Post by QPR Report on Oct 11, 2009 9:42:21 GMT
Telegraph - How did a Hong Kong barber take over Birmingham City FC?
He is the mysterious businessman behind the £80 million takeover of one of Britain’s biggest football clubs.
By Andrew Alderson and Malcolm Moore, in Hong Kong
11 Oct 2009
Carson Yeung, a Hong Kong entrepreneur, completed his protracted two-year takeover of Birmingham City last Tuesday meaning that, for the first time, half of the 20 Barclays Premier League clubs are now foreign owned.
From now on Mr Yeung, who has a penchant for leather jackets, snakeskin boots and the company of pretty young girls, will take pride of place in the directors’ box at St Andrew’s, the ground that has witnessed some of the club’s greatest triumphs since it was formed in 1875.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr Yeung who, just a decade ago, was a struggling barber in Kowloon, the bustling commercial district opposite Hong Kong Island. From there he vanished into obscurity before emerging two years ago as a multi-millionaire who now has enough clout to mix with Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian owner of Chelsea, and the super-rich Arabs who have recently taken over Manchester City and Portsmouth.
However, even as the champagne corks were popping last week to celebrate the buy-out of Birmingham City, questions were being asked about how Mr Yeung made his fortune and whether he is the “frontman” for other secretive financial investors.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that, in Hong Kong, Mr Yeung is known as “the invisible man”. Yet his associates have not remained quite so invisible: one was charged — but acquitted — of taking a bribe from a Chinese Triad gang; another was fined for financial irregularities.
Mr Yeung fiercely guards his privacy. Standing at Number 1 Breezy Path, in Hong Kong’s expensive Mid Levels district, is Ying Piu Mansions: the “official” home of Mr Yeung. But at the ground floor of the high-rise block, a uniformed doorman shrugs his shoulders when Mr Yeung’s name is mentioned. “I have only seen him here once in the last five years,” he says. “I have no idea where he stays.”
A visit to the 30th floor of the West Tower of the Shun Tak centre, where Mr Yeung has his offices, is no more rewarding. Royze Chang, the businessman’s secretary, is unsure of his whereabouts. “I have no idea where he is,” she says. “I am not expecting to see him for a few days.”
Inside these offices of Grandtop International Holdings, the shell company which Mr Yeung is using to buy Birmingham City, there are framed pictures of the St Andrew’s ground and newspapers featuring a smiling Mr Yeung on the front pages.
Although his successful bid for the Premier League club has brought Mr Yeung some fame in Britain, in the Far East he has managed to keep his personal life well hidden. Among Hong Kong’s chattering classes, Mr Yeung is rumoured to be a big player in the casinos of Macao. Some say he made his fortune from property, others on the Hong Kong stock
exchange. It is hard, however, to find anyone who admits to knowing him, or even meeting him. Even Mr Yeung’s London PR company, Bankside Consultants, has no CV for its client and staff admit they do not know whether he is married, how many children he has or how he made his money.
Mr Yeung emerged from near obscurity to buy a 29.9 per cent stake in Birmingham City in 2007. At the time, he hoped to gain immediate control of the club, which was then jointly owned by David and Ralph Gold and David Sullivan, three multi-millionaire businessmen with colourful pasts of their own.
The Gold brothers, East Enders who started out selling buttons from a stall outside their family home, launched the highly successful Ann Summers sex shop chain, while Mr Sullivan largely made his fortune as a publisher of pornographic magazines.
Yet Mr Yeung was apparently unable to get sufficient funding to push through the takeover and by the end of that 2007-8 season Birmingham City were relegated to the Championship —only to bounce back into the Premiership this year.
Mr Yeung is the chairman and an executive director of Grandtop, an investment, entertainment and sportswear firm that was incorporated in the Cayman Islands. According to company records, Grandtop has not made any profits for the past four years. This newspaper’s investigation has established that some of Mr Yeung’s associates have clashed with the authorities in the Far East. Last week the club appointed Peter Pannu, a former Hong Kong police officer, as the club’s new finance chief.
Yet during the 1990s, Mr Pannu made headlines several times, most notably when he and his associates were accused of accepting HK$20,000 (£7,000) from Andely Chan, the Sun Yee On Triad boss. They pleaded not guilty and said their jobs required them to meet known Triad members.
Mr Pannu was acquitted of the charges in 1996 after Chan was murdered in Macao and another key witness told the court he no longer wished to testify. Mr Pannu was also acquitted of other charges after which a judge said any police policy of mixing with Triads “to keep one’s finger on the pulse of the underworld” was “fraught with dangers for all concerned.” Mr Pannu said last week: “There is no allegation hanging over my head... We should bear in mind that allegations are made against people everywhere in this world. The fact remains the issues were cleared.”
It has also emerged that the woman who is helping to finance Grandtop’s bid, Pollyanna Chu, was fined 12 years ago by Hong Kong’s financial regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission, for acting as a commodities dealer without a licence.
Mr Yeung has arranged to borrow £57 million for the Birmingham City deal from Best China, a company owned by Mrs Chu, 51, who runs a string of casinos in Macao and is also the majority owner of Kingston Securities, a brokerage in Hong Kong.
With his reign at St Andrew’s just days old, Mr Yeung also finds himself being the subject of a multi-million pound legal claim.
Seymour Pierce, the stockbrokers, and Keith Harris, 56, its chairman, revealed last week that they were suing Grandtop for £2.2 million in alleged unpaid “success” fees relating to this year’s takeover.
Although Seymour Pierce was not involved in the final deal, the stockbrokers represented Grandtop International in 2007 and claims that its contract still entitles it to the bonus.
A friend of Mr Harris said: “You don’t sue clients willingly but Seymour Pierce has a contract which is as plain as the nose on your face. It requires him [Mr Yeung] to pay the company a success fee, but he simply went Awol.
“Keith feels badly let down by Yeung. Keith did very substantial work using his contacts to help him get a foot in the door and to enable him to buy his first tranche of shares. Keith supported him even when he went back on his intention to take over the club [in 2007] — though it caused huge grief in Birmingham.”
Grandtop says it is contesting Seymour Pierce’s claim and insists it has done no wrong: another finance company, BDO Stoy Hayward Corporate Finance, eventually helped clinch the takeover deal.
A source at Seymour Pierce is critical of how Mr Yeung’s team conducted themselves during the takeover attempt in 2007.
He related how Mr Yeung offered company staff the use of a chauffeur during the 2007 takeover negotiations, something of which they were initially appreciative.
“But the driver was listening in to everything that was being said and selling stories to the newspapers. Keith was tipped off by a journalist that he should be careful what he said in front of a certain person – and then the penny dropped.”
The source said that in 2007 Mr Yeung did little to ingratiate himself with the-then owners of Birmingham City or Karren Brady, the-then chief executive who has now left the club with a substantial pay-off.
“He demanded a seat on the board even though he was not entitled to one,” said one source. However, Mr Yeung is nothing if not patient. By August of this year, as the new football season was getting under way, he and the rest of the Grandtop board were pushing through a new takeover bid for the club, valuing each share at £1 — a 240 per cent premium on just six months earlier when the share price had tumbled to just 29.4p a share.
Sources close to Mr Yeung said that the seemingly unnecessarily high offer of £1 per share was to entice shareholders to release their stocks to Grandtop.
By last week Grandtop had bought a stake of 94 per cent of the club, meaning it can compulsorily buy the remaining shares. Mr Yeung is now in a position where he can – and almost certainly will – take Birmingham City off the Alternative Investment Market altogether and into private ownership, avoiding shareholder scrutiny of the club.
Mr Yeung has passed the Premier League’s “fit and proper persons” test last month. There are several grounds on which an individual can fail it, but the most important is that no one with an unspent criminal conviction that resulted in a year, or more, jail sentence, can take over at a club.
A senior source close to Birmingham City’s former owners said: “Carson Yeung has a passion for football and for business. But he is a mystery man and only time will tell how things work out for the club.”
Additional reporting by Hazel Knowles in Hong Kong
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/6294728/How-did-a-Hong-Kong-barber-take-over-Birmingham-City-FC.html
He is the mysterious businessman behind the £80 million takeover of one of Britain’s biggest football clubs.
By Andrew Alderson and Malcolm Moore, in Hong Kong
11 Oct 2009
Carson Yeung, a Hong Kong entrepreneur, completed his protracted two-year takeover of Birmingham City last Tuesday meaning that, for the first time, half of the 20 Barclays Premier League clubs are now foreign owned.
From now on Mr Yeung, who has a penchant for leather jackets, snakeskin boots and the company of pretty young girls, will take pride of place in the directors’ box at St Andrew’s, the ground that has witnessed some of the club’s greatest triumphs since it was formed in 1875.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Mr Yeung who, just a decade ago, was a struggling barber in Kowloon, the bustling commercial district opposite Hong Kong Island. From there he vanished into obscurity before emerging two years ago as a multi-millionaire who now has enough clout to mix with Roman Abramovich, the billionaire Russian owner of Chelsea, and the super-rich Arabs who have recently taken over Manchester City and Portsmouth.
However, even as the champagne corks were popping last week to celebrate the buy-out of Birmingham City, questions were being asked about how Mr Yeung made his fortune and whether he is the “frontman” for other secretive financial investors.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that, in Hong Kong, Mr Yeung is known as “the invisible man”. Yet his associates have not remained quite so invisible: one was charged — but acquitted — of taking a bribe from a Chinese Triad gang; another was fined for financial irregularities.
Mr Yeung fiercely guards his privacy. Standing at Number 1 Breezy Path, in Hong Kong’s expensive Mid Levels district, is Ying Piu Mansions: the “official” home of Mr Yeung. But at the ground floor of the high-rise block, a uniformed doorman shrugs his shoulders when Mr Yeung’s name is mentioned. “I have only seen him here once in the last five years,” he says. “I have no idea where he stays.”
A visit to the 30th floor of the West Tower of the Shun Tak centre, where Mr Yeung has his offices, is no more rewarding. Royze Chang, the businessman’s secretary, is unsure of his whereabouts. “I have no idea where he is,” she says. “I am not expecting to see him for a few days.”
Inside these offices of Grandtop International Holdings, the shell company which Mr Yeung is using to buy Birmingham City, there are framed pictures of the St Andrew’s ground and newspapers featuring a smiling Mr Yeung on the front pages.
Although his successful bid for the Premier League club has brought Mr Yeung some fame in Britain, in the Far East he has managed to keep his personal life well hidden. Among Hong Kong’s chattering classes, Mr Yeung is rumoured to be a big player in the casinos of Macao. Some say he made his fortune from property, others on the Hong Kong stock
exchange. It is hard, however, to find anyone who admits to knowing him, or even meeting him. Even Mr Yeung’s London PR company, Bankside Consultants, has no CV for its client and staff admit they do not know whether he is married, how many children he has or how he made his money.
Mr Yeung emerged from near obscurity to buy a 29.9 per cent stake in Birmingham City in 2007. At the time, he hoped to gain immediate control of the club, which was then jointly owned by David and Ralph Gold and David Sullivan, three multi-millionaire businessmen with colourful pasts of their own.
The Gold brothers, East Enders who started out selling buttons from a stall outside their family home, launched the highly successful Ann Summers sex shop chain, while Mr Sullivan largely made his fortune as a publisher of pornographic magazines.
Yet Mr Yeung was apparently unable to get sufficient funding to push through the takeover and by the end of that 2007-8 season Birmingham City were relegated to the Championship —only to bounce back into the Premiership this year.
Mr Yeung is the chairman and an executive director of Grandtop, an investment, entertainment and sportswear firm that was incorporated in the Cayman Islands. According to company records, Grandtop has not made any profits for the past four years. This newspaper’s investigation has established that some of Mr Yeung’s associates have clashed with the authorities in the Far East. Last week the club appointed Peter Pannu, a former Hong Kong police officer, as the club’s new finance chief.
Yet during the 1990s, Mr Pannu made headlines several times, most notably when he and his associates were accused of accepting HK$20,000 (£7,000) from Andely Chan, the Sun Yee On Triad boss. They pleaded not guilty and said their jobs required them to meet known Triad members.
Mr Pannu was acquitted of the charges in 1996 after Chan was murdered in Macao and another key witness told the court he no longer wished to testify. Mr Pannu was also acquitted of other charges after which a judge said any police policy of mixing with Triads “to keep one’s finger on the pulse of the underworld” was “fraught with dangers for all concerned.” Mr Pannu said last week: “There is no allegation hanging over my head... We should bear in mind that allegations are made against people everywhere in this world. The fact remains the issues were cleared.”
It has also emerged that the woman who is helping to finance Grandtop’s bid, Pollyanna Chu, was fined 12 years ago by Hong Kong’s financial regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission, for acting as a commodities dealer without a licence.
Mr Yeung has arranged to borrow £57 million for the Birmingham City deal from Best China, a company owned by Mrs Chu, 51, who runs a string of casinos in Macao and is also the majority owner of Kingston Securities, a brokerage in Hong Kong.
With his reign at St Andrew’s just days old, Mr Yeung also finds himself being the subject of a multi-million pound legal claim.
Seymour Pierce, the stockbrokers, and Keith Harris, 56, its chairman, revealed last week that they were suing Grandtop for £2.2 million in alleged unpaid “success” fees relating to this year’s takeover.
Although Seymour Pierce was not involved in the final deal, the stockbrokers represented Grandtop International in 2007 and claims that its contract still entitles it to the bonus.
A friend of Mr Harris said: “You don’t sue clients willingly but Seymour Pierce has a contract which is as plain as the nose on your face. It requires him [Mr Yeung] to pay the company a success fee, but he simply went Awol.
“Keith feels badly let down by Yeung. Keith did very substantial work using his contacts to help him get a foot in the door and to enable him to buy his first tranche of shares. Keith supported him even when he went back on his intention to take over the club [in 2007] — though it caused huge grief in Birmingham.”
Grandtop says it is contesting Seymour Pierce’s claim and insists it has done no wrong: another finance company, BDO Stoy Hayward Corporate Finance, eventually helped clinch the takeover deal.
A source at Seymour Pierce is critical of how Mr Yeung’s team conducted themselves during the takeover attempt in 2007.
He related how Mr Yeung offered company staff the use of a chauffeur during the 2007 takeover negotiations, something of which they were initially appreciative.
“But the driver was listening in to everything that was being said and selling stories to the newspapers. Keith was tipped off by a journalist that he should be careful what he said in front of a certain person – and then the penny dropped.”
The source said that in 2007 Mr Yeung did little to ingratiate himself with the-then owners of Birmingham City or Karren Brady, the-then chief executive who has now left the club with a substantial pay-off.
“He demanded a seat on the board even though he was not entitled to one,” said one source. However, Mr Yeung is nothing if not patient. By August of this year, as the new football season was getting under way, he and the rest of the Grandtop board were pushing through a new takeover bid for the club, valuing each share at £1 — a 240 per cent premium on just six months earlier when the share price had tumbled to just 29.4p a share.
Sources close to Mr Yeung said that the seemingly unnecessarily high offer of £1 per share was to entice shareholders to release their stocks to Grandtop.
By last week Grandtop had bought a stake of 94 per cent of the club, meaning it can compulsorily buy the remaining shares. Mr Yeung is now in a position where he can – and almost certainly will – take Birmingham City off the Alternative Investment Market altogether and into private ownership, avoiding shareholder scrutiny of the club.
Mr Yeung has passed the Premier League’s “fit and proper persons” test last month. There are several grounds on which an individual can fail it, but the most important is that no one with an unspent criminal conviction that resulted in a year, or more, jail sentence, can take over at a club.
A senior source close to Birmingham City’s former owners said: “Carson Yeung has a passion for football and for business. But he is a mystery man and only time will tell how things work out for the club.”
Additional reporting by Hazel Knowles in Hong Kong
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/news/6294728/How-did-a-Hong-Kong-barber-take-over-Birmingham-City-FC.html