British operations at some point.
They cautioned, however, that no decisions had been reached and would not be for some time.
The fate of Cineworld’s business in the UK has been mired in uncertainty for months, with the company initially exploring a sale of it before turning to a restructuring plan which compromises many of its landlords and other creditors.
It has announced the permanent closure of six sites, but it emerged last month that nearly 20 more were at risk of being shut amid ongoing talks with property owners.
The restructuring plan is due to complete later this month, which some landlords have opposed over the fairness of its terms.
Documents circulated as part of the restructuring plan process highlighted the fact that the company did not have sufficient funding to meet a quarterly rent bill on June 24 of £15.9m.
“Absent this funding, the UK Group would have been insolvent on a cashflow basis,” they said.
Other cinema operators, such as Odeon, are now poised to step in to take over small numbers of Cineworld’s other sites.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
The company trades from more than 100 locations in Britain, including at the Picturehouse chain, and employs thousands of people.
Cineworld grew under the leadership of the Greidinger family into a global giant of the industry, acquiring chains including Regal in the US in 2018 and the British company of the same name four years earlier.
Read more:
Pizza Hut UK hunts buyer amid budget tax crisis
Former Tory minister eyes top job at football regulator
Its multibillion-dollar debt mountain led it into crisis, though, and forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2022.
It delisted from the London Stock Exchange in August 2023, having seen its share price collapse.
In addition to the UK, Cineworld also operates in central and Eastern Europe, Israel and the US.
Cineworld has been contacted for comment.
A former Conservative cabinet minister has thrown his hat into the ring to become the inaugural chair of Britain’s new independent football regulator.
Sky News has learnt that Chris Heaton-Harris, who stood down as an MP at July’s general election, is among those who applied for the role ahead of a deadline on Friday.
Mr Heaton-Harris is himself a qualified football referee who has officiated at matches for decades.
A former Northern Ireland secretary and chief whip under Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson respectively, he said in 2022 of his part-time career as a football official: “I took a [refereeing] course and that was it, I’ve been going ever since.
“Football has done wonders for me throughout my life so I would recommend it to everybody.”
Mr Heaton-Harris is among a large number of people who have applied for the role of chair at the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), according to officials.
A publicly available timetable for the search says that interviews for the £130,000-a-year post will end on 11 December, with an appointment expected in the new year.
It is the second time that the government has embarked on a search for a chair for the IFR after an earlier hunt was curtailed by the general election.
The role will be based at the watchdog’s new headquarters in Manchester and will require a three-day-a-week commitment.
The Football Governance Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords this week, as part of a process that will represent the most fundamental shake-up in the oversight of English football in the game’s history.
The Labour administration has dropped a previous stipulation that the regulator should have regard to British foreign and trade policy when determining the appropriateness of a new club owner.
The IFR will monitor clubs’ adherence to rules requiring them to listen to fans’ views on issues including ticket pricing, while it may also have oversight of the parachute payments made to clubs in the years after their relegation from the Premier League.
The top flight has issued a statement expressing reservations about the regulator’s remit, while it has been broadly welcomed by the English Football League.
The IFR’s creation will come with the Premier League embroiled in a civil war over Manchester City‘s legal battles emanating from allegations that it breached the competition’s financial rules.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Next week, the 20 Premier League clubs will meet for a lengthy shareholder meeting, with a vote on amended Associated Party Transaction rules hanging in the balance.
The league needs 14 clubs to vote in favour for the rule changes to be passed.
Contrary to earlier expectations, however, a detailed discussion on a financial distribution agreement between the Premier League and EFL is unlikely to be on the agenda.
A Department for Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said: “The process for recruiting the Independent Football Regulator chair is under way but no appointment decisions have been made.
“We do not comment on speculation.”
This weekend, Mr Heaton-Harris could not be reached for comment.
Pizza Hut’s biggest UK franchisee has begun approaching potential bidders as it scrambles to mitigate the looming impact of tax hikes announced in last month’s Budget.
Sky News has learnt that Heart With Smart (HWS), which operates roughly 140 Pizza Hut dine-in restaurants, has instructed advisers to find a buyer or raise tens of millions of pounds in external funding.
City sources said this weekend that the process, which is being handled by Interpath Advisory, had got under way in recent days and was expected to result in a transaction taking place in the next few months.
HWS, which was previously called Pizza Hut Restaurants, employs about 3,000 people, making it one of the most significant businesses in Britain’s casual dining industry.
It is owned by a combination of Pricoa and the company’s management, led by chief executive Jens Hofma.
They led a management buyout reportedly worth £100m in 2018, with the business having previously owned by Rutland Partners, a private equity firm.
One source suggested that as well as the talks with external third parties, it remained possible that a financing solution could be reached with its existing backers.
HWS licenses the Pizza Hut name from Yum! Brands, the American food giant which also owns KFC.
Insiders suggested that the increases to the national living wage and employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) unveiled by Rachel Reeves would add approximately £4m to HWS’s annual costs – equivalent to more than half of last year’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
One added that the Pizza Hut restaurants’ operation needed additional funding to mitigate the impact of the Budget and put the business on a sustainable financial footing.
The consequences of a failure to find a buyer or new investment were unclear on Saturday, although the emergence of the process comes amid increasingly bleak warnings from across the hospitality industry.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Last weekend, Sky News revealed that a letter co-ordinated by the trade body UK Hospitality and signed by scores of industry chiefs – including Mr Hofma – told the chancellor that left unaddressed, her Budget tax hikes would result in job losses and business closures within a year.
It also said that the scope for pubs and restaurants to pass on the tax rises in the form of higher prices was limited because of weaker consumer spending power.
That was followed by a similar letter drafted by the British Retail Consortium this week which also warned of rising unemployment across the industry, underlining the Budget backlash from large swathes of the UK economy.
Even before the Budget, hospitality operators were feeling significant pressure, with TGI Fridays collapsing into administration before being sold to a consortium of Breal Capital and Calveton.
Sky News recently revealed that Pizza Express had hired investment bankers to advise on a debt refinancing.
HWS operates all of Pizza Hut’s dine-in restaurants in Britain, but has no involvement with its large number of delivery outlets, which are run by individual franchisees.
Accounts filed at Companies House for HWS4 for the period from 5 December 2022 to 3 December 2023 show that it completed a restructuring of its debt under which its lenders agreed to suspend repayments of some of its borrowings until November next year.
The terms of the same facilities were also extended to September 2027, while it also signed a new 10-year Pizza Hut franchise agreement with Yum Brands which expires in 2032.
“Whilst market conditions have improved noticeably since 2022, consumers remain challenged by higher-than-average levels of inflation, high mortgage costs and slow growth in the economy,” the accounts said.
It added: “The costs of business remain challenging.”
Pizza Hut opened its first UK restaurant in the early 1970s and expanded rapidly over the following 15 years.
In 2020, the company announced that it was closing dozens of restaurants, with the loss of hundreds of jobs, through a company voluntary arrangement (CVA).
At that time, it operated more than 240 sites across the UK.
Mr Hofma and Interpath both declined to comment.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports8 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway