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Louis Charles Edwards (15 June 1914 – 25 February 1980) was an English businessman from Salford, Lancashire, who was most notable for being chairman of Manchester United from June 1965 until his death in February 1980.
After the Second World War was declared, he joined the 14th/20th Hussars and was based in India and as a desert rat in Egypt. He was demobilised from the army after the death of his father on 13 February 1943. He left Louis 77 shares and his younger brother Douglas, 75. As a result, Louis took over the running of the business. On 7 June 1944, at St Ann's Church, Manchester, Edwards married Muriel Bullen. They had two sons and a daughter.
The business rapidly expanded in the 1950s, and in 1961 Edwards's company had contracts worth £393,000 a year and provided meat for 300,000 schools.Crick & Smith (1990), p. 103. The following year it was floated on the stock exchange. In the mid-1960s, it employed 1,300 people, had eighty retail outlets and had contracts with Woolworths and authorities in Salford, Manchester and other parts of Lancashire.
Edwards was elected to the Football League Management Committee in 1968 and served for four years.
On 5 February 1979, he sold his business to James Gulliver of Argyll Foods for £100,000. The Guardian, 10 September 1998. The deal also included a 16 per cent stake in Manchester United for Gulliver, who became a vice-president of the club. Edwards retired from the business world apart from his four-days-a-month consultancy position for Gulliver.Crick & Smith (1990), p. 119. He devoted his full-time commitments towards Manchester United and was at Old Trafford most days. Initially, Edwards' business retained the name Louis C. Edwards and Sons, but changed its name in October 1980. Gulliver bought 500,000 of the family's shares at 5p each.Crick & Smith (1990), p. 117.
An investigation by the ITV Granada/ITV investigative journalism series World in Action was broadcast on 28 January 1980 based on compilation that began in January 1979. The program alleged there Louis Edwards was illegal share deals involving false documentation and large secret cash payments to the Manchester City Council and company staff to win contracts for his business.
It also alleged that Manchester United used money from a special fund for inducements to sign footballers throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In one case in the early 1960s, it was alleged that a bribe of £5,000 was paid to the parents of Peter Lorimer, a promising young player whom the club had wanted to recruit. The money was later returned when the player chose Leeds United instead, though this was a clear breach of Football Association rules. The Guardian, 29 January 1980. The programme explained how Edwards quietly acquired his majority shareholding at Manchester United in the early 1960s and then bolstered his family's holding in the late 1970s in preparation for the controversial rights issue.
On 12 February, Manchester City Police said they were going to investigate the allegations made against both Louis Edwards and Manchester United.
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