The English Football League (EFL) confirmed on its official website on Friday (April 25, 2025) afternoon Asian time that it had received a letter of guarantee from Chinese dishonest businessmen Dai Yongge and Dai Xiuli that they will sell their ownership of English League One club Reading.

According to EFL's official statement, the Dai siblings wrote in the letter of guarantee that they had reached an agreement with potential buyers on the sale of the club's shares and all assets, including the ownership of Reading's stadium, training ground and other facilities. In order to prevent the takeover from being over-reported by the media, the authorities chose not to disclose any identity and information of the potential buyers and the transaction amount.

Due to the huge transaction amount involved in this takeover, and considering the sensitivity and complexity of Dai Yongge and Dai Xiuli as being included in the Chinese government's blacklist of dishonest businessmen, the EFL agreed to postpone the order for them to sell the ownership of the club until May 5.

The authorities believe that the Dai siblings have been given enough time and opportunities to sell the ownership of the club over the years, so extending the deadline by another two weeks is the limit.

However, since this is not the first time that Dai Yongge and Dai Xiuli have announced that they have submitted their "letter of guarantee" to the EFL that they will sell the ownership of Reading, most British fans are not satisfied with this statement.

Currently, it is widely speculated that the new potential buyer of Reading's shares is Rob Couhig, the former owner of Wycombe Wanderers and a famous American lawyer, but this rumour has not been confirmed so far.

Couhig acquired 90% of Wycombe Wanderers' shares in 2020, but chose to sell all the shares to Georgian businessman Mikheil Lomtadze four years later.

Last Wednesday (April 16, 2025), the EFL issued an official statement ordering Dai Yongge and Dai Xiuli, Chinese dishonest businessmen who have long owed loans to many banks but have been reluctant to repay them, to sell their ownership of Reading within one week (April 22).

At that time, the EFL said in an official statement that the authorities have reached the limit of their tolerance for the Dai siblings. The two stripped off various assets of the club, repeatedly owed wages to staff, withheld benefits due to staff, repeatedly owed taxes and violated the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), but they are still indifferent and the authorities ultimately became extremely exhausted with their antics.

At the same time, the two have promised to sell their ownership many times, but have repeatedly rejected almost every potential buyer's offer by saying that the offer did not cover the investment they had made or turning a blind eye to the offers, which is enough to show that the Dai siblings, Yongge and Xiuli, and their families, have been depleted of assets and have committed acts that can constitute deliberate destruction of a club.

At the request of His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Dai Yongge, Dai Xiu Li and Reading's Chinese CEO Pang Dayong have been listed as "unqualified" by the EFL in its "Directors and Shareholders Fit and Proper Persons Test".

Unless there is a temporary delay due to procedural issues, if the two fail to sell the club's ownership before the above date, the EFL League One club will be stripped of its full professional club license by the EFL and will be expelled from the English football league system regardless of the final standing of this season.