A group of Australian businessmen is set to take over third-tier English club Charlton Athletic, the club has confirmed.
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Led by Essendon AFL board member Andrew Muir, the investors have been in talks with Charlton for several months and appear ready to close the deal for the League One outfit.
In a statement on the club's website, Charlton said a sale was imminent to an investment group "linked" to the mysterious Australian Football Consortium.
"The group has a significant interest in the long-term prosperity of the club and is committed to seeing the deal go ahead," said the statement said, attributed jointly to Charlton and the investors.
"Understandably, negotiations of this scale take time due to the enormous amount of due diligence that goes on behind the scenes, the need to satisfy the regulatory complexities of a football takeover and the challenges of assembling an ownership group.
"The current ownership would like to assure the club's supporters that the running of the club will remain its priority throughout this process."
The Australian Football Consortium has been on the lookout for an underperforming English side to acquire and subsequently guide to the Premier League since it was established in 2016.
But the consortium remains shrouded in almost total secrecy, having not made any public comment outside of a mission statement on its website.
Muir has been pictured at recent Charlton matches and reportedly agreed on a price for the club with unpopular Belgian owner Roland Duchatelet in March.
No news on the takeover had emerged since then.
Muir banked $870 million last year when he sold his share in The Good Guys, a company started by his father from a single shopfront in 1952.
Reports indicate Gerard Murphy, another key figure in the consortium, will become the club's CEO.
Murphy is the co-founder of Leading Teams, a training company whose team-building, leadership and high-performance strategies have been used by a host of AFL clubs over the years, including Geelong, Richmond, Hawthorn and Sydney.
Another potential investor is Philip Aiken, chairman of construction giants Balfour Beatty, who is originally from Melbourne but now lives in London.
Aiken was linked with Murphy and the consortium when it was in previous buyout talks with Coventry City.
Based in south-east London, Charlton Athletic haven't reached the Premier League since the 2006-07 season.
Australian Associated Press
