NSWE Investment

[kippaxvilla2]

He wasn’t a front of any kind.  He was the one boasting in that Daily Mail article in Beijing how rich he was without actually putting a figure on it.  In fact I wonder if he still rents those made up regus suite offices.  They looked totally fake as well.

[garyshawsknee]

The only bad part of the play off win was seeing him in the background celebrating like a competition winner.

[Damo70]

Looking around, it's incredible how much support Xia still has. He was a charlatan, a con man if you like, who almost took us into administration yet somehow there's always an excuse for him.

I wasn't aware he had any support left amongst Villa fans. I thought we realised that however good his rather deluded intentions may or may not have been were he was very much a 'smoke and mirrors' owner. The only surprise is he rocked up at Villa Park instead of Small Heath, where he would have fitted in with their ownership pattern.

[London Villan]

How much of his back story was true? Where did the money come from to pay lerner for the purchase?

[Brend'Watkins]

Thanks, both!

I guess we can put aside the "let's move stadium" debate for now, then.

That it was ever even muted by some on here is an outright disgrace.

[Smoke]

Lerner shown his true colours there too. So the guy he found and decided to sell to couldn't pay him his bonus? Yeah.. go after the club for it and the new owners who saved it from administration. Prick.

[Monty]

Thanks, both!

I guess we can put aside the "let's move stadium" debate for now, then.

That it was ever even muted by some on here is an outright disgrace.

Agreed, you should never suppress free speech.

[kippaxvilla2]

Saviour or dreamer?

Busi­ness­man Xia set to buy Villa for ‘bar­gain’ £74.5m plus £40m bonus for owner Randy Lerner
 He says it’s big deal for fans but claims it’s small change com­pared with his $3.5bn swoop in US

By Nick Har­ris CHIIEF SPORTS NEWS COR­RE­SPON­DENT22 May 2016

TONY XIA, As­ton Villa’s owner-in­wait­ing, chuck­les when asked if he is a dol­lar bil­lion­aire.

‘I think it’s rather more than that,’ says the 39-year-old Chi­nese busi­ness­man, ex­plain­ing that just a few months ago he sold one of his com­pa­nies, Tea­max, for £430mil­lion, which is sit­ting in a bank account wait­ing to be spent, in part on Villa.


‘I own quite a lot of pri­vate busi­nesses and I think I can sell some of them for the same amount or more,’ adds Xia, who has pro­vided The Mail on Sun­day with a bank trans­fer cer­tifi­cate pur­port­ing to show the funds from the Teamex deal.

Speak­ing from his home in Bei­jing yes­ter­day in an hour-long ex­clu­sive in­ter­view, he re­vealed not just the fi­nan­cial nuts and bolts of the deal that could put him in con­trol at Villa Park within weeks but also...

How he be­came ac­quainted with China’s pres­i­dent, Xi Jin­ping.

Villa are not the sole ob­ject of his foot­balling af­fec­tions.

If his plans come to fruition, then the As­ton area of Birm­ing­ham will be­come home to a foot­ball theme park mar­keted to Chi­nese and In­dian tourists.

Villa’s academy will find and nur­ture the best young tal­ent in China, who, when good enough, can play a role in pop­u­lar­is­ing the club in his home coun­try.

‘If’, for the mo­ment, is the key word in the phrase ‘if his plans come to fruition’. Xia was happy to talk about his past, his pri­vate life, his busi­ness ca­reer and his fi­nances.

Within weeks he will need to prove, beyond doubt and with hard cash, that he has the as­sets and abil­ity to buy Villa and fund it. Ini­tial checks cor­rob­o­rate some of the in­for­ma­tion.

But the re­al­ity is that China has an opaque busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment and a chaot­i­cally ex­pand­ing econ­omy. In the short time since Xia hit the head­lines, it is im­pos­si­ble to ver­ify ev­ery­thing about him.

Even his birth­date has been ques­tioned. Xia, whose full name is Xia Jiantong, says he was born on Oc­to­ber 26, 1976, and that the con­fu­sion arose be­cause he started school as a pre­co­cious four-year-old whose par­ents needed for le­gal rea­sons to pre­tend he was six.

What is fact, and The MoS has ver­i­fied, is that he stud­ied land­scape de­sign at Har­vard Univer­sity in the late 1990s, started a de­sign com­pany, XWHO, in Bos­ton, Mas­sachusetts in March 1999, co-owned by his girl­friend at the time Cong Liu and one of his lec­tur­ers, Prof Charles Har­ris. Reg­istries in the USA and China show the com­pany re­lo­cated to Hangzhou in the eastern prov­ince of Zhe­jiang, where Xia also started Teamex, a plan­ning com­pany that has pro­vided ser­vices as hun­dreds of new cities have been built. Firms op­er­at­ing across IT, health, trans­port, de­sign, tourism and fi­nance were added. Xia’s busi­ness em­pire ex­ists un­der an um­brella or­gan­i­sa­tion called the RE­CON Group but most of the sub­sidiaries are pri­vately held, not stock­mar­ket listed. The most vis­i­ble, Lo­tus, has been loss­mak­ing but Xia is open about this and says it is turn­ing around.

He in­sists that within a few months a series of ma­jor merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions will bring a big­ger chunk of his busi­ness into the public do­main. ‘I would rather keep a low pro­file,’ he says. It is pointed out that buy­ing a foot­ball club just rel­e­gated from the Pre­mier League is not a clever way to do that. ‘Ac­tu­ally you’re right,’ he laughs.

‘There’s been more at­ten­tion than I’d ex­pect or could pre­dict. I knew peo­ple would pay at­ten­tion, but not this much.’

Scru­tiny, he is find­ing out, comes as part of the pack­age and he dis­closes what he will pay for Villa. Lerner, the Amer­i­can owner, wanted more than £100m but Xia says he has set­tled for £52m up front, plus Xia’s guar­an­tee of clear­ing Villa’s over­draft at HSBC of £24.5m. Xia says that £74.5m is thus sit­ting in a ring-fenced bank account.

Lerner will earn a £30m bonus if Villa re­turn to the Pre­mier League within three years and another £10m if they stay there for another three years after pro­mo­tion.

‘I ap­pre­ci­ate it’s a big deal for Villa

fans,’ he says. ‘But ac­tu­ally in pure busi­ness terms, I’m work­ing on ac­qui­si­tions much big­ger than this.’ He says, for ex­am­ple, that within months he will com­plete a $3.5bn takeover of a US lo­gis­tics firm.

If true, Villa fans could well have got them­selves an owner if not quite as rich as Ro­man Abramovich then cer­tainly ex­tremely wealthy. Whether he, like them, is a life­long sup­porter, is less clear.

Xia spent five months on an ex­change at Trin­ity Col­lege, Ox­ford, in 1998-99 and saw one Villa home game dur­ing that time. He says he can­not re­mem­ber who they played, or the score. This hardly smacks of an awestruck devo­tee.

He in­sists he has kept an eye on Villa’s for­tunes since but ad­mits he also has a soft spot for Arse­nal and is rather more con­vinc­ing wax­ing lyri­cal on Den­nis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. ‘I can as­sure you my first and only foot­ball pri­or­ity from now will be As­ton Villa though,’ he says.

Xia says he has of­fered the man­ager’s job to one of three can­di­dates in the public do­main but won’t con­firm which of Roberto Di Mat­teo, Nigel Pear­son or David Moyes it is.

‘When the man­ager is ap­pointed, we will dis­cuss his bud­get,’ Xia adds. It is ex­pected be­tween £20m and £50m will be avail­able for trans­fers, de­pend­ing on the case made by who­ever gets the job.

The long-term plan in­clude a foot­ball mu­seum and theme park to at­tract foot­ball tourists from China and India, and the re­cruit­ment of young Chi­nese play­ers to Villa’s academy, if not as for­mal schol­ars then on ex­change pro­grammes.

Xia says he will spend a lot of time in Birm­ing­ham over the next year, buy­ing a house for him­self and his wife Sally and daugh­ter Char­lotte, who turns two this sum­mer. He says buy­ing a club has been a long-term aim. He has played foot­ball since col­lege; Har­vard records show him in the univer­sity league. He says love of the sport and a de­sire to di­ver­sify his busi­ness in­ter­ests are his main driver, al­though the knowl­edge that China’s pres­i­dent, Xi Jin­ping, wants China to be­come a foot­balling su­per­power, is not lost on him.

He has known the pres­i­dent for some time, al­beit not closely. Xi was the most se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial in Zhe­jiang Prov­ince when Xia re­lo­cated there to the same in­dus­trial park as Jack Ma, China’s rich­est man in re­cent years.

Pres­i­dent Xi vis­ited both men’s com­pa­nies when they were still on the up. Xia dreams he might be tempted to Villa Park too.

For now, that re­mains a dream, just as Xia knows his plans for Villa re­main a dream in the eyes of many. He still has ev­ery­thing to prove.

[chrisw1]

Lerner shown his true colours there too. So the guy he found and decided to sell to couldn't pay him his bonus? Yeah.. go after the club for it and the new owners who saved it from administration. Prick.

For all his faults, expecting to be paid an agreed contractual fee when the club is owned by hugley rich owners is hardly a crime.  Would you waive £30m if it was owed to you by multi billionaites?

[Smirker]

The issue over the payment of £30m has annoyed me. Xia deserves no support.

[Smoke]

Lerner shown his true colours there too. So the guy he found and decided to sell to couldn't pay him his bonus? Yeah.. go after the club for it and the new owners who saved it from administration. Prick.

For all his faults, expecting to be paid an agreed contractual fee when the club is owned by hugley rich owners is hardly a crime.  Would you waive £30m if it was owed to you by multi billionaites?

Given his contract was with Xia who he sold the club to who then proceeded to nearly bankrupt it, I thought he might feel the smallest bit of responsibility for it. After all if his chosen owner hadn't been bailed out by wes and nas he would have got fuck all anyway.

[kippaxvilla2]

His contract most likely would’ve been with Recon part of who’s assets consisted of the football club.  Hence he still would be entitled to it.  You are right though if we had gone into Admin he probably wouldn’t have got his money back.  Unless he had security.

[The Edge]

The issue over the payment of £30m has annoyed me. Xia deserves no support.

It was yours truly who brought up the Henry Winter article this morning. I read it and felt so proud of my club (romantically nourished even)i wanted to share it with fellow fans. We should be full of optimism and hope for our club. The fact that it's ended with people grinding their gears over the shady bastards from yesteryear is a shame. Lets get back to enjoying the wonderful ride we're on now. UTV.

[KRS]

I like how the new owners have taken the club to their hearts, appreciate our heritage and history, and have full respect for the fans and club as an institution:

The fans are loving it. “We have 7,000 on a wait-list [for season tickets] for the first time in the club’s history. Villa Park is 42,000 capacity and if Villa get properly established in the Premier League, we will have demand to require us to add capacity. There are plans where we can infill.” They would not consider knocking Villa Park down. “No chance! Villa Park is a cathedral to football.”

I also have every confidence that we will see improvements in the ground and services on match days...we just have to be a little patient for these improvements to be implemented.

[The Edge]

I like how the new owners have taken the club to their hearts, appreciate our heritage and history, and have full respect for the fans and club as an institution:

The fans are loving it. “We have 7,000 on a wait-list [for season tickets] for the first time in the club’s history. Villa Park is 42,000 capacity and if Villa get properly established in the Premier League, we will have demand to require us to add capacity. There are plans where we can infill.” They would not consider knocking Villa Park down. “No chance! Villa Park is a cathedral to football.”

I also have every confidence that we will see improvements in the ground and services on match days...we just have to be a little patient for these improvements to be implemented.

Definitely mate. And lets have no more talk of building a new ground in Digbeth etc. At least not under our current stewardship.