Post by Macmoish on Sept 5, 2014 18:14:19 GMT
Flashback 9 Years: several pieces re Tony Fernandes and QPR ...
GUARDIAN Jamie Jackson Friday 5 September 2014
Tony Fernandes: QPR are one of few clubs where chairman’s name is sung
Owner endears himself to fans, wants to keep Harry Redknapp and has goal of 20 consecutive Premier League seasons
Tony Fernandes felt only reverence when he met Harry Redknapp. “When we played Newcastle in my first game as chairman, Harry came to watch,” says the Queens Park Rangers owner. “I was in awe of meeting the Harry Redknapp. I thought: ‘It’d be great if one day … ’ Life has a funny way of twisting and turning and he’s ended up with us.”
The anecdote is supposedly about Redknapp but really goes straight to the heart of who Fernandes is. For a multi-millionaire proprietor of an airline, Air Asia, and former F1 team magnate to volunteer fan-like admiration for Redknapp shows an innocence that stands out among the standoffish, slippery and PR-conscious characters who populate English football. It is why fans sing Fernandes’s name, why he was “ripped off” when QPR were previously in the Premier League and why he remains firmly the same man. “I can’t change my spirit,” says the 50-year-old.
Fernandes is sitting in a box at Loftus Road freshly showered from an ice-bucket challenge that featured a quadruple dousing, the legacy of a promise that the number of fans who could empty water over him should match QPR’s next result, which would be a 4-0 trouncing by Tottenham Hotspur. He says: “Nothing’s going to change me, I’m still a kid at Wembley jumping up and down like a lunatic,” recalling QPR’s play-off final victory in May. “I’m not cynical or bitter in any way. Life’s too short, you get ripped off, but if you hold a grudge it’s going to affect you. You take it on the chin, you learn, you try not to make the same mistakes.”
Those errors became the story of QPR’s two Premier League campaigns before they were relegated at the close of the 2012-13 season. After gaining promotion under Neil Warnock, a scattergun transfer policy acquired some questionable players at a cost that made the club the highest spenders in agent fees – £6.81m. A year later QPR “dropped” to third position, yet paid out £6.82m. In the relegation year of 2013, the bill was £5.66m.
Since Fernandes bought a 66% stake in QPR in the summer of 2011, 46 players have been bought or loaned. While one of these recruits, Joey Barton, is club captain, many of the those under Warnock, his successor, Mark Hughes, and Redknapp drew inflated salaries, proved divisive to team spirit and appeared mercenary. Chris Samba’s January 2013 arrival for a club-record £12.5m was flagged up as “just what we need” by Redknapp. Yet, despite the central defender receiving a scarcely credible £100,000 a week, he returned to Anzhi Makhachkala that summer.
On replacing Hughes in November 2012 Redknapp described himself as “disturbed” by the attitude of some players. The next month, José Bosingwa refused to be a substitute against Fulham, as the team sat second from bottom. Of this whole experience, Fernandes previously said: “I allowed myself to be exploited but that’s my choice.” Now he says: “I was trying to say: ‘You can’t sit there and blame everyone else, so you’ve got to take it on the chin.’”
As a successful businessman, how did Fernandes allow it to occur? “When I started my airline business I didn’t know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow I might get ripped off by journalists,” he says. “You’d be naive to think you know everything from day one.”
Fernandes admits the sacking of Warnock, in January 2012, and Hughes the following winter may have been other mistakes. “It’s history now but could Neil Warnock have still been here? I liked him, I got on well with him and maybe we were swayed at the time. Mark Hughes is doing a good job at Stoke, he did a good job before, but we went a lot of times without winning, so maybe something had to be done,” he says of a winless run in the opening 12 matches of the 2012-13 season that left QPR bottom by late November.
Redknapp has just been awarded a new deal. “What happens if we don’t win for 12 or 13 games?” says Fernandes, with trademark honesty. “But I think we’ve made our mind up to stick – we’ll just stick with Harry come what may. We want stability, we want players to know he’s the manager. A different approach, I think. My whole life’s been stability. People who have worked with me have for a long time. Air Asia is the same people who started it.
“I don’t believe football clubs can be any different. You only have to look at the most successful football clubs – Matt Busby, Bob Paisley, Alex Ferguson, they were all at their clubs for a long time. Martínez at Wigan and I’m sure at Everton, if he’s not nicked by someone. That’s a business principle that works.
“Many fans might resent me saying it but I was a West Ham fan. We had about three managers in 25 years, Greenwood, Lyall, and then it went pear-shaped. I believe fundamentally managers can do so much – it’s players at the end of the day. Harry said something like the system is the system but the players have to play to the system.”
Being involved at the sharp end remains a joy. “It’s still fun. I love it,” Fernandes says. “People say: ‘Why the hell do you own a football club?’ But Wembley was an amazing feeling, not many people in the world have that. Winning is an amazing feeling. You don’t get that in business, you don’t get that in many things. Listen, there’ll be more downs than ups but the ups balance out the downs.”
Malaysian-born and English-educated, Fernandes took an accountancy degree at the London School of Economics – he is uniquely positioned to comment on overseas owners. Does he think they are unfairly viewed? Vincent Tan’s experience at Cardiff City suggests foreigners can be negatively stereotyped.
“I think the major press goes to the manager and players, the owner is subsidiary to this unless there’s a lot of noise about it,” says Fernandes. “Communication is maybe where some owners are poor. I’ve made tons of mistakes but the fans out there still seem to like me, they still sing my name – we’re one of the few clubs where a chairman’s name is actually sung. That’s not because there’s anything fantastic about me but fans can relate to me, I communicate with them. So the difference – and I don’t think it’s overseas owners – is how you communicate. There’s English owners who are poor communicators as well.”
Fernandes has a strong presence on social media, often answering supporters on Twitter. “I believe in transparency, I believe fans of the club are the shareholders of the club. They may not be putting in as much money as a shareholder but they’re paying in a large part of their wage to watch QPR. That should be respected. We can’t make all 40,000, 50,000 happy or there’d be anarchy but we try and get their views. Our new stadium, training ground, a lot of things we did have come out of fans’ input.”
A consultation has begun over the plans for a new ground, at Old Oak in nearby Acton. What is the long-term vision for QPR? “It’s a tough old league,” Fernandes chuckles. “But the best thing I ever saw at a football club – and if I can emulate that I would’ve done something good – was at Everton. A plaque from the Premier League saying: ‘Twenty consecutive seasons.’ That’d be fantastic, so that’s my goal to start off with. It’s tough for us small boys but there are many small boys like us.”
Next for QPR is a visit to the new galáctico-style Manchester United of Radamel Falcao and Ángel di María. “I’m looking forward to it,” says Fernandes. “Quality is quality – they just need a few things to go their way – but I honestly believe Harry’s got good enough players, so I believe we have enough. I believe the manager will say we never have enough – but he’s no different from any other manager. Unfortunately for Harry, I don’t have £56m to go and buy Di María.”
In the relentless 24/7 Premier League whirlwind, what Redknapp does have is priceless: a chairman and owner who wants to give him every chance.
www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/05/tony-fernandes-qpr-chairman-harry-redknapp-premier-league?
INDEPENDENT
QPR chairman Tony Fernandes: 'F1 taught me how not to do things...'
QPR owner and former Lotus chief Tony Fernandes tells David Tremayne why he is much happier to be out of the pit lane and focusing on the pitch
David Tremayne
Friday 05 September 2014
Tony Fernandes, the colourful owner of Queen’s Park Rangers, Caterham Cars and AirAsia, does not regret his five-year adventure in Formula One’s “piranha club”.
“There’s nothing wrong in trying and failing,” he says. “I’ve had an unbelievable life. I’m 50 years old, and I brought Lotus back. No one can take that away from me. And Caterham is a much better known car manufacturer now. We’ve doubled our sales. I’ve met some great people. And I’ve learned how not to do things. I’ve learned about focus.”
A self-deprecating laugh is acknowledgement that he is harder to pin down than a frame house in a hurricane.
“I’d rather get to 55 and say I’m glad I did it, than wish I had. But we were just not good enough, and I enjoy football more.”
He concedes that not being involved on a daily basis, or else not employing someone with the calibre of former McLaren chief Martin Whitmarsh, was his biggest mistake. Romain Grosjean Romain Grosjean during practice at the Italian Grand Prix
“That’s the lesson from all this,” Fernandes says. “I’m so meticulous with AirAsia. I’m there and I know everything that’s going on. Success! I spent a lot more time on football and we are better. I won’t say successful, but better.”
Fernandes revived the fabled Team Lotus in 2010. But the dream soured when controversial entrepreneur Dany Bahar joined Lotus Cars in Malaysia and wanted Fernandes’ train set – Team Lotus – too. Founder Colin Chapman had separated the two entities as long ago as 1968, and Lotus Cars had been acquired by General Motors in 1986, but a lengthy legal case in 2011 proved inconclusive. In the end Fernandes rebranded as Caterham.
“That was the first massive chink in the dream,” he admits. “Selling the Lotus F1 brand was a major blow. I never said it to anyone, but it left me feeling that F1 was very nasty and vindictive.
“Then Caterham didn’t really progress, a lot of investments didn’t come through and it started to get tough.”
He had entered F1 believing former FIA president Max Mosley’s promise of a $40m budget cap. But that was always doomed. “Pretty soon the whole cost of F1 went the other way,” Fernandes reflects. “Tyres were free when I came in, now we pay for them. Then there was the turbo-engine change, whose cost almost doubled.”
In January he put his team on notice that his patience was not limited, and eventually sold it to a group of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors.
Fernandes does not want to come across as a sore loser, but he does not pull punches. “The economics of the sport is all wrong. Bar Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren, everyone else is struggling.
“I don’t want to say how much we ended up spending beyond the cap Max talked of, but it was a lot. So you’ve got to put your hands up and say, ‘We’re beat. It doesn’t make sense any more’.”
He admits that felt like falling out of love, and that the system beat him. “Every team talked about working together but it never happened. There should be enough money in the system for everyone to race. I don’t believe I should have the same as Ferrari or Red Bull, but $60m, $70m, that should come from the prize money.
“If you get more sponsorship and you can raise your budget to $120m, so be it. But $40m was unrealistic unless people really wanted it, and they didn’t. And the teams were not together, which was a major disappointment.” Tony Fernandes Fernandes in the Caterham garage in 2012
It did not help that he had also seen football’s commercial model. “In football the teams are much closer together. And yet they too are competing like hell. Whether you’re a top team or at the bottom, you get enough money to survive, and that’s the major difference. We got £30m when we were relegated [from the Premier League in 2013], and then £60m when we came back up. Of course, Manchester United have more and Chelsea have more, but you have baseline prize money which enables you to compete.”
And, as QPR proved in last season’s Championship play-off final against Derby County at Wembley, you still have the chance to win.
Wouldn’t it have been better to focus on one or the other rather than buying QPR and diluting the effort that should have gone into F1?
“Fair question,” he laughs after a long pause. “Maybe. Even then we were beginning to question F1, but if I had just stuck with F1 we would have been slightly better. I’m not sure how much better.”
In football there is no need to spend additional millions redesigning the ball for each match, either. “And there’s a fairer distribution of money and a better control of spending. There’s a better dialogue. There’s a general understanding that we are in it together. Obviously there are differences; somebody wants a salary cap, and somebody else doesn’t. But there’s a clear voting structure. One team, one vote. No need for unanimity. In F1 I think there is some sensibility where people want to help each other, but not at the top.
“But I’m not criticising motor racing. I love the sport. And I wouldn’t have got involved in football or car making if I hadn’t met Bernie [Ecclestone].”
Fernandes has proved his mettle with QPR’s fightback after relegation last year. “We didn’t give up and die, we came back fighting hard. There aren’t many teams that bounce back straight away. That was a fairy tale. But definitely I thought we had a chance.”
He cites the motivation of the players as the crucial change at Loftus Road last season. “There was such great camaraderie. Richard Dunne has been unbelievable, and Joey Barton has been great. He’s a tough boy – but I don’t think he realised how heavy I was when he got me up on his shoulders [at Wembley]. Bobby Zamora kept coming back and doing great things.”
So now Fernandes will focus on QPR, AirAsia, exciting new projects with Caterham Cars, and his smaller race teams. “I love GP2 and Moto2,” he laughs. “I think I’m a second division guy. What we should have done in hindsight was start a GP2 team, slowly learn the ropes, and then move on to F1.” Instead, he fell out of love with F1. But does he feel better to be out of it? “Yeah,” he admits. “It’s a relief.”
www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/qpr-chairman-tony-fernandes-f1-taught-me-how-not-to-do-things-9715520.html
Standard/Mihir Bose
Tony Fernandes: QPR are one of few clubs where chairman’s name is sung
Friday 5 September 2014 11.51 EDT
Tony Fernandes felt only reverence when he met Harry Redknapp. “When we played Newcastle in my first game as chairman, Harry came to watch,” says the Queens Park Rangers owner. “I was in awe of meeting the Harry Redknapp. I thought: ‘It’d be great if one day … ’ Life has a funny way of twisting and turning and he’s ended up with us.”
The anecdote is supposedly about Redknapp but really goes straight to the heart of who Fernandes is. For a multi-millionaire proprietor of an airline, Air Asia, and former F1 team magnate to volunteer fan-like admiration for Redknapp shows an innocence that stands out among the standoffish, slippery and PR-conscious characters who populate English football. It is why fans sing Fernandes’s name, why he was “ripped off” when QPR were previously in the Premier League and why he remains firmly the same man. “I can’t change my spirit,” says the 50-year-old.
Fernandes is sitting in a box at Loftus Road freshly showered from an ice-bucket challenge that featured a quadruple dousing, the legacy of a promise that the number of fans who could empty water over him should match QPR’s next result, which would be a 4-0 trouncing by Tottenham Hotspur. He says: “Nothing’s going to change me, I’m still a kid at Wembley jumping up and down like a lunatic,” recalling QPR’s play-off final victory in May. “I’m not cynical or bitter in any way. Life’s too short, you get ripped off, but if you hold a grudge it’s going to affect you. You take it on the chin, you learn, you try not to make the same mistakes.”
Those errors became the story of QPR’s two Premier League campaigns before they were relegated at the close of the 2012-13 season. After gaining promotion under Neil Warnock, a scattergun transfer policy acquired some questionable players at a cost that made the club the highest spenders in agent fees – £6.81m. A year later QPR “dropped” to third position, yet paid out £6.82m. In the relegation year of 2013, the bill was £5.66m.
Since Fernandes bought a 66% stake in QPR in the summer of 2011, 46 players have been bought or loaned. While one of these recruits, Joey Barton, is club captain, many of the those under Warnock, his successor, Mark Hughes, and Redknapp drew inflated salaries, proved divisive to team spirit and appeared mercenary. Chris Samba’s January 2013 arrival for a club-record £12.5m was flagged up as “just what we need” by Redknapp. Yet, despite the central defender receiving a scarcely credible £100,000 a week, he returned to Anzhi Makhachkala that summer.
On replacing Hughes in November 2012 Redknapp described himself as “disturbed” by the attitude of some players. The next month, José Bosingwa refused to be a substitute against Fulham, as the team sat second from bottom. Of this whole experience, Fernandes previously said: “I allowed myself to be exploited but that’s my choice.” Now he says: “I was trying to say: ‘You can’t sit there and blame everyone else, so you’ve got to take it on the chin.’”
As a successful businessman, how did Fernandes allow it to occur? “When I started my airline business I didn’t know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow I might get ripped off by journalists,” he says. “You’d be naive to think you know everything from day one.”
Fernandes admits the sacking of Warnock, in January 2012, and Hughes the following winter may have been other mistakes. “It’s history now but could Neil Warnock have still been here? I liked him, I got on well with him and maybe we were swayed at the time. Mark Hughes is doing a good job at Stoke, he did a good job before, but we went a lot of times without winning, so maybe something had to be done,” he says of a winless run in the opening 12 matches of the 2012-13 season that left QPR bottom by late November.
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Redknapp has just been awarded a new deal. “What happens if we don’t win for 12 or 13 games?” says Fernandes, with trademark honesty. “But I think we’ve made our mind up to stick – we’ll just stick with Harry come what may. We want stability, we want players to know he’s the manager. A different approach, I think. My whole life’s been stability. People who have worked with me have for a long time. Air Asia is the same people who started it.
“I don’t believe football clubs can be any different. You only have to look at the most successful football clubs – Matt Busby, Bob Paisley, Alex Ferguson, they were all at their clubs for a long time. Martínez at Wigan and I’m sure at Everton, if he’s not nicked by someone. That’s a business principle that works.
“Many fans might resent me saying it but I was a West Ham fan. We had about three managers in 25 years, Greenwood, Lyall, and then it went pear-shaped. I believe fundamentally managers can do so much – it’s players at the end of the day. Harry said something like the system is the system but the players have to play to the system.”
Being involved at the sharp end remains a joy. “It’s still fun. I love it,” Fernandes says. “People say: ‘Why the hell do you own a football club?’ But Wembley was an amazing feeling, not many people in the world have that. Winning is an amazing feeling. You don’t get that in business, you don’t get that in many things. Listen, there’ll be more downs than ups but the ups balance out the downs.”
Malaysian-born and English-educated, Fernandes took an accountancy degree at the London School of Economics – he is uniquely positioned to comment on overseas owners. Does he think they are unfairly viewed? Vincent Tan’s experience at Cardiff City suggests foreigners can be negatively stereotyped.
“I think the major press goes to the manager and players, the owner is subsidiary to this unless there’s a lot of noise about it,” says Fernandes. “Communication is maybe where some owners are poor. I’ve made tons of mistakes but the fans out there still seem to like me, they still sing my name – we’re one of the few clubs where a chairman’s name is actually sung. That’s not because there’s anything fantastic about me but fans can relate to me, I communicate with them. So the difference – and I don’t think it’s overseas owners – is how you communicate. There’s English owners who are poor communicators as well.”
Fernandes has a strong presence on social media, often answering supporters on Twitter. “I believe in transparency, I believe fans of the club are the shareholders of the club. They may not be putting in as much money as a shareholder but they’re paying in a large part of their wage to watch QPR. That should be respected. We can’t make all 40,000, 50,000 happy or there’d be anarchy but we try and get their views. Our new stadium, training ground, a lot of things we did have come out of fans’ input.”
A consultation has begun over the plans for a new ground, at Old Oak in nearby Acton. What is the long-term vision for QPR? “It’s a tough old league,” Fernandes chuckles. “But the best thing I ever saw at a football club – and if I can emulate that I would’ve done something good – was at Everton. A plaque from the Premier League saying: ‘Twenty consecutive seasons.’ That’d be fantastic, so that’s my goal to start off with. It’s tough for us small boys but there are many small boys like us.”
Next for QPR is a visit to the new galáctico-style Manchester United of Radamel Falcao and Ángel di María. “I’m looking forward to it,” says Fernandes. “Quality is quality – they just need a few things to go their way – but I honestly believe Harry’s got good enough players, so I believe we have enough. I believe the manager will say we never have enough – but he’s no different from any other manager. Unfortunately for Harry, I don’t have £56m to go and buy Di María.”
In the relentless 24/7 Premier League whirlwind, what Redknapp does have is priceless: a chairman and owner who wants to give him every chance.
www.mihirbose.com/index.php/qprs-tony-fernandes-i-won%E2%80%99t-wreck-harry-redknapps-dream-if-he-is-offered-england-job/
Times article
On a sunny midweek afternoon, without a player in sight, Queens Park Rangers’ ground is a rectangle of calm. Tony Fernandes bounds up one of the stands chomping on a Blue Riband chocolate biscuit.
“You can’t believe you’re in the middle of London, actually,” the chairman says, scanning the bright-green pitch.
“The first place I came after the Championship game at Wembley [when QPR beat Derby to return to the Premier League] was to sit here and take it all in. This is better than sitting in a stuffy office.”
Dressed in a red Air Asia cap, black T-shirt and jeans, Fernandes doesn’t look like the owner of an international empire. It’s intentional: the 50-year-old styles himself as Malaysia’s answer to Sir Richard Branson and eschews corporate strictures.
“I dress like this deliberately because if you wear a suit and tie you put a bit of distance between you and your staff,” he says. “People generally think I’m an illegal immigrant when I’m walking around the airport. QPR fans find me a bit weird because I sit with them; I go to the pub.”
He points at his PR man. “I hugged Ian the other day, in Sunderland, and people were asking who I was.”
Fernandes chuckles. He is chatty and informal, his polite English accent tinged with Branson-esque American inflections, but underneath is a serious businessman. He has amassed an estimated $650m (£400m) fortune by bringing low-cost air travel to Asia, ploughing some of the proceeds into hotels, insurance, mobile phones, sports cars — and football.
Fernandes and two Malaysian partners bought QPR three years ago from the Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone and the former team principal Flavio Briatore. They own 66%; most of the rest is held by the Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.
It hasn’t been a cheap pursuit. Accounts for 2012-13 showed a loss of £65m, with debt rising to £177m. Is Fernandes able to switch off from the on-pitch drama every season and see it as an investment?
“No. God, f*** no. I wish I could,” he says. “Sometimes I can’t come to the games. I’ll sit in there” — he gestures to the stadium’s innards — “or come out at half-time, you know. The whole experience of last season was like a bloody rollercoaster, but the best feeling was not winning. Honestly, it was being on the pitch [at Wembley] and seeing 40,000 QPR fans. Football is a religion to these people — I go to the pub and I see maybe five QPR fans with tattoos all over their bodies, their phones have got QPR covers, their watches are QPR . . .”
Fernandes presents his plans for the club in this vein. Last week QPR launched a consultation on proposals to build a 40,000-seat stadium — more than double the size of the Loftus Road ground — and 24,000 homes on nearby Old Oak Common.
Fernandes dubs the development New Queens Park and says it could bring 55,000 jobs to the area. It would take 10 years to build and could cost somewhere between £5bn and £10bn. The idea is impressive, if somewhat light on detail.
“One of the first things I did, because Bernie and Flavio had kind of run it into the ground, was to reactivate the community trust,” he says. “And as we began to see what the boys were doing, it tied in so well with what we’re trying to achieve here. Build a nicer stadium — but the underlying emphasis is to build better homes, let our fans be able to rent nicer homes or buy homes, and create jobs . . . I’m looking to put art galleries in there, get a Google in there, get some cool companies that can add value to the community. So there’s a lot of thought going into it.”
QPR’s shareholders have already spent £5m on preliminary work. They have hired Stadium Capital Developments, the company that moved Arsenal into the Emirates, the architect Sir Terry Farrell, the estate agency Savills and the engineering consultant BuroHappold.
Boris Johnson, the mayor, is keen to see that part of west London transformed in time for the arrival of a “superhub” station for HS2 and Crossrail in 2026. There are three councils involved — Brent, Ealing and Hammersmith & Fulham — plus the Greater London Authority.
Fernandes says: “We’re engaging so many different constituents to make this happen and our aim is to get everyone on our side. And it appears we’re getting everyone on our side, as well.”
That turns out to be a positive spin. A big chunk of the site is owned by Cargiant. The secondhand car dealer was irritated when QPR announced plans for a new stadium on its land last year without prior notice, and says it is now pushing ahead with its own scheme, in partnership with developers First Base and Lipton Rogers.
“It upset a lot of people here,” says Tony Mendes, managing director of Cargiant. “There were 700 employees concerned about their jobs. We were very surprised by QPR’s consultation programme and PR strategy when they know there’s no deal that’s been done and no discussions going on. They came to an end some time ago and we have our own plans to develop our land, whether or not QPR treats that seriously.”
Fernandes is coy about whether he could try to force Cargiant into selling by aligning the various political powers, or offering a knockout bid.
“I think people engage, people don’t engage. Time goes on; we’ve got to move on,” he says. “We know we’ve got a winning proposal because our proposal is for the community. You can’t beat that. We’re not developers, we’re not after making every buck, we’re after leaving a legacy.”
However, he hints at the economic leverage QPR could bring to bear. “I suppose they can [hold out], but obviously there are remedies available to everyone,” he says. “To leave this area and to throw out thousands of jobs seems a wasted opportunity. Because we can’t stay in this stadium for ever. It’s beautiful and we love it, but we can’t keep just putting money in because we have an 18,000-seat stadium, the smallest in the Premier League and — dare I say it — in the Championship as well.”
Fernandes comes across as straight-talking, but he knows how to bargain. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur until his father — “a very left-wing communist doctor” — and his mother — “a right-wing capitalist Tupperware saleswoman” — sent him to boarding school in Surrey at the age of 12.
He loved football and was dismayed to discover that Epsom College offered only rugby. “I almost dropped dead and died,” he says. “And I argued — don’t write this bit down — I argued with the headmaster and I got three strokes.”
He went to the London School of Economics and became an accountant. “I couldn’t handle it,” he says with a laugh. “The worst part of it was trying to fill out the timesheet because I didn’t do anything, so I just quit. And the final straw was they were looking for me and I was at the Oval [watching cricket].”
Fernandes joined Branson’s Virgin Records briefly, then moved to Warner Music. In 2001, with the blessing of Malaysia’s prime minister at the time, he mortgaged his house and bought Air Asia, a loss-making part of government-backed DRB-Hicom.
He turned round the company and lobbied the prime minister to propose dropping flight restrictions with Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Air Asia is now a strong contender to win the region’s low-cost airline dogfight, although attempts to build a long-haul budget carrier in the shape of Air Asia X have met with more mixed success.
Fernandes hopes to use some of the tricks he has learnt at Air Asia to make football tickets cheaper. If QPR manages to build a new stadium, its capacity will vastly increase. “I’m a big believer in volume,” he says. “Air Asia started with 200,000 passengers and it’s now doing 52m. That’s all due to low prices stimulating more people to fly with us. I believe the concept is not dissimilar in football — provided we’re playing good football. We could charge £1 if we’re playing crap and no one’s gonna come.”
He reckons revenues will be boosted with ancillary sales: “Bigger club shop — match day there is f***ing pandemonium, right — food sales, etc.”
The QPR chairman recalls his less plutocratic youth: as a student he paid £12 a week to live “on top of a kebab shop on the Uxbridge Road”. I can’t resist asking if he has acquired that most symbolic of tycoon accessories — a private jet.
Fernandes pauses. “I do, but don’t write that. I always thought idiots bought private jets, then I bought one. It’s a Global Express. It’s not mine, I share it with my partner [his wife].” There is another pause and he deadpans: “I’ll have half soon.”
Working day
The chairman of Queens Park Rangers gets up at 7am at his home in London’s Belgravia or the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Tony Fernandes spends most of his time running Air Asia, the low-cost carrier he has owned since 2001, flitting between the office and different airports.
“I’m at the check-in desk, I’m at the planes, I’m with the engineers late at night,” he says. “Sometimes I just go to the airport and hang around with passengers. It’s a bigger hassle now because everyone wants to take a photograph.”
As well as Air Asia, his Tune Group has interests in car manufacturing, hotels, insurance and mobile phones. He goes to bed at about 1am.
Downtime
The 50-year-old loves music. He has 22,000 CDs and a growing digital collection of hip-hop, R&B and rock tracks.
Fernandes is doing up a farmhouse in Ayrshire. “We found some bats there, and bats are protected, so right now my renovation has come to a complete halt,” he laughs.
Note if not able to read it - Copied/and pasted (presume whole article)
Via
www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/queensparkrangers/forum/124317/interview-with-tf-in-st-business--some-insight-on-car-giant..../#0
Read more: qprreport.proboards.com/thread/edit/39918#ixzz5QDFJW6Si
GUARDIAN Jamie Jackson Friday 5 September 2014
Tony Fernandes: QPR are one of few clubs where chairman’s name is sung
Owner endears himself to fans, wants to keep Harry Redknapp and has goal of 20 consecutive Premier League seasons
Tony Fernandes felt only reverence when he met Harry Redknapp. “When we played Newcastle in my first game as chairman, Harry came to watch,” says the Queens Park Rangers owner. “I was in awe of meeting the Harry Redknapp. I thought: ‘It’d be great if one day … ’ Life has a funny way of twisting and turning and he’s ended up with us.”
The anecdote is supposedly about Redknapp but really goes straight to the heart of who Fernandes is. For a multi-millionaire proprietor of an airline, Air Asia, and former F1 team magnate to volunteer fan-like admiration for Redknapp shows an innocence that stands out among the standoffish, slippery and PR-conscious characters who populate English football. It is why fans sing Fernandes’s name, why he was “ripped off” when QPR were previously in the Premier League and why he remains firmly the same man. “I can’t change my spirit,” says the 50-year-old.
Fernandes is sitting in a box at Loftus Road freshly showered from an ice-bucket challenge that featured a quadruple dousing, the legacy of a promise that the number of fans who could empty water over him should match QPR’s next result, which would be a 4-0 trouncing by Tottenham Hotspur. He says: “Nothing’s going to change me, I’m still a kid at Wembley jumping up and down like a lunatic,” recalling QPR’s play-off final victory in May. “I’m not cynical or bitter in any way. Life’s too short, you get ripped off, but if you hold a grudge it’s going to affect you. You take it on the chin, you learn, you try not to make the same mistakes.”
Those errors became the story of QPR’s two Premier League campaigns before they were relegated at the close of the 2012-13 season. After gaining promotion under Neil Warnock, a scattergun transfer policy acquired some questionable players at a cost that made the club the highest spenders in agent fees – £6.81m. A year later QPR “dropped” to third position, yet paid out £6.82m. In the relegation year of 2013, the bill was £5.66m.
Since Fernandes bought a 66% stake in QPR in the summer of 2011, 46 players have been bought or loaned. While one of these recruits, Joey Barton, is club captain, many of the those under Warnock, his successor, Mark Hughes, and Redknapp drew inflated salaries, proved divisive to team spirit and appeared mercenary. Chris Samba’s January 2013 arrival for a club-record £12.5m was flagged up as “just what we need” by Redknapp. Yet, despite the central defender receiving a scarcely credible £100,000 a week, he returned to Anzhi Makhachkala that summer.
On replacing Hughes in November 2012 Redknapp described himself as “disturbed” by the attitude of some players. The next month, José Bosingwa refused to be a substitute against Fulham, as the team sat second from bottom. Of this whole experience, Fernandes previously said: “I allowed myself to be exploited but that’s my choice.” Now he says: “I was trying to say: ‘You can’t sit there and blame everyone else, so you’ve got to take it on the chin.’”
As a successful businessman, how did Fernandes allow it to occur? “When I started my airline business I didn’t know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow I might get ripped off by journalists,” he says. “You’d be naive to think you know everything from day one.”
Fernandes admits the sacking of Warnock, in January 2012, and Hughes the following winter may have been other mistakes. “It’s history now but could Neil Warnock have still been here? I liked him, I got on well with him and maybe we were swayed at the time. Mark Hughes is doing a good job at Stoke, he did a good job before, but we went a lot of times without winning, so maybe something had to be done,” he says of a winless run in the opening 12 matches of the 2012-13 season that left QPR bottom by late November.
Redknapp has just been awarded a new deal. “What happens if we don’t win for 12 or 13 games?” says Fernandes, with trademark honesty. “But I think we’ve made our mind up to stick – we’ll just stick with Harry come what may. We want stability, we want players to know he’s the manager. A different approach, I think. My whole life’s been stability. People who have worked with me have for a long time. Air Asia is the same people who started it.
“I don’t believe football clubs can be any different. You only have to look at the most successful football clubs – Matt Busby, Bob Paisley, Alex Ferguson, they were all at their clubs for a long time. Martínez at Wigan and I’m sure at Everton, if he’s not nicked by someone. That’s a business principle that works.
“Many fans might resent me saying it but I was a West Ham fan. We had about three managers in 25 years, Greenwood, Lyall, and then it went pear-shaped. I believe fundamentally managers can do so much – it’s players at the end of the day. Harry said something like the system is the system but the players have to play to the system.”
Being involved at the sharp end remains a joy. “It’s still fun. I love it,” Fernandes says. “People say: ‘Why the hell do you own a football club?’ But Wembley was an amazing feeling, not many people in the world have that. Winning is an amazing feeling. You don’t get that in business, you don’t get that in many things. Listen, there’ll be more downs than ups but the ups balance out the downs.”
Malaysian-born and English-educated, Fernandes took an accountancy degree at the London School of Economics – he is uniquely positioned to comment on overseas owners. Does he think they are unfairly viewed? Vincent Tan’s experience at Cardiff City suggests foreigners can be negatively stereotyped.
“I think the major press goes to the manager and players, the owner is subsidiary to this unless there’s a lot of noise about it,” says Fernandes. “Communication is maybe where some owners are poor. I’ve made tons of mistakes but the fans out there still seem to like me, they still sing my name – we’re one of the few clubs where a chairman’s name is actually sung. That’s not because there’s anything fantastic about me but fans can relate to me, I communicate with them. So the difference – and I don’t think it’s overseas owners – is how you communicate. There’s English owners who are poor communicators as well.”
Fernandes has a strong presence on social media, often answering supporters on Twitter. “I believe in transparency, I believe fans of the club are the shareholders of the club. They may not be putting in as much money as a shareholder but they’re paying in a large part of their wage to watch QPR. That should be respected. We can’t make all 40,000, 50,000 happy or there’d be anarchy but we try and get their views. Our new stadium, training ground, a lot of things we did have come out of fans’ input.”
A consultation has begun over the plans for a new ground, at Old Oak in nearby Acton. What is the long-term vision for QPR? “It’s a tough old league,” Fernandes chuckles. “But the best thing I ever saw at a football club – and if I can emulate that I would’ve done something good – was at Everton. A plaque from the Premier League saying: ‘Twenty consecutive seasons.’ That’d be fantastic, so that’s my goal to start off with. It’s tough for us small boys but there are many small boys like us.”
Next for QPR is a visit to the new galáctico-style Manchester United of Radamel Falcao and Ángel di María. “I’m looking forward to it,” says Fernandes. “Quality is quality – they just need a few things to go their way – but I honestly believe Harry’s got good enough players, so I believe we have enough. I believe the manager will say we never have enough – but he’s no different from any other manager. Unfortunately for Harry, I don’t have £56m to go and buy Di María.”
In the relentless 24/7 Premier League whirlwind, what Redknapp does have is priceless: a chairman and owner who wants to give him every chance.
www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/05/tony-fernandes-qpr-chairman-harry-redknapp-premier-league?
INDEPENDENT
QPR chairman Tony Fernandes: 'F1 taught me how not to do things...'
QPR owner and former Lotus chief Tony Fernandes tells David Tremayne why he is much happier to be out of the pit lane and focusing on the pitch
David Tremayne
Friday 05 September 2014
Tony Fernandes, the colourful owner of Queen’s Park Rangers, Caterham Cars and AirAsia, does not regret his five-year adventure in Formula One’s “piranha club”.
“There’s nothing wrong in trying and failing,” he says. “I’ve had an unbelievable life. I’m 50 years old, and I brought Lotus back. No one can take that away from me. And Caterham is a much better known car manufacturer now. We’ve doubled our sales. I’ve met some great people. And I’ve learned how not to do things. I’ve learned about focus.”
A self-deprecating laugh is acknowledgement that he is harder to pin down than a frame house in a hurricane.
“I’d rather get to 55 and say I’m glad I did it, than wish I had. But we were just not good enough, and I enjoy football more.”
He concedes that not being involved on a daily basis, or else not employing someone with the calibre of former McLaren chief Martin Whitmarsh, was his biggest mistake. Romain Grosjean Romain Grosjean during practice at the Italian Grand Prix
“That’s the lesson from all this,” Fernandes says. “I’m so meticulous with AirAsia. I’m there and I know everything that’s going on. Success! I spent a lot more time on football and we are better. I won’t say successful, but better.”
Fernandes revived the fabled Team Lotus in 2010. But the dream soured when controversial entrepreneur Dany Bahar joined Lotus Cars in Malaysia and wanted Fernandes’ train set – Team Lotus – too. Founder Colin Chapman had separated the two entities as long ago as 1968, and Lotus Cars had been acquired by General Motors in 1986, but a lengthy legal case in 2011 proved inconclusive. In the end Fernandes rebranded as Caterham.
“That was the first massive chink in the dream,” he admits. “Selling the Lotus F1 brand was a major blow. I never said it to anyone, but it left me feeling that F1 was very nasty and vindictive.
“Then Caterham didn’t really progress, a lot of investments didn’t come through and it started to get tough.”
He had entered F1 believing former FIA president Max Mosley’s promise of a $40m budget cap. But that was always doomed. “Pretty soon the whole cost of F1 went the other way,” Fernandes reflects. “Tyres were free when I came in, now we pay for them. Then there was the turbo-engine change, whose cost almost doubled.”
In January he put his team on notice that his patience was not limited, and eventually sold it to a group of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors.
Fernandes does not want to come across as a sore loser, but he does not pull punches. “The economics of the sport is all wrong. Bar Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren, everyone else is struggling.
“I don’t want to say how much we ended up spending beyond the cap Max talked of, but it was a lot. So you’ve got to put your hands up and say, ‘We’re beat. It doesn’t make sense any more’.”
He admits that felt like falling out of love, and that the system beat him. “Every team talked about working together but it never happened. There should be enough money in the system for everyone to race. I don’t believe I should have the same as Ferrari or Red Bull, but $60m, $70m, that should come from the prize money.
“If you get more sponsorship and you can raise your budget to $120m, so be it. But $40m was unrealistic unless people really wanted it, and they didn’t. And the teams were not together, which was a major disappointment.” Tony Fernandes Fernandes in the Caterham garage in 2012
It did not help that he had also seen football’s commercial model. “In football the teams are much closer together. And yet they too are competing like hell. Whether you’re a top team or at the bottom, you get enough money to survive, and that’s the major difference. We got £30m when we were relegated [from the Premier League in 2013], and then £60m when we came back up. Of course, Manchester United have more and Chelsea have more, but you have baseline prize money which enables you to compete.”
And, as QPR proved in last season’s Championship play-off final against Derby County at Wembley, you still have the chance to win.
Wouldn’t it have been better to focus on one or the other rather than buying QPR and diluting the effort that should have gone into F1?
“Fair question,” he laughs after a long pause. “Maybe. Even then we were beginning to question F1, but if I had just stuck with F1 we would have been slightly better. I’m not sure how much better.”
In football there is no need to spend additional millions redesigning the ball for each match, either. “And there’s a fairer distribution of money and a better control of spending. There’s a better dialogue. There’s a general understanding that we are in it together. Obviously there are differences; somebody wants a salary cap, and somebody else doesn’t. But there’s a clear voting structure. One team, one vote. No need for unanimity. In F1 I think there is some sensibility where people want to help each other, but not at the top.
“But I’m not criticising motor racing. I love the sport. And I wouldn’t have got involved in football or car making if I hadn’t met Bernie [Ecclestone].”
Fernandes has proved his mettle with QPR’s fightback after relegation last year. “We didn’t give up and die, we came back fighting hard. There aren’t many teams that bounce back straight away. That was a fairy tale. But definitely I thought we had a chance.”
He cites the motivation of the players as the crucial change at Loftus Road last season. “There was such great camaraderie. Richard Dunne has been unbelievable, and Joey Barton has been great. He’s a tough boy – but I don’t think he realised how heavy I was when he got me up on his shoulders [at Wembley]. Bobby Zamora kept coming back and doing great things.”
So now Fernandes will focus on QPR, AirAsia, exciting new projects with Caterham Cars, and his smaller race teams. “I love GP2 and Moto2,” he laughs. “I think I’m a second division guy. What we should have done in hindsight was start a GP2 team, slowly learn the ropes, and then move on to F1.” Instead, he fell out of love with F1. But does he feel better to be out of it? “Yeah,” he admits. “It’s a relief.”
www.independent.co.uk/sport/motor-racing/qpr-chairman-tony-fernandes-f1-taught-me-how-not-to-do-things-9715520.html
Standard/Mihir Bose
Tony Fernandes: QPR are one of few clubs where chairman’s name is sung
Friday 5 September 2014 11.51 EDT
Tony Fernandes felt only reverence when he met Harry Redknapp. “When we played Newcastle in my first game as chairman, Harry came to watch,” says the Queens Park Rangers owner. “I was in awe of meeting the Harry Redknapp. I thought: ‘It’d be great if one day … ’ Life has a funny way of twisting and turning and he’s ended up with us.”
The anecdote is supposedly about Redknapp but really goes straight to the heart of who Fernandes is. For a multi-millionaire proprietor of an airline, Air Asia, and former F1 team magnate to volunteer fan-like admiration for Redknapp shows an innocence that stands out among the standoffish, slippery and PR-conscious characters who populate English football. It is why fans sing Fernandes’s name, why he was “ripped off” when QPR were previously in the Premier League and why he remains firmly the same man. “I can’t change my spirit,” says the 50-year-old.
Fernandes is sitting in a box at Loftus Road freshly showered from an ice-bucket challenge that featured a quadruple dousing, the legacy of a promise that the number of fans who could empty water over him should match QPR’s next result, which would be a 4-0 trouncing by Tottenham Hotspur. He says: “Nothing’s going to change me, I’m still a kid at Wembley jumping up and down like a lunatic,” recalling QPR’s play-off final victory in May. “I’m not cynical or bitter in any way. Life’s too short, you get ripped off, but if you hold a grudge it’s going to affect you. You take it on the chin, you learn, you try not to make the same mistakes.”
Those errors became the story of QPR’s two Premier League campaigns before they were relegated at the close of the 2012-13 season. After gaining promotion under Neil Warnock, a scattergun transfer policy acquired some questionable players at a cost that made the club the highest spenders in agent fees – £6.81m. A year later QPR “dropped” to third position, yet paid out £6.82m. In the relegation year of 2013, the bill was £5.66m.
Since Fernandes bought a 66% stake in QPR in the summer of 2011, 46 players have been bought or loaned. While one of these recruits, Joey Barton, is club captain, many of the those under Warnock, his successor, Mark Hughes, and Redknapp drew inflated salaries, proved divisive to team spirit and appeared mercenary. Chris Samba’s January 2013 arrival for a club-record £12.5m was flagged up as “just what we need” by Redknapp. Yet, despite the central defender receiving a scarcely credible £100,000 a week, he returned to Anzhi Makhachkala that summer.
On replacing Hughes in November 2012 Redknapp described himself as “disturbed” by the attitude of some players. The next month, José Bosingwa refused to be a substitute against Fulham, as the team sat second from bottom. Of this whole experience, Fernandes previously said: “I allowed myself to be exploited but that’s my choice.” Now he says: “I was trying to say: ‘You can’t sit there and blame everyone else, so you’ve got to take it on the chin.’”
As a successful businessman, how did Fernandes allow it to occur? “When I started my airline business I didn’t know everything, right? If I start up a newspaper tomorrow I might get ripped off by journalists,” he says. “You’d be naive to think you know everything from day one.”
Fernandes admits the sacking of Warnock, in January 2012, and Hughes the following winter may have been other mistakes. “It’s history now but could Neil Warnock have still been here? I liked him, I got on well with him and maybe we were swayed at the time. Mark Hughes is doing a good job at Stoke, he did a good job before, but we went a lot of times without winning, so maybe something had to be done,” he says of a winless run in the opening 12 matches of the 2012-13 season that left QPR bottom by late November.
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Redknapp has just been awarded a new deal. “What happens if we don’t win for 12 or 13 games?” says Fernandes, with trademark honesty. “But I think we’ve made our mind up to stick – we’ll just stick with Harry come what may. We want stability, we want players to know he’s the manager. A different approach, I think. My whole life’s been stability. People who have worked with me have for a long time. Air Asia is the same people who started it.
“I don’t believe football clubs can be any different. You only have to look at the most successful football clubs – Matt Busby, Bob Paisley, Alex Ferguson, they were all at their clubs for a long time. Martínez at Wigan and I’m sure at Everton, if he’s not nicked by someone. That’s a business principle that works.
“Many fans might resent me saying it but I was a West Ham fan. We had about three managers in 25 years, Greenwood, Lyall, and then it went pear-shaped. I believe fundamentally managers can do so much – it’s players at the end of the day. Harry said something like the system is the system but the players have to play to the system.”
Being involved at the sharp end remains a joy. “It’s still fun. I love it,” Fernandes says. “People say: ‘Why the hell do you own a football club?’ But Wembley was an amazing feeling, not many people in the world have that. Winning is an amazing feeling. You don’t get that in business, you don’t get that in many things. Listen, there’ll be more downs than ups but the ups balance out the downs.”
Malaysian-born and English-educated, Fernandes took an accountancy degree at the London School of Economics – he is uniquely positioned to comment on overseas owners. Does he think they are unfairly viewed? Vincent Tan’s experience at Cardiff City suggests foreigners can be negatively stereotyped.
“I think the major press goes to the manager and players, the owner is subsidiary to this unless there’s a lot of noise about it,” says Fernandes. “Communication is maybe where some owners are poor. I’ve made tons of mistakes but the fans out there still seem to like me, they still sing my name – we’re one of the few clubs where a chairman’s name is actually sung. That’s not because there’s anything fantastic about me but fans can relate to me, I communicate with them. So the difference – and I don’t think it’s overseas owners – is how you communicate. There’s English owners who are poor communicators as well.”
Fernandes has a strong presence on social media, often answering supporters on Twitter. “I believe in transparency, I believe fans of the club are the shareholders of the club. They may not be putting in as much money as a shareholder but they’re paying in a large part of their wage to watch QPR. That should be respected. We can’t make all 40,000, 50,000 happy or there’d be anarchy but we try and get their views. Our new stadium, training ground, a lot of things we did have come out of fans’ input.”
A consultation has begun over the plans for a new ground, at Old Oak in nearby Acton. What is the long-term vision for QPR? “It’s a tough old league,” Fernandes chuckles. “But the best thing I ever saw at a football club – and if I can emulate that I would’ve done something good – was at Everton. A plaque from the Premier League saying: ‘Twenty consecutive seasons.’ That’d be fantastic, so that’s my goal to start off with. It’s tough for us small boys but there are many small boys like us.”
Next for QPR is a visit to the new galáctico-style Manchester United of Radamel Falcao and Ángel di María. “I’m looking forward to it,” says Fernandes. “Quality is quality – they just need a few things to go their way – but I honestly believe Harry’s got good enough players, so I believe we have enough. I believe the manager will say we never have enough – but he’s no different from any other manager. Unfortunately for Harry, I don’t have £56m to go and buy Di María.”
In the relentless 24/7 Premier League whirlwind, what Redknapp does have is priceless: a chairman and owner who wants to give him every chance.
www.mihirbose.com/index.php/qprs-tony-fernandes-i-won%E2%80%99t-wreck-harry-redknapps-dream-if-he-is-offered-england-job/
Times article
On a sunny midweek afternoon, without a player in sight, Queens Park Rangers’ ground is a rectangle of calm. Tony Fernandes bounds up one of the stands chomping on a Blue Riband chocolate biscuit.
“You can’t believe you’re in the middle of London, actually,” the chairman says, scanning the bright-green pitch.
“The first place I came after the Championship game at Wembley [when QPR beat Derby to return to the Premier League] was to sit here and take it all in. This is better than sitting in a stuffy office.”
Dressed in a red Air Asia cap, black T-shirt and jeans, Fernandes doesn’t look like the owner of an international empire. It’s intentional: the 50-year-old styles himself as Malaysia’s answer to Sir Richard Branson and eschews corporate strictures.
“I dress like this deliberately because if you wear a suit and tie you put a bit of distance between you and your staff,” he says. “People generally think I’m an illegal immigrant when I’m walking around the airport. QPR fans find me a bit weird because I sit with them; I go to the pub.”
He points at his PR man. “I hugged Ian the other day, in Sunderland, and people were asking who I was.”
Fernandes chuckles. He is chatty and informal, his polite English accent tinged with Branson-esque American inflections, but underneath is a serious businessman. He has amassed an estimated $650m (£400m) fortune by bringing low-cost air travel to Asia, ploughing some of the proceeds into hotels, insurance, mobile phones, sports cars — and football.
Fernandes and two Malaysian partners bought QPR three years ago from the Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone and the former team principal Flavio Briatore. They own 66%; most of the rest is held by the Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal.
It hasn’t been a cheap pursuit. Accounts for 2012-13 showed a loss of £65m, with debt rising to £177m. Is Fernandes able to switch off from the on-pitch drama every season and see it as an investment?
“No. God, f*** no. I wish I could,” he says. “Sometimes I can’t come to the games. I’ll sit in there” — he gestures to the stadium’s innards — “or come out at half-time, you know. The whole experience of last season was like a bloody rollercoaster, but the best feeling was not winning. Honestly, it was being on the pitch [at Wembley] and seeing 40,000 QPR fans. Football is a religion to these people — I go to the pub and I see maybe five QPR fans with tattoos all over their bodies, their phones have got QPR covers, their watches are QPR . . .”
Fernandes presents his plans for the club in this vein. Last week QPR launched a consultation on proposals to build a 40,000-seat stadium — more than double the size of the Loftus Road ground — and 24,000 homes on nearby Old Oak Common.
Fernandes dubs the development New Queens Park and says it could bring 55,000 jobs to the area. It would take 10 years to build and could cost somewhere between £5bn and £10bn. The idea is impressive, if somewhat light on detail.
“One of the first things I did, because Bernie and Flavio had kind of run it into the ground, was to reactivate the community trust,” he says. “And as we began to see what the boys were doing, it tied in so well with what we’re trying to achieve here. Build a nicer stadium — but the underlying emphasis is to build better homes, let our fans be able to rent nicer homes or buy homes, and create jobs . . . I’m looking to put art galleries in there, get a Google in there, get some cool companies that can add value to the community. So there’s a lot of thought going into it.”
QPR’s shareholders have already spent £5m on preliminary work. They have hired Stadium Capital Developments, the company that moved Arsenal into the Emirates, the architect Sir Terry Farrell, the estate agency Savills and the engineering consultant BuroHappold.
Boris Johnson, the mayor, is keen to see that part of west London transformed in time for the arrival of a “superhub” station for HS2 and Crossrail in 2026. There are three councils involved — Brent, Ealing and Hammersmith & Fulham — plus the Greater London Authority.
Fernandes says: “We’re engaging so many different constituents to make this happen and our aim is to get everyone on our side. And it appears we’re getting everyone on our side, as well.”
That turns out to be a positive spin. A big chunk of the site is owned by Cargiant. The secondhand car dealer was irritated when QPR announced plans for a new stadium on its land last year without prior notice, and says it is now pushing ahead with its own scheme, in partnership with developers First Base and Lipton Rogers.
“It upset a lot of people here,” says Tony Mendes, managing director of Cargiant. “There were 700 employees concerned about their jobs. We were very surprised by QPR’s consultation programme and PR strategy when they know there’s no deal that’s been done and no discussions going on. They came to an end some time ago and we have our own plans to develop our land, whether or not QPR treats that seriously.”
Fernandes is coy about whether he could try to force Cargiant into selling by aligning the various political powers, or offering a knockout bid.
“I think people engage, people don’t engage. Time goes on; we’ve got to move on,” he says. “We know we’ve got a winning proposal because our proposal is for the community. You can’t beat that. We’re not developers, we’re not after making every buck, we’re after leaving a legacy.”
However, he hints at the economic leverage QPR could bring to bear. “I suppose they can [hold out], but obviously there are remedies available to everyone,” he says. “To leave this area and to throw out thousands of jobs seems a wasted opportunity. Because we can’t stay in this stadium for ever. It’s beautiful and we love it, but we can’t keep just putting money in because we have an 18,000-seat stadium, the smallest in the Premier League and — dare I say it — in the Championship as well.”
Fernandes comes across as straight-talking, but he knows how to bargain. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur until his father — “a very left-wing communist doctor” — and his mother — “a right-wing capitalist Tupperware saleswoman” — sent him to boarding school in Surrey at the age of 12.
He loved football and was dismayed to discover that Epsom College offered only rugby. “I almost dropped dead and died,” he says. “And I argued — don’t write this bit down — I argued with the headmaster and I got three strokes.”
He went to the London School of Economics and became an accountant. “I couldn’t handle it,” he says with a laugh. “The worst part of it was trying to fill out the timesheet because I didn’t do anything, so I just quit. And the final straw was they were looking for me and I was at the Oval [watching cricket].”
Fernandes joined Branson’s Virgin Records briefly, then moved to Warner Music. In 2001, with the blessing of Malaysia’s prime minister at the time, he mortgaged his house and bought Air Asia, a loss-making part of government-backed DRB-Hicom.
He turned round the company and lobbied the prime minister to propose dropping flight restrictions with Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Air Asia is now a strong contender to win the region’s low-cost airline dogfight, although attempts to build a long-haul budget carrier in the shape of Air Asia X have met with more mixed success.
Fernandes hopes to use some of the tricks he has learnt at Air Asia to make football tickets cheaper. If QPR manages to build a new stadium, its capacity will vastly increase. “I’m a big believer in volume,” he says. “Air Asia started with 200,000 passengers and it’s now doing 52m. That’s all due to low prices stimulating more people to fly with us. I believe the concept is not dissimilar in football — provided we’re playing good football. We could charge £1 if we’re playing crap and no one’s gonna come.”
He reckons revenues will be boosted with ancillary sales: “Bigger club shop — match day there is f***ing pandemonium, right — food sales, etc.”
The QPR chairman recalls his less plutocratic youth: as a student he paid £12 a week to live “on top of a kebab shop on the Uxbridge Road”. I can’t resist asking if he has acquired that most symbolic of tycoon accessories — a private jet.
Fernandes pauses. “I do, but don’t write that. I always thought idiots bought private jets, then I bought one. It’s a Global Express. It’s not mine, I share it with my partner [his wife].” There is another pause and he deadpans: “I’ll have half soon.”
Working day
The chairman of Queens Park Rangers gets up at 7am at his home in London’s Belgravia or the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. Tony Fernandes spends most of his time running Air Asia, the low-cost carrier he has owned since 2001, flitting between the office and different airports.
“I’m at the check-in desk, I’m at the planes, I’m with the engineers late at night,” he says. “Sometimes I just go to the airport and hang around with passengers. It’s a bigger hassle now because everyone wants to take a photograph.”
As well as Air Asia, his Tune Group has interests in car manufacturing, hotels, insurance and mobile phones. He goes to bed at about 1am.
Downtime
The 50-year-old loves music. He has 22,000 CDs and a growing digital collection of hip-hop, R&B and rock tracks.
Fernandes is doing up a farmhouse in Ayrshire. “We found some bats there, and bats are protected, so right now my renovation has come to a complete halt,” he laughs.
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