Dartford firm caught in media storm after 'buying' Glasgow Rangers
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It's not every day you splash out more than £30 million on a
Scottish Premier League football club.
And in the case of an estate agent many miles from the border,
it’s not any day.
But that has not stopped it becoming mistakenly embroiled in a
take-over bid for one of the UK’s most successful teams.
Puzzled staff at Andrew Ellis Estates in Dartford, Kent, thought
their boss had netted a fortune when they picked up the first phone
call asking about their proposed £33 million bid for Rangers
FC.
But, after dozens of calls and emails from sports journalists
and die-hard fans, they realised they had been caught in a major
mix-up.
The Lowfield Street office was flooded with enquiries after
reports a property tycoon named Andrew Ellis was tabling a bid for
the Scottish giants.
Co-director Toby Ellis said his beleaguered team-mates had
received calls from several Scottish newspapers and television
stations as well as English national newspapers, including the
Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
He said: "It started with someone calling and asking for Mr
Ellis and whether I wanted to pass comment on my bid for Rangers.
Then there were more calls, asking for pictures and comments. We
had about three from the same paper - they didn’t believe us when
we put them straight."
Mr Ellis, who is a Chelsea fan and no relation to the man lining
up the multi-million pound take-over, thinks the mix-up may have
come from search engine Google, where his firm comes as the second
result in a search for key words "Andrew Ellis".
Even fans from Rangers’ fierce Glasgow rivals, Celtic, have been
having their say, despite staff doing their best to blow the
whistle on the confusion.
Mr Ellis’ co-director, and a Tottenham Hotspur fan, Gino
Cinganelli, said: "I’ve taken four or five phone calls. At first it
was fun. I thought, 'Great, we’re buying a football club,’ but now
it’s getting a bit annoying. We don’t have £30 million to splash
around.
"No-one here has any links to Rangers. The office is actually
Celtic green."
The closest the business has got to buying a football club is a
proposed shirt sponsorship deal with an amateur outfit in
Medway.
The real Andrew Ellis has so far refused to talk about his
involvement with Rangers.
The club, which is £31 million in debt, says it has opened
discussions with interested parties, including the property
developer, who owns Guernsey-based vehicle company RFC Holdings,
but added they are at an early stage.
Mr Ellis is a former director of Queens Park Rangers Football
Club, and had previously made a bid to take control of the London
club in 2001 before withdrawing the offer.
The following year his consortium paid £500,000 to buy League
One club Northampton Town and he took over as chairman but quit the
role soon after.
Thursday, March 11 2010
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