How Ed Woodward will personally profit from Man Utd takeover
Former Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward is set to receive a substantial personal windfall when the club is eventually sold.
The Glazer family, for whom Woodward was a key figure ever since helping to broker the highly controversial leveraged buyout takeover in 2005, finally made the decision in November to welcome offers for a full or partial sale of the club.
With a soft deadline for bids looming at the end of the month, a full takeover is now expected. Both Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad bin Jaber Al Thani have gone public with their intentions to buy the club, with offers still potentially also coming from the United States and elsewhere in the Middle East for what is an incredibly rare opportunity – ownership of Man Utd has only changed hands on a handful of occasions in the club’s 145-year history.
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Woodward was responsible for the day-to-day running of United for nine years from 2013 until stepping down in 2022 in the wake of 2021’s European Super League scandal.
The former banker was a highly divisive figure during his time in charge, blamed by many fans for the club’s football stagnation and even once the victim of a violent protest outside his family home.
Even though Woodward has since departed, he has retained a very valuable minor stake in the club. The Daily Mail has reported that he is the only person not a member of the Glazer family to own any of the enormously lucrative class ‘B’ shares.
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The ‘B’ shares hold 10 times the voting power of ‘A’ shares at board level, with the latter the ones that have been sold off by members of the Glazer family in recent years. That has both raised substantial cash and still ensured they retain the most valuable and influential shareholding.
Woodward is thought to own a 0.05% stake of one ‘B’ share, which may not sound like very much at all. But if the club is sold for £4.5bn, that alone would see him pocket £1.5m. A higher sale price would obviously mean he could pocket even more.