Hibs shareholder Bill Foley is reportedly set to add another club to his Black Knight FC portfolio.

The AFC Bournemouth owner, who acquired a 25 per cent stake at Easter Road earlier this year, is keen on branching into Portugual, and has held talks with Lisbon-based top-flight side Casa Pia. According to BBC Sport, discussions remain at an early stage with Foley still considering his options.

If a deal is done, it would take the total number of clubs in Black Knight's multi-club model to five. As well as the investment in Hibs, the group own Auckland FC and have ploughed money into French club Lorient. With Portugal seemingly next on their investment wishlist, reports say the group regard the country as a 'hotbed' of footballing talent, not least for up-and-coming players from South America making their first steps into European football.

Explaining the rationale behind the model, with Bournemouth at the top of the tree, Foley said in the summer: "We have a multi-club strategy so we promote players from Club A to Club B to Club C to Club D. We now have four clubs, and we are about to acquire a controlling interest in another club. It is all designed to give the players a path to the Premier League."

The Black Knights invested an initial £6m into Hibs back in February, taking two seats on the board, with the money put towards improvements at Easter Road and HTC, as well as into the first-team budget. In a round of media interviews earlier this month, Hibs owner Ian Gordon maintained that the club's relationship with Black Knight remained 'in a good place', despite Foley claiming publicly that Hibs were 'not listening' to his group's input after appointing David Gray as head coach and Malky Mackay as sporting director.

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"I think it's been well reported that throughout the appointing of our sporting director and manager, Black Knight was very involved in that process, but when it came down to it the family and the board felt it was the best choice to make the appointments that we did," Gordon explained. "I think it showed that it's always Hibs first. The relationship is in a good place. There are things ongoing in the background, we are in constant communication with the guys at Bournemouth, with Ryan Caswell as well and now Tim [Bezabatchenko, president]. Tim is going to be coming up and there are going to be certain people from Bournemouth's team coming up to work with our guys."