REPORT: Daniel Levy looking for buyers of his ENIC stock

Five months after being knifed in the back and removed as Tottenham Hotspur chairman by the Lewis family, Daniel Levy is reportedly ready to offload his 29.9% minority investment in the club. According to our good buddy Matt Law in the Telegraph this morning, Levy is asking £1b for his minority stake in ENIC, the Lewis-run organization. It’s not clear yet whether there are any buyers, but a familiar face is back in the frame. More on that guy in a moment.

This is interesting at a couple of levels. For starters, if we assume Levy’s valuation of his ENIC stake to be £1b, and that ENIC has an 87% controlling stake in Tottenham Hotspur the club, doing the math extrapolates that Levy would value the entire club at approximately £3.85b. There’s plenty of wiggle room here, but let’s round that up to £4bn, which would make the club among the most valuable clubs in the Premier League. Consider: Chelsea, with multiple Premier League and Champions League titles, was purchased by a consortium led in part by Todd Boehly for £4.25b in 2022, and a £4b valuation would put Spurs level with recent valuations of both Liverpool, Manchester City, and Manchester United, though some sources have assessed United at closer to £5-6b. Arsenal is currently valued at around £3.5b.

This is fascinating just on its surface. It would suggest that the Lewis family’s price, should they ever want to sell the club, is equivalent to what it would take to purchase just about any of the top clubs in the Premier League. Now, that’s just the back of the envelope math, and there are some reasons why Levy’s valuation of his ENIC shares may not be as valuable as he’d want them to be.

For starters, according to the Telegraph, Levy’s shares are in ENIC, not the club itself, meaning any buyer would have a minority stake in ENIC. That doesn’t actually give a lot of power to the buyer unless they leverage some control over ENIC as part of the purchase agreement. The Telegraph reports that ENIC cannot block to whom Levy sells his shares, but questions whether Levy’s ENIC stake is as valuable or even attractive to prospective buyers.

City insiders have doubted whether Levy could get £1bn for his shares, given it is a minority stake and offers no position of influence or power. His stake does not give him any preferred bidder status for control of Tottenham.

Not only does Levy’s stake come with no voting rights, place on the board or position of influence at Tottenham, it does not give the holder any first refusal or preferred bidder status if the club are ever sold.

— Matt Law, The Telegraph

That’s pretty significant, and more or less begs the question of who would want to spend £1b for shares that don’t really do anything except add a touch of prestige to a portfolio. In fact, based on what we think we know about Levy’s shares, it’s debatable whether they’re of much interest to anyone except the Lewis Family, which holds the controlling shares of ENIC itself.

Enter: Brooklyn Earick. Remember that guy? A few months ago, the former DJ, NASA intern, and current social media influencer, tech bro, and crypto “entrepreneur” (and I use the term extremely loosely) submitted a risible bid as part of a consortium to purchase Tottenham Hotspur. It was soundly rejected by ENIC, which went as far as to issue a public statement mentioning this dude by name, which was unusual. I wrote about it at the time, explaining why I believed that the bid was never serious, and that Earick’s history cast serious doubts as to whether he even had anything close to the amount of money to purchase the club. Earick, it should be noted, was required to issue a document indicating his intent to place a bid for the, and he failed to do so, suggesting the interest was never serious and was more about profile raisi

Earick is apparently back, according to a Sun article that I will not link to, as part of another consortium along with Chinese businessman Ng Wing-Fai, that is interested in Levy’s 29% ENIC stake. A recent article in talkSPORT that features an interview with journalist Ben Jacobs, casts doubts, again, as to the veracity of this approach or whether Earick or Ng actually have the funds.

“My understanding at this stage is that nobody has met Levy’s valuation. Now, we heard some reports suggesting that two failed prospective bidders, who were ruled out to buy 100 per cent of Tottenham, are going to team up and try to take Levy’s 29 per cent.

“One of them is the former DJ, Brooklyn Earick, and the other is Hong Kong-based businessman, Ng Wing-Fai, who put together a broader group.

“… Spurs sources I speak to say two things really clearly.

“One, they’ve not been informed that Levy is about to sell and two, there is scepticism that whether the individuals that were named in the press have the funds to meet Levy’s valuation.

“The other thing to note is that this isn’t a trojan horse into the club, so if somebody buys Levy’s stake, it comes with no power, and Tottenham are adamant that you can’t then go and take more shares off more people and get a longer-term pat to buying the entire club.

“So it’s a lot of money and ultimately, even if someone does buy Levy’s 29 per cent, they’re not going to get any control of even voting power.”

— Ben Jacobs, talkSPORT

And there’s more. The same talkSPORT article has quotes from former Palace owner Simon Jordan, who says he actually spoke to Levy briefly about a potential share sale.

“I had a very brief exchange with Daniel, he was on a flight, just to get some sort of understanding of where he is in it all so that you can get some degree of ‘from the horse’s mouth’.

“His opinion, these guys don’t have the money and are creating noise, and publicity. So, whether that’s positioning from Daniel about the fact that he wants to call their bluff…

“I mean listen, let’s be clear, he will sell his shares in ENIC, that’s what he’ll do if the price is met, and take the opportunities that that kind of money will present to him.

“… The deals that get done are the ones that you hear about at the last minute. There’s a few exceptions, we know there’s a few exceptions, that we get to hear it from the beginning, from its gestation, to its end product. But most of the time when it’s big deals or football clubs being sold, or major shareholdings being sold, you tend to hear about it just as it’s about to be done or when it’s done.

“So in this instance, it looks like people are running around, running their mouths and don’t have the cash to do it.”

— Simon Jordan, talkSPORT

Daniel Levy is clearly done with Tottenham Hotspur. He’s not coming back to the club, and even the suggestion that he’s open to a sale of his ENIC stock makes that crystal clear. That said, we have no idea who will actually buy his stake, when it will happen, and what it means. One thing I think I can say is that Brooklyn Earick’s involvement is just more financial clout grifting. There’s nothing in his background to suggest, even with Ng’s money, that he has enough cash to pull off this kind of deal, especially if the shares don’t come with any actual power.

In summary, let’s wait and see what happens to Levy and his shares, but nothing I’m reading comes across as imminent, and we already know one of the proposed buyers is coming across, again, as a shell-game grifter. This is very likely just another vapor-ware story about board room control that will disappear from memory within a few days.