Hibs owners set to buy out Bill Foley's £6m stake in club

American billionaire Bill Foley is set to sell his 25% stake in Hibernian less than two years after investing in the Edinburgh club.

The 80-year-old, who owns English Premier League side Bournemouth as part of a worldwide network of football clubs, is ready to dispose of his interest in Scottish football.

The Gordon family, which has the controlling 60% of shares at Hibs, is preparing to buy Foley’s stakeholding.

The decision came about after Foley’s Black Knight Football Club group and the Hibs owners could not agree on the future direction for the Easter Road club.

It was then mutually concluded that the best way forward would be for the Gordon Family to buy the Black Knight shares and allow Foley to move on.

STV News understands the deal will see Foley receive back the £6m he paid for his stake directly from the Gordons.

In an interview with The Observer newspaper published on November 9, Foley said he wanted the clubs he was involved with to “feel part of their system”, which feeds into Bournemouth.

Foley – who also has interests in Lorient in France, Auckland FC of New Zealand and Portugal’s Moreirense – said: “We’ve chosen to find other clubs for a feeder system.

“But we want to hire the sporting director, the coach, the analysts, for the teams to play the way Bournemouth play, so that if we do have to pay a fee for a player, we are paying ourselves.

“We want everyone – coaches, players, analysts – to feel that being part of our system is to their benefit.”

Foley’s multi-million pound investment in Hibs was rubber-stamped in February 2024, but by July that year, the American had voiced displeasure at decisions being made at Easter Road.

He told BBC Sport: “If the other ownership group at Hibernian listens to us, they will do better.

“So far, they really haven’t been listening to our input. I believe they will listen to our input now.”

Speaking in July this year to The Athletic, Hibernian chairman Ian Gordon said the club and Black Knight Football Club were working through their differences, with the appointment of BKFC president Tim Bezbatchenko to the board.

He said: “There was a disagreement about the coach [David Gray], but since then, Tim has come in and he’s now hired multiple people under him.

“Black Knight is now really starting to put their network together, and since then, the collaboration is daily. The biggest benefit we see now is the exchange of best practices behind the scenes.

“We’re doing so many things in the background to get the structure that we now have in place, so we can just be a well-oiled machine.

“Ultimately, I decided that Dave was the right guy, and luckily that paid off quite well this season.”

Once the deal is completed, the Gordon Family will hold an 85% shareholding in the club, which was originally purchased by the late Ron Gordon in July 2019.