Amanda Staveley has released a statement this morning addressing the collapse of her bid to buy into West Ham United and in doing so, revealed a detail that had gone largely unreported until now. Her consortium's approach was never just about Vanessa Gold's 25.1 percent stake. It was an attempt to buy out David Sullivan too.
"We are obviously disappointed not to have been successful in our bid to acquire the 25% shareholding in West Ham United," Staveley said in the statement. "For transparency, our original offer was for both David Sullivan's 38.8% stake and Vanessa Gold's 25.1% stake in the Club."
As GSH reported in June, Staveley’s first approach was to buy Gold and Sullivan’s shares with Daniel Křetínský and have an equal stake in West Ham. However, the Czech billionaire rebuffed her advances and encouraged her to make a bid for Sullivan’s ownership shares. Instead, she now reveals that Sullivan was still holding out.
The statement arrives at the end of a process that had been building for weeks. Gold had reached a provisional agreement to sell her shares to Staveley's PCP Capital Partners consortium, alongside her husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi, but the sale triggered pre-emption rights held by West Ham's existing shareholders, giving Křetínský, Sullivan, Tripp Smith, Terry Brown and minority shareholders first refusal on the stake before it could go to an outside buyer. They exercised those rights, completing a £141 million deal that lifted Křetínský to a 46 percent shareholding, Sullivan to 40 percent, and Smith to 11 percent — comfortably shutting Staveley's consortium out of Gold's shares.
Staveley's statement doesn't dispute how that process played out. "There was always the potential that the other shareholders would take up their rights under the shareholders' agreement, which is what they have elected to do," she said.
Supporters have spent years hoping for an outcome that would remove Sullivan entirely from the ownership group. Staveley's statement effectively confirms she tried to deliver it in one move — buying both Gold's and Sullivan's shares together, rather than settling for a minority position built solely around Gold's holding. It's a pointed reminder to supporters of what was actually on the table, and to Sullivan personally that the door hasn't been closed from her side.
“We will continue to follow this process closely,” she continued in her statement. “Our ambitions for the club remain, and we would be open to the opportunity to work constructively with the existing shareholders in the future, subject to use not taking up other opportunities.”
Staveley is understood to have made clear separately that she considers this pursuit far from finished, and that she and her consortium are prepared to come back for Sullivan's newly enlarged 40 percent stake, and potentially Tripp Smith's 11 percent alongside it. Combined, that would hand her a 51 percent controlling interest and trigger a formal takeover of the club. Some reports have suggested the timing of Sullivan and Křetínský's own share increase may have been less about shutting Staveley out permanently and more about positioning themselves to negotiate from strength if and when she does come back with an offer for their shares.
For now, West Ham's ownership structure is settled on paper: Křetínský as the largest shareholder, and Staveley on the outside looking in. But a statement that goes out of its way to confirm a full takeover was the actual goal, delivered the same day the rival deal was finalised, is not the sound of someone walking away. If Sullivan is ever inclined to sell, Staveley has just made clear she'll be waiting.
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