March 23 (Bloomberg) -- George Gillett may sell the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League and his 50 percent stake in Liverpool F.C., Canadiens President Pierre Boivin said.

“The Gillett family has retained the services of financial advisers in order to assess various strategic alternatives to optimize the value of its corporate assets,” Boivin said in a statement read by team spokesman Donald Beauchamp.

In Canada, Gillett has retained the services of Bank of Montreal’s BMO Capital Markets unit and the process is under way, Boivin said. All information related to the process is confidential.

The teams owned by Gillett are among the most successful in the world. The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup a record 24 times and trail only the New York Yankees for the most championships among major North American professional teams. Liverpool, with 18 titles, has won English soccer’s top league more than any other club.

“We’re going through a very difficult period,” Boivin told Montreal’s La Presse newspaper in an interview published today. “Banks are reticent to finance even very good projects. The advisors will make sure of maximizing the assets of the companies and reorient, if necessary, the financial strategies of the Gillett family.”

Easier to Sell

Gillett may find it easier to sell the Canadiens than Liverpool because his 80 percent stake gives him control of the club, said Bruno Delorme, a sports management professor at Concordia University in Montreal. By contrast, Gillett owns 50 percent of Liverpool.

“For him, maybe it’s his high point to sell the Canadiens,” Delorme said in a telephone interview. “He got a good deal when he bought them.”

Gillett, 70, paid brewer Molson Inc. C$275 million ($223 million) for a controlling stake in the Canadiens and their home arena in 2001. Molson, which later merged with Adolph Coors Co. of Colorado to form Molson Coors Brewing Co., still owns about 20 percent of the team.

Under Gillett, the Canadiens have increased revenue by boosting advertising, expanding the team store and introducing throwback jerseys, Delorme said.

“The Canadiens are pretty much a recession-proof business,” he said. “They have a monopoly in that they are the only truly major league team in Montreal.”

The Canadiens hold the eighth and final playoff spot in the NHL’s Eastern Conference by one point over the Florida Panthers.

Value of Canadiens

According to Forbes magazine, Montreal is hockey’s third- most profitable franchise. In its annual valuation of NHL teams, published in October, Forbes valued the Canadiens at $334 million, which compares with $448 million for the Toronto Maple Leafs and $411 million for the New York Rangers.

Research In Motion Ltd. founder Jim Balsillie, a Canadian billionaire who was unsuccessful in his bid to buy the NHL’s Nashville Predators and Pittsburgh Penguins in the last three years, may be interested in pursuing the Canadiens, La Presse said.

Other potential bidders, according to the newspaper, include Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte; Rene Angelil, the manager and husband of singer Celine Dion; and Canadian financier Stephen Bronfman, a former shareholder of the Montreal Expos baseball club.

In England, Gillett and partner Tom Hicks, owner of baseball’s Texas Rangers and hockey’s Dallas Stars, bought Liverpool in February 2007 for 174 million pounds ($252 million) and assumed 45 million pounds in debt. The partners have until July to refinance or extend a 350 million pound loan with Royal Bank of Scotland PLC and Wachovia Corp.

Hicks’s Plans

Last week, Hicks said he planned to stay with the Northwest England-based club for another five years. He said he wasn’t sure what Gillett’s plans were.

Liverpool is second in the 20-team Premier League, one point behind reigning champion Manchester United. Liverpool has also reached the quarterfinals of the Champions League after beat nine-time winner Real Madrid in the last round.

Gillett, a native of Wisconsin, is the founder and chairman of Booth Creek Management Corp., which oversees the family’s interests in businesses such as meat packing, car dealerships and ski resorts. In the 1960s, he bought a minority stake in the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League and purchased the Harlem Globetrotters.

He is a partner in the Richard Petty Motorsports, a Nascar racing team, and also owns a concert production unit, Gillett Entertainment Group.

Gillett Entertainment produces more than 400 shows annually at Montreal’s Bell Centre and other venues in the city, selling more than 1.2 million tickets, Boivin said today at a speech in Montreal. He declined to comment on the potential sale of the team.

To contact the reporters on this story: Frederic Tomesco in Montreal tomesco@bloomberg.net; Tariq Panja in the London newsroom on tpanja@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 23, 2009 16:31 EDT