Wyss and Boehly confident of deal to buy Chelsea from Roman Abramovich

Todd Boehly and Hansjörg Wyss are increasingly confident that their bid to buy Chelsea will be successful and are set to step up negotiations with Roman Abramovich this weekend.

Abramovich has confirmed he wants to end his ownership of Chelsea and it is believed that the Russian oligarch wants a sale to go through quickly. A deadline of 15 March has been set for interested parties, with the US bank Raine tasked with making the sale, but Boehly and Wyss have stolen a march on rival bidders and are expected to have made their opening offer by Sunday night.

Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, first revealed that he could join a consortium trying to buy Chelsea to the Swiss newspaper Blick. The 86-year-old has partnered with Boehly, who part-owns the LA Dodgers, and the pair are hopeful that an agreement will be reached soon. They have finalised the other partners joining them but the identity of the other figures is not known yet.

Boehly reportedly had a £2.2bn bid for Chelsea rejected in 2019 and is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of the US company Eldridge Industries, which invests in sectors including media and sport. Wyss has previously worked with Boehly at Eldridge and has flown from Switzerland to California to work on the proposal with his fellow bidder.

Wyss is the founder and the former president and chairman of Synthes Holding AG, a medical device manufacturer, and a supporter of liberal and environmental causes in the US, where he lived for a number of years.

Born in Bern, Switzerland, 19 September 1935. He studied engineering, earned an MBA from Harvard, then worked in textiles in Asia and Europe. As a sideline he sold planes – with one sale introducing him to the co-founder of the Swiss medical device manufacturer