Aston Villa football club will be the second English Premiership football club to fall to an American billionaire after accepting Randy Lerner's £62.6 million offer.

Lerner, who also owns the Cleveland Browns American football franchise and is reported to be worth more than $1 billion, has received acceptances from the holders of 56.85 per cent of the shares for his 547p per share bid. The Villa board ‘unanimously’ recommends that shareholders accept the offer, it being a premium of 47 per cent to the 371.5p share price at the start of the offer period last September.

Aston Villa’s famously frugal outgoing chairman and main shareholder ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis has presided over Villa for over thirty seasons, on and off, but was not at the helm during the club’s most successful period, when it won the league and the European cup in 1982.

Lerner, who inherited the majority of his wealth from the MBNA credit card empire built by his father, believes with the deeper pockets he can provide Aston Villa ‘can compete at the highest level within the Premiership and in Europe’. The shares bounced eight per cent to 537.5p today.

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