MARKUS Liebherr needed just two hours to make his mind up that he wanted to buy Saints.

It was back in June 2009 when Liebherr first set foot inside St Mary’s.

Almost instantly, he was smitten.

Liebherr had been introduced to the prospect of buying Southampton FC by Nicola Cortese, the man he later installed as executive chairman.

Cortese had known Liebherr for a few years prior to the latter gaining control of the club.

Speaking shortly after the takeover, Cortese told the Echo: “I introduced Markus to the project.

“A day later we came to Southampton and from the first minute he stepped foot on the ground of the football club it took him two hours to make a firm offer.”

Liebherr was aware of Southampton’s cultural heritage, as his company had supplied the cranes for various building work in the city for decades.

“Markus is a very intelligent person,”

Cortese added.

“I was surprised when we got here and he told us a lot about the shipping business of Southampton right back from the First and Second World Wars.

“There was not a direct affinity with Southampton FC before but when he got here and saw the infrastructure … he said ‘this club needs to be elsewhere and I can help to take it where it belongs to be.’ “That is clear. It is the Premier League.”

Cortese described Liebherr as “a genius in business – he is somebody who invents new technologies.

“On a personal level he’s not a man of big words, he is somebody who likes trusted people around him. He’s not really open to people he doesn’t know. He is also somebody who doesn’t like to be in the spotlight.

“He is a very passionate person and if you can attract his passion about something he is 100 per cent passionate.

“He was always reading the Daily Echo website, particularly what the fans were saying and what they were writing.

“Every time somebody said something about the Swiss he would underline it.

Every time he saw it he thought a little bit more that he had to act because he was going to please a lot of people.”

Cortese said at the time of the takeover that Liebherr, despite his huge wealth, would not be emulating the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City by throwing huge amounts of cash at team building.

Having said that, Alan Pardew has still been given almost £4m to spend in 12 months – the second biggest spending spree in third division history.

Liebherr’s personal wealth was estimated at the time of the takeover to be around £2.5 billion.

That put him joint fourth in the list of English football club owners.

The only people ahead of him were Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nayan, QPR’s Lakshmi Mittal and Roman Abramovich at Chelsea.