A British-led consortium fronted by Chelsea supporters has confirmed that it has made a bid to buy the club.
Centricus, a London-based asset management firm, has joined forces with Jonathan Lourie of Cheyne Capital and Talis Capital’s Bob Finch, previously majority shareholder of FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark, to submit an offer prior to Friday night’s deadline.
Lourie, Finch, Centricus’ co-founder Nizar Al-Bassam and the firm’s chief executive officer Garth Ritchie are all season-ticket holders at Stamford Bridge.
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Centricus has advised FIFA and UEFA over funding in the past, and has access to significant funds. To underline this they have a staggering £40billion has invested in technology companies, financial services and leisure companies.
“We oversee £40billion assets,’ Al-Bassam said via Zoom on Sunday afternoon.
“We’ve been focused on content for a number of years, the FIFA work, the UEFA work, is all built around our view that content is a very, very dominant aspect of technology going forward and sports is a very core, key aspect of content.”
“There’s a clock [on finding a new owner for Chelsea] ticking because the club is bleeding money at a faster rate than it should be while there’s uncertainty there.
“I’ve had the same seats in the Tambling suite and the same seats in the West Stand for 10 years. I’m worried for the staff there when I see this turmoil.
“We see the same people hosting us when we walk in. They’re amazing to us. We see the same people in the stands looking after us and I’m feeling for them.
“We’ve tried to focus on a proposal which align the ownership of the club with long-term investors with a deep history with the club. If you look at the proposal we put forward, keeping it an entirely British finance proposal is core to that.
“There are plenty of very successful clubs financed by international investors but in this case after two decades of exceptional success by the club, the club has the fanbase with the resources to support the club to maintain that success. That’s what’s very unique about this proposal.”
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While Al-Bassam loves the club, he was refreshingly honest about how he and the consortium wish to make a profit out of the Blues too.
“We’ve looked at the club in the past. There have been occasions where there were rumours of the club being available but ultimately all those projects were shelved.
“Our bid is all domestic, we don’t have any foreign investors so we’re using domestic capital which I think is quite noteworthy. We all attend the matches with our kids.
“I don’t think any of us are coming purely because we’re fans or purely because we love football,’ Al-Bassam added. “It’s really driven by the commercial opportunities. But it is a long-term investment. For us, you simply can’t buy a club and expect to sell it in five or ten years. The expectations from the fans, the regulators, be it the FA or Premier League or from the Government, would be not to have a sale of this club in the next five or 10 years.
“So this would have to be a very, very long-term commitment. The commitment just around either a stadium expansion or a new stadium is a half-decade commitment and that needs to be done in consultation with the community, the council and with fans.”