IF you want to buy a football club then Stockport-born Keith Harris is your man.

The bright and personable chairman of the investment bank Seymour Pierce has done as much as anyone to steer Thaksin Shinawatra's takeover bid for City through the choppiest of waters.

Harris, 54, made a career for himself in investment banking, spending six years as chief executive of HSBC in the 1990s. Yet it is for his work with football clubs that he is better known.

He was the financial expert who brokered Roman Abramovich's purchase of Chelsea and the banker who arranged to sell a chunk of United to BSkyB in 1999, before the deal was blocked by the Government.

Magnate

He acted for Icelandic biscuit magnate Eggert Magnusson in his £85m takeover at West Ham last November, and is currently advising Championship side Southampton, who are attracting takeover interest. Harris has a fair share of big business deals outside football under his belt, too. He advised Richard Desmond when the multi-millionaire bought the Express Newspapers group for £125m in a deal that took just a month to complete.

His ability to keep a calm head and a sense of perspective in the stressful world of finance has won him many admirers, and was undoubtedly a factor in Shinawatra's decision to use his services to broker the City deal.

It hasn't all been plain-sailing, though. Harris has admitted that one of the most difficult periods of his career was his two-year stint as chairman of the Football League between 2000 and 2002, which coincided with the ITV Digital crisis.

The collapse of ITV Digital, and its £315m television contract with the Football League, plunged many of its clubs into serious financial trouble.

Harris actually played in the Football League, turning out as a left-sided midfielder for Bradford Park Avenue in the early 1970s while he was a student.

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