Rangers board sources have dismissed claims that the club could be on the verge of a multi-million-pound takeover by American investors.

Reports on Tuesday afternoon suggested that a £150million valuation had been placed on Rangers by potential suitors that were keen to take a seat at the Ibrox top table.

But the Rangers Review understands that several key players at the club have had no contact about selling their shares. And former chairman Dave King has told the Rangers Review that the story has ‘no truth whatsoever’ as he backed John Bennett to transform the club’s fortunes on and off the park.

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King is still the major shareholder in RIFC plc with a stake of 14.12 per cent, while current Ibrox chief Bennett controls 5.51 per cent of the shares. Douglas Park, George Taylor, Stuart Gibson and Julian Wolhardt are amongst the other major players behind the scenes.

“There is no truth whatsoever to the rumour that a USA billionaire - or anyone - has expressed any interest in acquiring Rangers,” King told the Rangers Review. “The Club is going through a difficult phase that was largely self-inflicted and commenced with Douglas Park refusing to back Steven Gerrard’s ambition to kick on from title 55. Self-interest should never be put ahead of our Club. I am hoping that John Bennett turns things around. I know he will do everything in his power to do so.”       

A proposed takeover from Kylie Fox and KRF Capital collapsed last year and saw Rangers ultimately win a high-profile court case against the American businesswoman. Fox had been seeking a 75 per cent controlling stake at Ibrox and the report in City AM on Tuesday revealed that she was not part of the new interested party that were considering making bids for minority shareholdings.

Suggestions of a boardroom overhaul at Ibrox come as Bennett gets set to sign off on the final deals of the summer transfer window to bolster Philippe Clement’s squad. Rangers remain in the market for additions ahead of the deadline on Friday night.

Bennett has spent recent months going through the books and every operational area to cut costs after years of overspending at Ibrox. The chairman outlined the requirement to find £10.5million in savings at the AGM last year.

“I very deliberately called out a number at the AGM and it is not an overstatement to say that becoming chairman my number one mission off the pitch was to rid the club of pre-player trading losses,” Bennett told RangersTV last month. “And I called that out at the AGM. That number to June 2023 was £10.5m, that's unsustainable and we should talk about sustainability, Financial Fair Play etc. That right there is wholly unsustainable and I said that has to go away. You can't just will things to go away, it takes action.

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“I look at that and that is well on the way to being eradicated and that has taken a lot of work from a lot of people and I have driven that, I have driven hard and it has been hard on some people, for example, to drive that through and execute it. But execute it we must. I'm not having club, which we'll come to player trading, and the famed player trading model we need to address that, but first get after what I call low-hanging fruit.

“This club should not be losing £10.5m pre-player trading in a year, my goodness me. When I became chairman - and again it is not an overstatement to say this required cultural change.”