Tony Xia (no longer involved with AVFC)

[Rob182]

Ok Chris. 

If you don't think fans deserve that information then you really are living in a world of ignorant bliss. I've paid a lot of my own cash and time into this club over the years (including being a ST holder for 10 years) so excuse me for wanting to know the financial particulars. 

In the last 24 hours I've read a lot of comments saying that Chelsea fans don't know the ins, outs or details of where a lot of Abramovich's money is from. Are Chelsea, and their Champions League and Premier League wins, living in a world of ignorant bliss?

I'd hazard a guess that a Chelsea fan with a season ticket for 10 years has paid a damn sight more than you have at Villa, and yet they may not be privy to the 'financial particulars'.

As for the 'financial terrorist' comment I read earlier.

[coda]

16 minutes ago, TRO said:

There are certainly more questions than answers

 

 

 

[Dr_Pangloss]

5 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

 

 

In the last 24 hours I've read a lot of comments saying that Chelsea fans don't know the ins, outs or details of where a lot of Abramovich's money is from. Are Chelsea, and their Champions League and Premier League wins, living in a world of ignorant bliss?

 

I'd hazard a guess that a Chelsea fan with a season ticket for 10 years has paid a damn sight more than you have at Villa, and yet they may not be privy to the 'financial particulars'.

 

As for the 'financial terrorist' comment I read earlier.

That's fine. Chelsea fans have to live with the fact that they have a hyper corrupt oligarch for an owner. Evidently, many of them don't care. However if we had something comparable at Aston Villa, well that's something I really couldn't condone. Hence my own personal concern. 

Edited May 21, 2016 by Dr_Pangloss

[Godders]

3 minutes ago, KHV said:

It's a company in the British virgin islands. Reading had a loan from them. When Reading had their parachute payment Vibrac took it all. When reading failed to pay the loan ineteres Vibrac forced player sales to cover the debts. Vibrac also loaned money to Everton. Wyness who is pals of Samuelson at time I believe franchised out catering at Goodison to cut costs so they didnt generate any match day revenue for their books and also sold the training complex. Everton then had a lease agreement on the training complex. Vibrac have loaned money to Fulham, West Ham and Southampton. 

They are arseholes, Samuelson is involved with them

But they're not loan sharks though are they. Their business model from what little looking into I've done is to give cash advances against future TV money, or in Reading's case, a future balloon payment. Samuelson, as a director, would not have had sole sign off on the loan from Vibrac, so that Reading couldn't afford to repay it is not Samuelson's fault or engineering.

Vibrac were investigated by the football league because Medjeski handed control of the club over to them as Reading couldn't afford to repay the loan with interest (again, the terms of which would not have been signed off on by Samuelson in isolation), so they effectively took control without going through the fit and proper persons test. 

Yes Samuelson then made an attempt to buy the club from Vibrac fronting Phoenix, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Surely if there was any wrongdoing here, Vibrac  would have sold the club to Phoenix for significantly less than the market value of the club?

Also, what link does Samuelson have with them, other than presumably putting Reading (a club in need of cash) in touch with Vibrac (a niche company specialising in loans to high profile football clubs), and then at a later time, trying to buy Reading from them??

Outsourcing and sale and leaseback are both fully above board business activities that may be undertaken for any number of reasons, so nothing there to suggest any issues with any loan at Everton IMO. 

[KHV]

8 minutes ago, ThisCouldBeRotterdam said:

And tonight's lottery numbers are?

You may be right, or you may be spectacularly wrong. But can we atleast let some proper factual information about everyone's roles come out before franchising off the club?

What? Samuelson has never ever operated any differently. It's his job, he is a financier, he provides finance for people through loans provided by murky shell companies nobody knows anything about. It's his job, it's how he makes his millions, it's who he is.There is no way on this Earth he is here to just sit on the board. Samuelson will be making money from this deal, if Villa are a success or go down the toilet it doesn't matter. Samuelson will make his money. It's not hard to find things he has been involved in, it is hard to find things he has been involved in that put your mind at rest. 

[One For The Road]

8 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

That's fine. Chelsea fans have to live with the fact that they have a hyper corrupt oligarch for an owner. Evidently, many of them don't care. However if we had something comparable at Aston Villa, well that's something I really couldn't condone. Hence my own personal concern. 

With all due respect, football as a whole is rotten to the core and has been for years. There's no points to be scored by suggesting that a certain club is more corrupt than ours or visa versa, the whole sport is dodgy as ****.

[Godders]

18 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Ok Chris. 

If you don't think fans deserve that information then you really are living in a world of ignorant bliss. I've paid a lot of my own cash and time into this club over the years (including being a ST holder for 10 years) so excuse me for wanting to know the financial particulars. 

I didn't say fans don't deserve that information did I. I said they have no right to that information. They don't. Just like Dr X or AVFC has absolutely no right to see, or even ask to see, your personal bank statements.

It would be a completely different situation if you were a shareholder, but since the club is privately owned, I'm afraid you don't have any right to any information about how the deal is financed, or how the club is to be run. By all means though contact the club and ask the question - you may find that Dr X is fully willing to divulge all that info to you. I would doubt it though.  

[Mic09]

(Long post alert!)

There is an awful lot of 'reading between the lines' here. We know nothing about Xia. We also know nothing of Samuelsons involvement. Yet, it seems to me that in some people's eyes Villa have already started to finance Chinese regime and launder money to some dodgy British individuals. A bit of doom and gloom. In my eyes:

1. Lerner is an idiot, but I really don't think his intentions are wrong. He would not sell the club to anyobody that cannot finance it.

2. Let's assume that Xia's company is making massive losses and is barely making it. To use an analogy here, if I am in debt I do not go and buy myself a brand new sports car. Not for a second do I dobt that our Dr has some serious funds.

3. Lerner inherited his wealth, but surely he invests a lot - to stay rich you have to play the financial game. Did anybody for a second question Lerner's stock market/investment activity?

4. Let's assume we are funded directly by Chinese government. Great. That means we are the world's richest club.

5.I find it funny, and on the edge of being racist, that people have a problem with Chinese money coming in due to the 'crimes of the Chinese government'. Yet nobody speaks of the world's biggest terrorist organisation, the American Government. Let's for a second assume that Chinese government is, whatever it means, ''bad''. Does that mean Xia is bad? And do the crimes of the American government make Lerner 'bad'? Does anybody have a moral problem with Lerner or America? If not, why?

6. I know nothing, and nobody here knows nothing of Samuelson's participation in Aston Villa. Why assume anything?

7. With Recon owning 5 companies on the HK stock exchange, do you think this information wasn't mentioned during Lerner/Hollis and Xia negotiations? How do you think it came about?:

Hollis: Tony, do you have any business on the HK stock exchange? 
Dr: Yes, I have 5 companies
Hollis: Randy, we have ourselves a buyer

8. I cant believe anybody is inclined to listen to the same media sources who for years have been discriminating against Villa. Now, they are willing to put Villa's activity in a bad light and people seem to be buying it like kids in a sweet shop.

9. We are not all of a sudden going to have 11 Chinese players on the pitch. That is becuase they need an impossible to get work permit.

To conclude this long post, people, take a chill pill and see what is going to happen.

 

[StanBalaban]

Spent all day out on the piss yesterday, so have missed a lot of posts in this and the 'Takeover' thread.

Can someone enlighten me of something that Dr. Xia has himself said that has since been disputed or debunked? Has anyone heard from Keith Wyness yet?

So far as far as I can tell, it seems some of the 'facts' in what reads like a hastily prepared press junket have been a little wide of the mark. Probably the same people that prepared the #WelcomeRemy hashtag.

I doubt it's Big Tone's personal wealth that has bought the club, but that doesn't mean that we'll (possibly ever) be privy to the source of funds. You can bet that Hollis and the team that brokered the sale will need to know all about the origins of wealth for both the sale and upkeep of the club.

 

[Phumfeinz]

3 minutes ago, StanBalaban said:

Spent all day out on the piss yesterday, so have missed a lot of posts in this and the 'Takeover' thread.

Can someone enlighten me of something that Dr. Xia has himself said that has since been disputed or debunked? Has anyone heard from Keith Wyness yet?

So far as far as I can tell, it seems some of the 'facts' in what reads like a hastily prepared press junket have been a little wide of the mark. Probably the same people that prepared the #WelcomeRemy hashtag.

I doubt it's Big Tone's personal wealth that has bought the club, but that doesn't mean that we'll (possibly ever) be privy to the source of funds. You can bet that Hollis and the team that brokered the sale will need to know all about the origins of wealth for both the sale and upkeep of the club.

 

I don't think Dr. Xia himself has said anything incorrect, more that it's been misinterpreted by Steve Hollis or something like that. There's too much shit in the thread to go wading through to be certain but that seems to be the general gist I think.

[This Could Be Rotterdam]

16 minutes ago, KHV said:

What? Samuelson has never ever operated any differently. It's his job, he is a financier, he provides finance for people through loans provided by murky shell companies nobody knows anything about. It's his job, it's how he makes his millions, it's who he is.There is no way on this Earth he is here to just sit on the board. Samuelson will be making money from this deal, if Villa are a success or go down the toilet it doesn't matter. Samuelson will make his money. It's not hard to find things he has been involved in, it is hard to find things he has been involved in that put your mind at rest. 

'Businessman makes money is business deal shocker!'

I dont for a second think that anyone involved on either side of this takeover is doing so out of the kindness of their heart. I dont for a second think that anyone who will be involved in the running of the club going forward is doing so because they want a challenge or because they love villa. I dont expect them to. I expect them to firstly, do a better job than lerner, and secondly, be open with the fans about their intentions (whether those intentions are realistic or not) and to admit when they make mistakes. It seems to me that Reading made a big mistake. I wont judge them until they do anything negative to our club, quite frankly i dont care if they make millions from running the club. As long as they do so while making us more successful (which right now requires them to finance a team that can win more than three games a season). 

It will certainly take a lot more before i go around chucking the term 'financial terrorist about'...im not sure i even know how you define that!

[VillaChris]

1 hour ago, KHV said:

That's the biggest joke of it all. His name crops up in tax fraud, money laundering cases but he is never the fall guy. He always somehow manages to be unscathed while others end up in prison. Just google Christopher Samuelson fraud and he crops up. He crippled Reading with about £60 million worth of debt after they took out loans against the parachute payments which he was behind and then he tried to buy them with a consortium. Xia like the Russian who took over at Reading is just a front. Villa will almost certainly be funded in some way by Mr Samuelson with money from god knows wherr and if we don't get promotion we will be **** as Samuelson will want his money back and the club will be saddled with debt. His mate Wyness will be CEO and you only have to ask a toffees fan about all there rather bizarre loans and financial backing to realise there is something very unsavory behind the scenes there. Mr Samuelsons name surprisingly crops up amongst all that shit too. Samuelson is here to make a large amount of money, if promotion doesn't happen expect everything to be sold off or franchised out just like what Wyness did at Everton. There is little info on Xia because he is a nobody, keep your eyes on the puppet masters pulling the strings in the background. The only way this works is to get into the premier league at the first attempt. Failure will result on a Reading like implosion and we will be ****. If Xia supposedly has backing from the Chinese government then there would be zero need for Samuelson at all under any circumstance.

Last time I looked Reading were mid table in the championship  so I think "implosion" is a bit of an overexaggeration surely, that's what happened to Pompey and Blackpool, now those have been two poorly run clubs.

Reading to me have always been a bit of a plastic nothing club who've had a few years in the prem and think they should be in it all the time.

[Kingman]

44 minutes ago, StanBalaban said:

Spent all day out on the piss yesterday, so have missed a lot of posts in this and the 'Takeover' thread.

Can someone enlighten me of something that Dr. Xia has himself said that has since been disputed or debunked? Has anyone heard from Keith Wyness yet?

So far as far as I can tell, it seems some of the 'facts' in what reads like a hastily prepared press junket have been a little wide of the mark. Probably the same people that prepared the #WelcomeRemy hashtag.

I doubt it's Big Tone's personal wealth that has bought the club, but that doesn't mean that we'll (possibly ever) be privy to the source of funds. You can bet that Hollis and the team that brokered the sale will need to know all about the origins of wealth for both the sale and upkeep of the club.

 

TBH No one knows 100% WTF is going on pal.

[StanBalaban]

TBH No one knows 100% WTF is going on pal.

Exactly. What we do know is that there's little information available via a Google search, but whatever there is seems to have been rehashed and circulated by SSN, the press and even our own PR Team.

Upon further digging some of the "facts" seem to be wide of the mark, but none were presented by Xia or his team (as far as I know).

Hollis and his team will know intimate details of the source of funds and origins of wealth. He may have been given the Birdsnest information by his researchers though, and they seem to have got that wrong. Doesn't discredit the information he already knows though, and that's the important information.

One thing Dr. Xia has said is that they've been on the scene for a long time in regards to buying the Villa, so one may assume that this is the deal the Mervyn King was enthusing about.

Between King and Hollis, I expect them to know the details that matter. Doesn't mean we'll be privy to everything but I'll wait to hear more from Xia and Wyness before shitting my pants too much.

[Jareth]

I like that Tony has been studying the championship for years and believes he knows it better than any other new business areas he's been involved with lately. I also like that he has identified confidence as the key issue, as well as lack of application and has plans to improve individual performances of players and staff. He comes accross as hugely intelligent and with a desire to be involved day-to-day. All that said, he also doesn't plan to interfere or impose players on the squad, has respected the integrity of the name 'Villa Park' during a potential rebrand, and mostly he intends to listen to his new coach and support him with whatever finance that coach believes necessary to take us up.

Short of a botched press release by AVFC and Hollis' over enthusiasm to sell Tony to us, I for one believe we have found the perfect owner for us. And there I shall leave my last statement of man-love for Tony, I am aware I couldn't be any further up his bottom at this point in time!

[trekka]

1 hour ago, Mic09 said:

(Long post alert!)

There is an awful lot of 'reading between the lines' here. We know nothing about Xia. We also know nothing of Samuelsons involvement. Yet, it seems to me that in some people's eyes Villa have already started to finance Chinese regime and launder money to some dodgy British individuals. A bit of doom and gloom. In my eyes:

1. Lerner is an idiot, but I really don't think his intentions are wrong. He would not sell the club to anyobody that cannot finance it.

2. Let's assume that Xia's company is making massive losses and is barely making it. To use an analogy here, if I am in debt I do not go and buy myself a brand new sports car. Not for a second do I dobt that our Dr has some serious funds.

3. Lerner inherited his wealth, but surely he invests a lot - to stay rich you have to play the financial game. Did anybody for a second question Lerner's stock market/investment activity?

4. Let's assume we are funded directly by Chinese government. Great. That means we are the world's richest club.

5.I find it funny, and on the edge of being racist, that people have a problem with Chinese money coming in due to the 'crimes of the Chinese government'. Yet nobody speaks of the world's biggest terrorist organisation, the American Government. Let's for a second assume that Chinese government is, whatever it means, ''bad''. Does that mean Xia is bad? And do the crimes of the American government make Lerner 'bad'? Does anybody have a moral problem with Lerner or America? If not, why?

6. I know nothing, and nobody here knows nothing of Samuelson's participation in Aston Villa. Why assume anything?

7. With Recon owning 5 companies on the HK stock exchange, do you think this information wasn't mentioned during Lerner/Hollis and Xia negotiations? How do you think it came about?:

Hollis: Tony, do you have any business on the HK stock exchange? 
Dr: Yes, I have 5 companies
Hollis: Randy, we have ourselves a buyer

8. I cant believe anybody is inclined to listen to the same media sources who for years have been discriminating against Villa. Now, they are willing to put Villa's activity in a bad light and people seem to be buying it like kids in a sweet shop.

9. We are not all of a sudden going to have 11 Chinese players on the pitch. That is becuase they need an impossible to get work permit.

To conclude this long post, people, take a chill pill and see what is going to happen.

 

Nicely put. 

[Mantis]

1 hour ago, Mic09 said:

(Long post alert!)

There is an awful lot of 'reading between the lines' here. We know nothing about Xia. We also know nothing of Samuelsons involvement. Yet, it seems to me that in some people's eyes Villa have already started to finance Chinese regime and launder money to some dodgy British individuals. A bit of doom and gloom. In my eyes:

1. Lerner is an idiot, but I really don't think his intentions are wrong. He would not sell the club to anyobody that cannot finance it.

2. Let's assume that Xia's company is making massive losses and is barely making it. To use an analogy here, if I am in debt I do not go and buy myself a brand new sports car. Not for a second do I dobt that our Dr has some serious funds.

3. Lerner inherited his wealth, but surely he invests a lot - to stay rich you have to play the financial game. Did anybody for a second question Lerner's stock market/investment activity?

4. Let's assume we are funded directly by Chinese government. Great. That means we are the world's richest club.

5.I find it funny, and on the edge of being racist, that people have a problem with Chinese money coming in due to the 'crimes of the Chinese government'. Yet nobody speaks of the world's biggest terrorist organisation, the American Government. Let's for a second assume that Chinese government is, whatever it means, ''bad''. Does that mean Xia is bad? And do the crimes of the American government make Lerner 'bad'? Does anybody have a moral problem with Lerner or America? If not, why?

6. I know nothing, and nobody here knows nothing of Samuelson's participation in Aston Villa. Why assume anything?

7. With Recon owning 5 companies on the HK stock exchange, do you think this information wasn't mentioned during Lerner/Hollis and Xia negotiations? How do you think it came about?:

Hollis: Tony, do you have any business on the HK stock exchange? 
Dr: Yes, I have 5 companies
Hollis: Randy, we have ourselves a buyer

8. I cant believe anybody is inclined to listen to the same media sources who for years have been discriminating against Villa. Now, they are willing to put Villa's activity in a bad light and people seem to be buying it like kids in a sweet shop.

9. We are not all of a sudden going to have 11 Chinese players on the pitch. That is becuase they need an impossible to get work permit.

To conclude this long post, people, take a chill pill and see what is going to happen.
 

Agree with everything here except the ludicrous point about the American government (for all it's many faults) being the "world's biggest terrorist organisation".

Edited May 21, 2016 by Mantis

[coda]

I'd be interested in Sir Merv's opinion on all this. Didn't someone email him and receive a reply after his resignation?

[bannedfromHandV]

3 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Ok Chris. 

If you don't think fans deserve that information then you really are living in a world of ignorant bliss. I've paid a lot of my own cash and time into this club over the years (including being a ST holder for 10 years) so excuse me for wanting to know the financial particulars. 

I've bought a helluva lot of adidas stuff over the years, I don't expect them to start inviting me to their Board meetings.......

[sharkyvilla]

16 minutes ago, coda said:

I'd be interested in Sir Merv's opinion on all this. Didn't someone email him and receive a reply after his resignation?

Yeah that was me, but I really think that was a one off and was just a nice gesture from one fan to another.  I doubt he'd go into any detail about any of this, plus he'd probably get annoyed if I kept bombarding him, especially as I leaked his last email