RANGERS chairman Dave King has finally put in a bid for millions of the club's shares four weeks after losing an appeal against a court ruling forcing him to make the offer.

It comes after a court agreed that he and others acted together to force their way into the Ibrox boardroom three years ago.

The Ibrox chief has been fighting the Takeover Panel over the prospect of the £10.8 million offering - which could potentially put a heavy financial burden on the South African businessman.

The panel originally decided that a formal takeover should have been triggered after the Three Bears group led by Mr King secured more than 30 per cent of the voting rights in Rangers.

Glasgow Times: Rangers chairman Dave King

That meant under the code of takeovers and mergers, they should make a cash offer to all other shareholders at the highest price paid in the 12 months before the offer was announced.

Despite a long fight, Mr King has now relented to make an offer for 70 per cent of the club's shares through the South African-based  Lairds Investments (Proprietary) Limited for the shares of all other shareholders at 20p a share.

The current Rangers International Football Club plc share price with the JP Jenkins, which operates the platform in which Rangers equity is traded, is 7.5p more. It means shareholders, in theory, would get more money for their shares by simply using the trading platform, but only if there is a buyer.

The offer document says the bid would be funded "using the receipt of dividends to be declared on April 4 amounting to  £13,074,842.90.

"The dividends will be ring fenced for the purposes of the offer," the document says.

During one hearing in October, Mr King's advocate Lord Davidson of Glen Clova QC argued that he "is penniless" adding: "Any order wouldn't secure compliance. It won't. It is pointless."

The mandatory offer states that the two directors of Laird Investments are Mr King and his daughter, Tracey Hamill.  It says the company is ultimately owned by a trust to which which Mr King, his wife and his children are beneficiaries.

The takeover group – which included Park's Motor Group founder Douglas Park, Rangers Supporters Trust and Rangers First member George Taylor and Rangers fan George Letham – had always denied that they had acted 'in concert' to purchase shares in Rangers on December 31 2014 and 2 January 2015, at a time when a board said to be allied to Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley was in place.

But the Takeover Appeal Board (TAB) last year said that " the case for concluding that... Mr Letham and Mr King, at least, were acting in concert in purchasing the relevant shares becomes overwhelming".

Glasgow Times:

In December Lord Bannatyne ruled in favour of the Takeover Panel that Mr King acted in concert with other shareholders when he bought a controlling stake in 2015.

But Mr King argued that a judge went "too far" in ordering him to make a mandatory offer at a price of 20p a share.

Lord Carloway on March 1 announced that a fresh appeal would be refused.

Lord Bannatyne in a previous hearing said that Mr King's argument that he did not have the funds to make the offer was "irrelevant".

The judge said: "When the respondent (Mr King) acting in concert bought shares in Rangers which took them over the 30% shareholding the respondent was aware that the purchase of such a shareholding would mean that a mandatory offer would be required."

Mr King had argued he had no control over trusts which held assets for his family but the judge decided he had had effective control.

Mr King previously told the panel committee that it had "fundamentally misinterpreted" what had occurred at Rangers and that his motivation was to "work together with supporters groups to restore proper standards of corporate governance of Rangers".

An original hearing committee blamed delays in an initial ruling on the case were "very substantially attributable to a lack of co-operation" by Mr King, which the Rangers chairman said was "unfounded and patently incorrect".