A group of top businessmen from around Yorkshire will attend a behind-closed-doors meeting in Leeds next Tuesday to discuss ways in which they may be able to raise capital for Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

Between 35 and 40 businessmen have been invited by Yorkshire president Robin Smith and club chairman Keith Moss to the gathering at the Leeds offices of Yorkshire's legal advisers, DLA.

Also attending will be Yorkshire chief executive Chris Hassell and marketing director Tony Panaro.

The four Yorkshire officials will outline where Yorkshire now stand financially and where they hope to go in the future and the presentation will cover everything from sponsorship to the naming of the new stands.

Smith said that any talk of Yorkshire becoming a plc was "going far too far" but he admitted that they may be talking about full incorporation to a limited company which was one step up from their registration as a society in 1999 under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act.

And Moss added: "This is just a way to see if we can bring the kind of capital into the club in the future that we need for investment purposes."

A group of members on the Yorkshire committee are known to favour the club becoming a plc and being run by hard-headed businessmen who can inject cash and boost profits.

They see Yorkshire changing from a district process of electing committee members to a first-past-the-post system as being a step in that direction but a proposal on these lines was narrowly rejected by the full committee and is now being put to the club's annual meeting on March 23 in the form of a resolution from former committee member Philip Akroyd.

Yorkshire have not named any of the businessmen who will be attending the presentation but they hope to be able to give some details of the discussions to members at the annual meeting.

Updated: 11:30 Tuesday, March 05, 2002