Two wealthy Singaporean traders have aroused the enthusiasm of football enthusiasts with a bet for Newcastle United of the English Premier League who, if successful, will see them join the developing ranks of Asian business magnates to take part in the beautiful game.
Nelson Loh and Terence Loh, who are cousins, along with Evangeline Shen, former former fan and lawyer trained in China, are the co-founders of the Bellagraph Nova group, which said Saturday that it is in an “advanced level of negotiation” for the acquisition of the club, popularly known as The Magpies for its black-and-white inner band.
“In addition to the commitment to Newcastle Football Club and the community, Bellagraph Nova Group appealed former England captain Alan Shearer and former player Michael Chopra,” he added that he had a letter of intent and evidence of funds.
“We need to conclude the agreement as temporally as possible and do wonderful things for the club and for the community. We already have the help of many fans.”
Loh’s cousins, former investment bankers, have kept a downward profile that other entrepreneurs like billionaire Peter Lim who, in 2014, effectively bid for Spanish club Valencia. In media interviews, the Loh describe themselves as willing to disrupt existing industries and have demonstrated their links to world leaders, adding former U.S. President Barack Obama with a photo of them in a prominent place on the group’s website.
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Loh’s cousins also made Obama settle for a key speaker at a fundraising gala for four Singapore charities when the 44th U.S. president visited the city last December with his wife Michelle on two occasions organized through The Growth Faculty.
Nelson Loh reportedly co-chaired an Asian summit in South Korea in 2017 with former British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Private bankers contacted through This Week in Asia did not comment on the balance of Loh’s cousins, however, Morten Bennedsen, professor of economics at Insead Business School who studies the circle of family businesses, said that with more wealth accumulated in Asia, it is herbal for the circle of relatives to invest worldwide more frequently , adding in sports clubs.
“Asian families and investment teams are more active than they were, say, 10 years ago,” he said.
There are several “reasons” for Asian tycoons to make large-scale investments, as in European sports clubs, he said.
In addition to acting as a springboard for their businesses to globalize, in order to take advantage of the merits of an explosion of television-streaming advertising around the world, some family corporations also saw these investments as a good fortune and a symbol of prestige. .
“For some investments, this may be a means of spreading a wealth that has been now unknown in Western circles,” Bennedsen added.
“More rarely, this can be an investment in itself. Buying a successful sports club can seamlessly double the return after a few years.”
But investments in foreign sports corporations can be controversial. Lim now faces calls from Valencia enthusiasts to resign, even though he even thought he was a white knight only six years ago. The fan criticized him for his negligence in managing the club, its poor effects and the sale of its most productive players.
His daughter, Kim Lim, also drew attention to a now-deleted comment she posted on her Instagram profile, which said that “the club is ours and we can do what’s necessary with it and no one can say Array.”
An imaginable explanation as to why the protest may be due to a “valid” fear of xenophobia in cases where Asian families rush to buy European clubs, said R. Sasikumar, a former Singapore footballer who now runs sports marketing firm Red Card Global. . Football enthusiasts tended to be emotional and vocal, he said, but few knew how football clubs were handled.
READ ALSO: A failing club is a bigger club, Singapore billionaire Peter Lim told Valencia fans
This could be a new talking point if the Singapore-backed Bellagraph Nova took over Newcastle, the English Premier League club founded in 1892, he added. “It’s a huge club. It’s not just an English club, but a global club with a fan base around the world,” Sasikumar said.
The group’s interest in the club came after a three-hundred million pound ($395 million) offer from a Saudi consortium, which included Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, fell last month.
But Sasikumar gave a note of confidence in the trio, which by contacting Shearer, a former star team manager, were “aligning the club legends.”
“I think it’s a smart start, but it’s still about to be seen how they govern the club and how they run it, and I’m not sure they’ve reveled in the sport,” he said.
“But I definitely say there will be a fraction of the enthusiasts who will feel … this xenophobia [with] foreigners coming to take the football club, [and] there will be some kind of apprehension but I guess it’s the task of investors now is to convince the enthusiasts.
Media reports recommend that Loh’s cousins be strong supporters of the sport. For example, they sponsored Singapore’s veteran racing engine, Yuey Tan, in the 2018 Porsche Mobil 1 Super Cup race in Europe. They also sponsored the Muay Thai team in Singapore and the St Michael’s Soccer Association.
In Saturday’s press release, the organization said its co-founders were “willing to make a massive contribution to the club’s progression through its strong and foreign design and a business/sports mindset.”
While Lohs’ non-public wealth is a matter of speculation, Bellagraph Nova Group says it owns 31 brands in a hundred countries in spaces ranging from medical care to finance, sports and genuine heritage, and has reportedly hired 23,000 employees. He made $12 billion in sales last year.
Based in Paris, the organization is the result of a merger in July between two entities, the Bellagraph Group and the DORR Group. The first is a multinational company founded through Shen and is more productively known by its subsidiary Bellagraph Jewelry, while the moment has Loh’s cousins as founders and is worth more than $4 billion until the end of 2019.
One of the main subsidiaries of the DORR Group is Novena Global Lifecare, in Singapore, a health and aesthetics organization that, according to its website, has a network of more than 250 branches in more than 20 cities. It also performs DNA tests for the diagnosis of inherited diseases as well as mobile stem treatments, among other services.
Prior to the merger, Nelson Loh, who holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics from Cambridge, worked as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase for nearly a decade in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Terence Loh cited Santa Clara University and Harvard Business School as his alma mater, and participates in the forums of several organizations, the investment company Cedarlake Capital, as a senior advisor.
During this time, Shen studied at Fudan University and Renmin University in China before running as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. She then served as senior vice president of Haitong Securities, and remains a senior spouse at law firm Jin Mao, on her LinkedIn profile.
If Loh’s cousins succeed, they will join the ranks of wealthy Asians, adding Thai and Chinese tycoons with participations in sports clubs.
Malaysian entrepreneur and investor Vincent Tan Chee Yioun has a majority stake (51%) at Cardiff City Welsh football club. Tan, the founder of Berjaya Corporation, has an estimated $750 million, according to Forbes, and also has stakes in Bosnian club FK Sarajevo, Belgian-looking KV Kortrijk and a member of an organization that owns Los Angeles FC in the United States. States.
Meanwhile, thai family circle Srivaddhanaprabha owns English club Leicester City. The vanquished Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who died in a helicopter crash shortly after taking off from the club’s King Power Stadium, is the executive leader and president of the Thai conglomerate King Power Duty Free.
Chinese tycoons are also influential. Chinese conglomerate Fosun International paid Steve Morgan forty-five million pounds for Wolverhampton Wanderers, or Wolves, in 2016, while Gao Jisheng, founder and president of Lander Sports Development Co., beat several Chinese rivals to buy Southampton in August 2017.
This trend of Asian money reaching sports clubs and franchises came to stay, said Sasikumar, a former Singaporean footballer.
He said that families in the midst of a transition from strength and wealth to a younger member were “always in favor of anything that’s exciting, anything that’s a little sexier.” Football clubs and sports franchises fall into this category, he said, and noted an increase in Asian ownership of Spanish and Italian sports clubs.
“Traditional corporations need to make sure they exploit and exploit football club cult supporters and monetize this, and return to the club later,” Sasikumar added.
Newcastle United enthusiasts were comforted by the offer. Terence Ong, a 34-year-old marketing manager in Singapore, “expected the worst.”
While it is encouraging to see interest in the club, this is not the first time that public takeover offers have been reported. “I think I’ll wait for the champagne and party poppers for now until there’s an official statement,” Ong said. “As a sports fan, it’s great to see other Singaporeans interested in elite sport, whether in the box or in the convention hall.”
Sasikumar also felt it was exciting to see an Asian performance in European football. “Being a Singaporean band running for Newcastle makes it even more exciting in the sense that there may be a domino effect on the home football scene,” he said.
This article was first published in South China Morning Post.