Friday 6 February 2009

Michael Gliksten

Michael Gliksten, the chairman of Charlton from 1962 to 1982 and the last member of the Glikesten dynasty to head up the club, has succumbed to a long battle with cancer.

Gliksten sold the club in 1982 to Mark Hulyer for a token £1,000, but retained ownership of the ground through his company, Adelong. The ground was then valued at £414,000. He loaned £300,000 to the club to cover half the existing overdraft.

One factor that led him to sell up was that he was involved in a farming enterprise in Australia which was difficult to combine with sorting out Charlton's problems.

Gliksten, however, retained two acres of land behind the West Stand and this subsequently became the subject of a complicated legal dispute in the period leading up to the club's departure from The Valley.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shame about Michael, but his Dad should have bought Stanley Matthews when we had the chance .
I think essentially it was the uninspiring Gliksten ownership for all those years that stopped us becoming an Arsenal or Tottenham when we had the crowd potential pre and post war- we've never recovered

Wyn Grant said...

The Glikstens were reluctant to spend money particularly on increasing the invariably sold out seated accommodation which had a return ratio of 7.5:1 compared with the terraces. We also had a reputation as a selling club.