Bournemouth owner Bill Foley will visit Hibs before the end of the season, following the ratification of his minority investment offer at the club's AGM earlier this week. 

Easter Road chiefs were in talks with the US billionaire for the best part of a year before holding crunch talks with the Scottish FA to ensure Foley's bid to acquire a 25% stake in the club would get the go-ahead. And now that it has the blessing of the club's shareholders, the next step is for the 79-year-old to visit Edinburgh and, more importantly, Hibs. 

“There is a planned trip. The dates haven’t been agreed yet but there is a trip planned between now and the end of the season," chief executive Ben Kensell confirmed at Tuesday's AGM. 

“He is fully committed. He’s met the Gordon family. This has been nine months – longer than some girlfriends! But there’s a proper relationship here, not just a transaction. It’s a partnership. We expect representatives and/or Bill to be on the board. The Black Knight group is a large group across many different sporting entities. But we know that Bill wants to, and will, be very involved. 

“He has a real love of football. You don’t buy Bournemouth, or part of Lorient, or Auckland, if you’re not a football fan. So he’ll be involved. Ian [Gordon] will lead on that relationship, as well as myself, as we have from the start."

Kensell is also relishing a bigger slice of the UEFA solidarity money pie, with Hibs set to benefit to the tune of close to £1 million next season.

“European football, and solidarity payments for the Scottish game, is huge," he continued. "It’s such an exciting league to be part of because it gives us the opportunity, via the coefficient, to have several teams in Europe.

"And it gives us the opportunity to sample it, even through qualifying rounds. Look at what we did this year, we had three rounds. We had a trip to Lucerne and a showpiece game against Aston Villa.

"If we hadn’t drawn Aston Villa, I genuinely believe we had a proper opportunity of getting into the group stages of European football for the first time in the club’s history.”