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Everton reached 2nd place in the Premiership after their defeat of Liverpool in the Merseyside derby on 11 December, but the club continues to face serious financial problems. The £27m sale of Wayne Rooney helped the club to reduce borrowings of £49.7m, but the club is understood to have lost £15.3m in the last financial year. Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco and a life-long Toffeeman, has been recruited as an unpaid adviser to the club. His appointment should take some of the pressure off chairman Bill Kenwright who has been struggling to find a new source of external funds. One of his critics is major shareholder Paul Gregg, an Oxford based entrepreneur who offered to raise up to £15m for the club but was rebuffed. The club has instead based its plans on a hoped for injection of £30m from Fortress Sports Fund, a little-known investor group that is owned by Christopher Samuelson, a financier based in Geneva. His consortium wants to invest £12.8m for a 29.9 per cent stake in the club with an option to increase its shareholding to 50.1% for an additional £17.2m. Everton has agreed a 14-day extension to an exclusivity clause granted to Fortress after it expired last week. Mr Samuelson has stated that his group was in the 'final stages' of completing the transaction, but delays had been caused by the administrative requirements of international regulators. With the funding in place, the club would be well placed to build on its current success that has made it the surprise package of the Premiership and avoid a slump in the second half of the season.
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