Controversial former Crystal Palace owner John Texter has reportedly submitted a £400m bid to take over Wolves amid growing dissatisfaction among Molineux fans with their current owners. Wolves are currently the only team in the Premier League, and in English football’s top six divisions, to have yet to win this season.
Wolves lost to Burnley in stoppage time on Sunday and found themselves languishing at the bottom of the league table, six points off safety. After the final whistle, home supporters could be heard voicing their dissatisfaction with Fosun, the club’s owner since 2016, and yelling at manager Vitor Pereira: “You’ll be fired in the morning.”
According to The Athletic, Texter, who sold a minority stake in Crystal Palace earlier this year, is keen to add Wolves to his multi-club portfolio. According to reports, he has made an offer consisting of £150m in cash and an additional £262.6m in shares to buy the club.
Textor currently owns stakes in Brazil’s Botafogo, France’s Lyon and Belgium’s RWDM Brussels. The American businessman is said to like Wolves’ long-standing policy of signing Portuguese players, which is in line with Eagle Football Group’s (EFG) strategy to introduce South American talent to the European market.
Despite these developments, sources within Wolves insist the club are not for sale and are seeking outside investment.
Mr Texter’s bid for Wolves coincided with a Brazilian court ruling that he needed to reverse his decision to resign as Lyon club president in order to protect Botafogo. Texter managed to prevent Lyon’s managerial relegation to Ligue 2 in the summer, maintaining his position as a key decision-maker in France.
He is expected to remain the largest shareholder in Lyon’s parent company, EFG.
It is also in an ongoing legal dispute with its main lender Ares Management, which is seeking to recover the $425m (£320m) it lent to Textor when it bought Lyon three years ago. Negotiations are underway to reach a settlement, which would see Tequitor keep Botafogo and Ares take over Lyon.
There is also another disagreement with EFG shareholder Iconic Sports Eagle Investments, which believes it had insured its $75 million investment in EFG. This policy would allow Mr. Texter to buy back Iconic’s EFG shares at a predetermined price if the EFG IPO plan fails.
In 2023, that failed and Textor did not buy back the shares within the agreed 12-month period.
The week after the Wolves bid failed, a Florida court rejected Texter’s bid to have the case heard in the UK because EFG is a British company.
This was followed by an appearance at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in a separate dispute between Atlanta United and Major League Soccer over the transfer fee of Thiago Almada, who moved from Atlanta to Botafogo before signing with Atlético Madrid.
On Friday, October 17, a British court rejected Texter’s application to dismiss Iconic’s claims worth £70 million. A full-scale trial is scheduled to take place next year.
This series of events follows the loss of two lawsuits in Belgium in which an American businessman accused former RWDM Brussels owner Thierry Daly of fraud. He is also facing legal action from former Wolves and Botafogo manager Bruno Large over a possible offer within EFG.
