Rochdale Football Club: Who are 'preferred investors' the Ogden family

Rochdale-born businessman and entrepreneur Sir Peter Ogden is no stranger to making investments in his home town. But the many thousands of pounds of donations and funding he has pumped in has always been in the field of education - not football.

Rochdale AFC's chairman, Simon Gauge, warned the football club would face liquidation unless a buyer could be found before the end of this month. Today, the Ogden family was announced by the club as the 'preferred investor' to takeover.

The family said it would provide 'sufficient' funding so the club could continue to function for the next 30 days. "By the expiry of that period, we plan to have completed our diligence and formulated and presented our offer such that, assuming it is acceptable to the club, we can conclude an investment before the end of the season," read a statement released by the club from them.

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Importantly, the family's statement said the offer was not financially motivated - shares they would acquire would be held in trust for the benefit of the Rochdale AFC Community Trust.

Sir Peter, brought up in Percy Street, Kingsway, was educated at Lowerplace Primary School and Rochdale Grammar School for Boys, which is now Balderstone Technology College.

From there he won a scholarship to Durham University and went on to complete an MBA at Harvard Business School before embarking on a career in investment banking in the UK and the US, principally with Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

He co-founded the computer services company Computacenter in 1981 and in 1982, the financial software company Computasoft, which was subsequently renamed Dealogic PLC.