Leighton has taken on some of the toughest jobs in British business

He has offered to lend the club millions of pounds of his own money and is likely to have a key role in any rescue takeover.

Leighton is widely respected as one of Britain's best business managers and was personally appointed by the prime minister early last year to turn around the loss-making Royal Mail.

The 50-year-old faced down the threat of the first national postal strike in seven years and he is renowned for taking on difficult jobs.

In addition to Leeds and the Royal Mail he is on the board of eight other companies, including dotcom firm Lastminute.com, where he is acting chairman.

Leighton is also a director at BSkyB and was recently handed the unenviable task of persuading shareholders to accept the appointment of 30-year-old James Murdoch as chief executive of the company his father Rupert chairs.

A married father-of-three, Leighton even runs a website, Going Plural, which offers help to budding entrepreneurs.

Losses slashed

He began his career with a lengthy stint at Mars, but he made his name at supermarket group Asda, transforming it from a �500m company to one sold to US giant Wal-Mart for �6.2bn in 1999.

At the Royal Mail Leighton has had some success in turning the company round.

In May, it posted its first improvement in trading performance for five years.

By then, it said, it was losing "just" �750,000 a day, down from an average of �1.2m a day the previous year.

Mr Leighton told the BBC he thought the company could be "profitable" by the end of the year.

Some quite painful changes have been made to get to that point, however.

If you vote with the activists amongst the union against the deal - or don't vote at all - we begin the process of commercial suicide Allan Leighton's recent message to postal staff

Nearly 17,000 jobs have already gone and more than 30,000 are expected to have been lost by 2005.

Leighton tried to win round his staff by appealing to them directly - and succeeded, at least on a national level.

At Asda, his success has been partly put down to his introduction of "huddles" - meetings where staff would get together to discuss daily issues.

At the Royal Mail, he also tries to have a direct relationship with the workforce.

He says he gets hundreds of e-mails a week from staff, and that most of his best ideas have come by talking directly to staff about their ideas and problems.

Confrontation

Indeed, he recently sent a letter to all staff asking them not to walk out.

"If you vote with the activists amongst the union against the deal - or don't vote at all - we begin the process of commercial suicide," he warned.

The CWU, however, is not the only body to face confrontation with Mr Leighton.

He has also had several bruising encounters with the regulator Postcomm, which is trying to open up the postal market.

So worried is he by the effects of the regulator's plans, he has warned, that he could end up taking it to the High Court or European Court to ensure the Royal Mail's survival.

If, as looks likely, Leighton leads a takeover bid for Leeds, it is clear he has just the sort of crisis-management skills and experience the troubled club desperately needs.