Manchester United faces threat from speculators "It's a story that is interesting to short sellers," said Simon Colvin, an analyst at Markit. People have ingested the current situation of a highly leveraged sports team that is open to the whims of the football season. The US-based Glazer family, which used the IPO to sell about 10pc of the club they acquired for £790m in 2005, opted for a flotation just as Manchester United faces increasing competition for domestic trophies from local rival Manchester City, and for the European Cup from the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid. Mr Colvin said that the the volume of shares available for short-sellers to borrow has risen as investors at the IPO allocate a portion of their holdings to the lending programmes speculators can tap in to. Companies in the S&P 500 have an average 3.4pc of their shares in the hands of short-sellers, says Markit. Short-sellers borrow shares and then sell them in the hope the price will fall. They make money by buying back the shares at a lower price, returning the shares to the original owner and then pocketing the difference. Shares in Manchester United stood at $12.575 in early trading in New York, some 10.2pc down on the company's flotation price of of $14. Manchester United declined to comment.