Investor Hasan Ismaik is having the termination of the cooperation agreement with former Bundesliga champions 1860 Munich reviewed by a legal counsel.
The club terminated the partnership agreement with Ismaik, which had been in place for 15 years, on Thursday after is was demoted into the fourth division over financial problems.
“If the club believes that terminating the cooperation agreement is the right path for its future, then that it’s their decision,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Friday.
“For our part, we will carefully review this step from a legal perspective and safeguard all of our contractual rights in the process,” he added.
“What really saddens me is not the termination of the agreement itself, but the fact that a 15-year journey has come to an end without us all having managed to build the level of trust and cooperation the club would have needed to move forward.”
The club was a founding member of the Bundesliga in 1963 and won the title in 1966. They also have two German Cup titles and played in the European Cup Winners’ Cup final in 1965.
But 1860 have not played in the top flight since 2004 and had been in the third tier since 2018.
They finished eighth in the past season but missed a Wednesday deadline by the ruling body DFB, reportedly not able to provide €2.7 million ($3.14 million) for a new third-tier licence.
As a result the club is demoted into the fourth tier, like in 2017 for the same reason.
The club named “a failure to honour a funding commitment by our shareholder Hasan Ismaik and his affiliated companies” as the reason while Ismaik said on Facebook that an agreement could not be reached although he made concessions.
Jordanian businessman Ismaik has always been controversial since he started investing into the club in 2011.
