Munro admits to Romanov buy-out snub

PAT MUNRO today admitted that Vladimir Romanov has thus far spurned his consortium's takeover advances which would wrest control of Hearts from the Russian banker.

Munro has enlisted the Icelandic billionaire Thor Bjorgolfsson and several business partners in the Middle East in an attempt to buy out Romanov's 80.01 per cent shareholding in the club. He claims his group have already made one offer to Romanov for his shares, which is thought to total six billion Icelandic Krona, or £45million.
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However, Romanov has no intention of negotiating a sale. The Evening News can reveal that the majority shareholder pulled out of a proposed meeting with Munro and colleagues in Lithuania earlier this month, and Munro's subsequent attempts to make contact with members of the Tynecastle hierarchy have failed.

"I have made him an offer to take over Hearts," said Munro. "We have people behind us in Iceland and the Middle East. The football club is at the top of our agenda but there is a construction business deal in the offing as well so we are trying to do them together.

"We want to get Romanov involved in the construction deal in the Middle East. That's why we want to get in touch with him and resurrect this meeting we had planned, which was cancelled. I don't want to rock any boats with Vladimir, I had been dealing a lot with Sergejus Fedotovas until now but last time I tried to phone Sergejus his phone number was discontinued.

"It's now proving difficult to get in touch with anyone, but we want to push this forward."

A source close to Romanov said today: "Mr Romanov would be more interested if the bid was from Marilyn Monroe and not Pat Munro. He has no interest in selling Hearts and is not interested in any bids."

Bjorgolfsson was last year ranked 350th in the Forbes World Rich List and is believed to be worth more than £1.5 billion. He is the son of Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, the man behind the recent Icelandic takeover of West Ham United.

Meanwhile, Hearts head coach Valdas Ivanauskas is adamant that goalkeeper Craig Gordon will not be frozen out of the team for the rest of the season. Gordon was left on the bench in Saturday's Scottish Cup defeat at Dunfermline after his absence at Ibrox the previous weekend. "It was a football decision," said Ivanauskas. "This week it was Steve Banks in goal but at least the transfer window is over now. This is good for Craig."

Taken from the Scotsman