The Takeover Thread - Recon Group - NOW WITH NEW POLL

[Smoke]

Re: is it prudent to advertise how much you've got to spend.

if you intended to spend far more than that then probably yes.

[wozwebs]

BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese magnate who has agreed to buy English football club Aston Villa has said the final purchase price for the club would range between 75 million pounds and more than 100 million pounds, depending on how the club performs next season.

Recon Group chairman Xia Jiantong told Reuters that he will pay at the upper end of the price range if the club immediately returns to the English Premier League next season. A failure to gain promotion could see the purchase price as low as 75 million pounds, he said.

Xia said he will spend between 30 and 40 million pounds on new players for the upcoming season, and will announce a new club manager in the next two to three weeks. Aston Villa, the historic English club that was relegated from the English Premier League this season, was one of eight Premier League clubs that Xia considered for acquisition, he said during an interview in Beijing on Thursday.

Xia also said he was in talks with various soccer teams in Spain and Italy, as well as China and India, for potential acquisitions within three years.

(Reporting by Jake Spring and Sabrina Mao; Editing by Will Waterman)

https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/recon-group-chair-says-could-pay-more-100-084421390--finance.html?soc_src=mediacontentsharebuttons&soc_trk=tw

[PaulWinch again]

I think the only 'remarkable similarity' is "Chinese man buys Birmingham club" and people are reading a lot into that.

I agree.

[aev]

From the FT

After his proposed acquisition of Aston Villa, a British football club just relegated from the Premier League, was announced on Wednesday, he used his Chinese microblogging account to post a picture of Forrest Gump, the dim-witted but athletically gifted film character of the 1990s.
“Go Villa Go! We will be back,” he wrote on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, in a message tweeted to David Cameron, the British prime minister, who also claims to support the team.
A statement on the Aston Villa website claims Mr Xia played striker while at university. “He became a fan of Aston Villa many years ago and is delighted at the opportunity to become the new owner,” it said.
“Dr Xia’s immediate objective is to return Aston Villa to the Premier League and then to have the club finish in the top six, bringing European football back to Villa Park. He plans to make Aston Villa the most famous football club in China with a huge fan base.”
Mr Xia is head of Recon Group, a holding company based in Hangzhou and Beijing with a mix of investments. Recon declined to answer questions or make Mr Xia available for an interview, and he does not appear to have published an annual report or audited financial statements.
The genesis of the Recon Group appears to have taken place during the six years Mr Xia spent at western universities, including Harvard, where he studied design and landscape architecture in the 1990s.
In 1996, Mr Xia’s XWHO bought into a company created in the 1960s by his Harvard University adviser, Charles Harris. The company was subsequently renamed the Recon Group by Mr Xia, who brought its services to China, according to a statement on XWHO’s website.
Mr Harris could not be reached for comment. In one interview with a Chinese publication, Mr Xia referred to Mr Harris as his “adoptive father”.
The company, according to its website, has controlling stakes in five publicly listed companies in China and Hong Kong: a soap maker, a maker of food additives and a company that does small loans and appraisals.
Recon’s largest investment appears to be a stake in the Shanghai-based Lotus Health Group, which, according to the statement, is “the largest glutamic company in China” (glutamic is a food additive including MSG). It has 12,000 employees and 10,000 distributors in China. Company records put Mr Xia’s Zhejiang Recon Investment Ltd stake at 75 per cent.
Lotus produces 150,000 tonnes of MSG, exporting to more than 70 countries every year, according to Shanghai stock exchange filings. Last month it announced it had made a net loss in 2015 of Rmb508.5m ($77.7m) on revenues of Rmb1.7bn, compared with a net profit of Rmb23.9m the previous year.
Formerly known as Henan Lotus Gourmet Powder, Lotus Health Group was at the centre of a mysterious episode last December when it announced, and then two days later retracted, the appointment of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s cousin to its board of directors. Calls to Lotus went unanswered on Wednesday.
Recon’s website says the company also owns a controlling share in Hong Kong-listed Roma Group, which had profits last year of HK$36m (US$4m) and is “principally engaged in the provision valuation and technical advisory services” in Hong Kong.
Public documents indicate it makes small personal loans and loans collateralised by stock shares. Calls to Roma went unanswered.

[brian green]

Me too.

[kiddylion]

Has anyone found any evidence of the Harvard link?

The peice on the official villa site says he spent 6 years at Harvard

[Ads]

Some sad obsessed Nose has found evidence that he owned/lived at a residence in Boston for a time at the house owned by his Professor.

[dave.woodhall]

I like the "immediate top six" objective - no daft promises and grandiose plans.

[damon loves JT]

I can't say that any of this thrills me. But who knows. Let's see.

[Jimbo]

Some sad obsessed Nose has found evidence that he owned/lived at a residence in Boston for a time at the house owned by his Professor.

I think we should all just sit back and let the Small Heath Scrutineers do our digging. They've got our backs on this one. 

[Dave]

Some sad obsessed Nose has found evidence that he owned/lived at a residence in Boston for a time at the house owned by his Professor.

I think we should all just sit back and let the Small Heath Scrutineers do our digging. They've got our backs on this one.

Just like the only possible reason Villa supporters said that the Yeung takeover looked suspect was because we wanted it to be the case.

[MattW]

I think we should celebrate! 
Also do doo mongers on here look at where Ramon abrohaovuch get his money from. For example. Let's enjoy this we got what we wanted and a super power is guiding villa back to big time. For me when di matteo gets in shows intent and can stress the power of China is showing

This post fills me with joy.

I lost my shit for five minutes over that post. Brilliant.

[Quiet Lion]

Some chap on Reddit has posted the following:

I searched this person ("Dr. Tony Xia", real name Xia Jiantong 夏建统) a bit. Be ware, he seems to be a known fraud. He claims to be a Harvard PhD and even "professor", and used that to obtain a lot of funding for his company. But actually he just obtained Master's degree there. His PhD career is on a permanent leave. He also claimed to be hired into a world-class company as vice president early in his career, which is nonsense (he registered the company himself). Also he's known to cheat and lie a lot to everybody around him, e.g. constantly betraying his ex wife who "cut relation with parents, had 4 abortions, and worked illegally when still a student" to support his Master's career, promising great compensations for people he hired and never fulfilling them etc. Detailed information(widely reported circa 2009) is available at http://www.xys.org/dajia/xiajt.html, for anybody who can read Chinese.
Could all be lies, but I thought it would be nice to bring everyone down to earth

[peter w]

A professor just means that you're teaching a subject though doesn't it?

Anyway, could you imagine the meltdown if Lerner has stayed  and said that we'd only be spending £30m-£40m on new players this season?

[cdbearsfan]

£30-£40 million should be enough for promotion.