Popular Post powell91 Posted May 21, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2016 Everything is gonna be fine. I had to turn twitter off because of the amount of 'financial experts' that quite clearly know (Jack shit)) everything. We wanted Lerner gone an owner who would have most likely gave us a shoe string budget and doomed us further. We complain and protest for years and now he has finally gone we get someone in who has stated that they will turn it round we will have a big budget and become competitive again and all some people can do is get the pitch forks and torches back out for round 2. It does my head in. 12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 6 hours ago, Daweii said: The issue with Lerner is he was spending his own personal money. Lerner himself if he had carried on as he started wouldn't have been bad but when you see your own personal finances vanishing you put on the brakes pretty fast. Xia may wind up to be better or worse but it also seems that wherever he's getting the money from he's not spending his own money, which in the short to medium term at least means we will likely get insane financial support. Our issue is if after he's spent £300, £400, £500 million+ if we still haven't won the league and started to reap financial benefits in China and success in China for his other businesses we might be in trouble. I believe it was Diesler talking about Evergrande who took over a team several years ago. The business was only worth £2-3 billion but Evergrande's owner spent over £1 billion on the club over three years, yet after several super league wins his core business is now worth £10+ billion due to popularity of his sports team. He also got a non-political place in the government as a reward of sorts. We don't know how much Recon Group is actually worth, but it could be that Xia is hoping for the same so is willing to spend billions of his companies money to do it knowing it could pay off big time. If Xia's goal is for Recon to be at least known China wide and worth far more than it is now then we are certainly a way to do that if previous Chinese owned clubs are to go by. Good point it could well be that while things look ify in terms of western corporate values, they have an alternative method of reaching our holy grail. The bottom line is it may be worth keeping an open mind and just watching football events unfold and make our judgements as we go. assuming Tony X passes the leagues tests. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Straggler Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Dr X has stated that his main objective from owning the Villa is to improve football in China. This 100% aligns with the known policy of the Chinese government. Am I wrong to draw a line between those two things? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Whatever it turns out to be it can not be as bad as the Le a rner years we have just suffered. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThunderPower_14 Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Ultimately if we win I couldn't care less if we were owned by Lex Luthor 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 The way things are at this time.I would be over the moon if we just won the league cup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alreadyexists Posted May 21, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted May 21, 2016 15 minutes ago, ThunderPower_14 said: Ultimately if we win I couldn't care less if we were owned by Lex Luthor That would be cool though wouldn't it!? LexCorp also owned the Daily Planet for a little while, so could get some good press from it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeanO Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 1 hour ago, AndyC said: one bad experience and you taint a whole nation. The company I work for has worked with the Chinese for 15 years, they have helped us triple the businesses turnover and they cant do enough for us. I personally have been dealing with our Chinese suppliers for 5 years on a daily basis, their commitment to get the job done day or middle of the night is brilliant. I have emailed my contacts there asking if they know anything about our new owner. No not 1 bad experience, he's had many instances. He's not the only person I know who finds dealing with the Chinese businessmen difficult but there's not much point in going into detail here. You'll find out what you want to hear....no doubt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyC Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 4 minutes ago, SeanO said: No not 1 bad experience, he's had many instances. He's not the only person I know who finds dealing with the Chinese businessmen difficult but there's not much point in going into detail here. You'll find out what you want to hear....no doubt. You are correct, there will be many examples of dodgy Chinese business deals and men, just the same as the UK, USA, Spain, France etc etc. Every country in the world has a cess pool of white collar criminals, that does not make the whole country corrupt though. For the time being we have to put our faith in Hollis and the fit and proper test. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rds1983 Posted May 21, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted May 21, 2016 8 minutes ago, SeanO said: No not 1 bad experience, he's had many instances. He's not the only person I know who finds dealing with the Chinese businessmen difficult but there's not much point in going into detail here. I've dealt with Chinese, Brazilian, Indian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, English etc. businesses and businessmen. Yes there have been difficult Chinese firms but there have been fantastic ones, I can say the exact same thing about every other country I've bought products from. Including British firms. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Why didn't we just take the easy route and accept Ellison's bid Was he not rich enough or something Do we vs know for a fact that Ellison bid? And I thought it was a consortium with ties to Ellison? If they had bought us we'd have the FT and other naysayers currently sat combing through what the exact ties to Ellison are... We were never on the brink of Ellison putting his $50bn in to the club Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post CarewsEyebrowDesigner Posted May 21, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2016 I wouldn't lay the blame for the misinformation in the OS statement on the new owner, that could be a problem with Villa PR but as we don't know fully we can't say either way for sure. Hollis' own statements certainly don't help and only raise more questions about the due diligence done. It may all turn out to be fine, but at the moment it's concerning. Anyway, I'm not keen on the implicit (and, at times, explicit) deriding of fans who only want to know for sure what is going on. Grow up. We all want the best for the club, we are all in the same boat. Emailing the football league may be a bit much though As it stands, the lack of transparency & clear information makes me uncomfortable. This could be a culture clash and in that case we just have to accept it. However, I don't for a second accept that we should just wait and see if the new owners turn out good or bad. We should know from the outset because the cost of it going wrong is too high. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meme Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 1 minute ago, CarewsEyebrowDesigner said: We should know from the outset because the cost of it going wrong is too high. I think this is the case with most takeovers, if not all. There is always a chance that something will go wrong and/or the owner turns out to be a right mess. Only time will tell what will happen to our good club. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Best case, Xia never misrepresented anything, Hollis is a **** buffoon who misunderstands comments, then publicly repeats his misunderstandings without verifying it. Which is still a little worrying in terms of due diligence he's done, but it's significantly less worrying than our new chairman deliberately trying to mislead us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deisler123 Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Anyone knows if the FA/league so-called test will disclose all information about the owner/investors? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Butterfingers Posted May 21, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2016 47 minutes ago, Straggler said: Dr X has stated that his main objective from owning the Villa is to improve football in China. This 100% aligns with the known policy of the Chinese government. Am I wrong to draw a line between those two things? You are not wrong and it is a possibility. There are obviously numerous other possibilities as well. There are only two clubs who really have owners who are prepared to throw unlimited funds in and they are Man City and Chelsea. Everyone else has to work within certain restraints. We have worked under impossible restraints, since the start of the Lambert era and the results are now there for all to see. What type of owner could we have realistically hoped for? The Man City type is a one off. The next batch, there is not much of a muchness between. Some are successful, some are not so successful. It would have been a gamble. If there is Government backing in this, from China, then you would assume that money will follow-That could only be a good thing. If their motive is to improve Chinese football then how will that effect the way that Villa are run? In order for us to influence Chinese football, surely we will have to be successful ourselves? We won't be much of an asset if we languish around like Sunderland do year in year out, just making up the numbers. I see no real problem with Government backing-In fact I see it as a massive positive. I also suspect there will be no sleep lost doing dodgy deals to enhance Villas rebuild-So what? The game is corrupt from top to bottom-From the likes of Baker who sells cup final tickets on the black market, to the Chelsea owner who has no morals about where his money comes from. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Rob182 Posted May 21, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 21, 2016 So to summarise again: - The Official Site said that Recon own 5 listed companies instead of 1 (note 'listed companies', was the area of error. Recon still own a LOT of other companies). - Hollis incorrectly said that Xia was involved in the Bird's Nest Stadium. - Chris Samuelson is strongly rumoured to have some involvement, as 'Samuelson' was on a shirt photographed with Xia and we believe he is one of the people in a blurry photo of Xia at Villa Park. Those are the only, as far as I'm aware, issues that have cropped up so far. The first two can be put down to simple miscommunications or misunderstandings. The third point is the main worry, and yet none of us know what, if any, involvement Samuelson could have moving forward (if it is even him). From what I've read, Samuelson has never been convicted of anything, although he has been subject of a number of money laundering investigations. I've read that he was the main spokesperson for Anton Zingarevich's takeover/attempted takeover of Reading, which resulted in Zingarevich's investment vehicle becoming subject to a Premier League investigation and the Reading fans have a lot to say about that era and the people involved. Samuelson is surely not going to be the spokesperson for Xia? Xia seems clever enough and happy enough to do the talking at the moment. Keith Wyness also appears to be involved, and again would be more qualified to do the talking than Samuelson. I've also read that Samuelson has been massively involved in the process of helping clients hide or disguise assets. But, is this practice illegal? I don't know. When you're competing against other businesses, your 'disguised assets' would surely become an advantage. We all know this too well, with the old 'don't tell them your transfer budget!' rule. I suppose the biggest concern right now, is that Samuelson has some sort of financial involvement in the deal. But we're all guessing and, rightly or wrongly, jumping to some giant conclusions. For me, the positives of what Xia have said around investment, his enthusiasm, the future and his ambition have far outweighed the two 'solid' negatives (the OS incorrect info and the Bird's Nest comment by Hollis) that we have seen so far. The third negative isn't exactly solid, as we don't know whether Samuelson is involved at all, we don't what role he could possibly play and we don't actually know what impact him being involved could even have. For all we know, he could have simply assisted in the purchase and will then be no longer needed. Stay positive folks! The doom-mongering feels a little premature, when we know so little, so far! UTV 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jareth Posted May 21, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted May 21, 2016 In that pic of Samuelson at the newcastle game, nearly everyone in the exec box was looking bored in their posh chinos, while Tony was sat wearing a villa shirt taking a pic of the game on his phone - that gives me a lot of confidence in our new owner. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Djemba_Villan Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 (More than likely) Unrelated but something I saw as exciting was the prospect that with Chinese investment, Villa would be the platform upon which ties between Birmingham and China grew and we would benefit as a result. The very recent announcement of regular direct flights to China from BHX was a massive step forward. However, yesterday that particular train fell off the rails too China-BHX Flights Scrapped Shame Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 39 minutes ago, Davkaus said: Best case, Xia never misrepresented anything, Hollis is a **** buffoon who misunderstands comments, then publicly repeats his misunderstandings without verifying it. Which is still a little worrying in terms of due diligence he's done, but it's significantly less worrying than our new chairman deliberately trying to mislead us. But when you point this out you get berated by others and informed of his 32 years experience at KPMG. Well did they teach buffoonery at KPMG? Although to be fair, having worked in that industry, I think I can safely say that the answer to that question is yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts