Please tell me when to stop laughing at SHA

[mjmooney]

The best thing about this thread is that none of them will be educated enough to read it!

Oh but they do, which makes it all the better. Off they trundle back to sha forums and moan about "the bastards on villatalk". I have more things to worry about in the day than what arch-rivals fans are writing about the club I support on teh internets to be honest.

"Arch rivals"??? :shock:

[islingtonclaret]

The best thing about this thread is that none of them will be educated enough to read it!

Oh but they do, which makes it all the better. Off they trundle back to sha forums and moan about "the bastards on villatalk". I have more things to worry about in the day than what arch-rivals fans are writing about the club I support on teh internets to be honest.

"Arch rivals"??? :shock:

OK, okay, badly worded I admit

[Cracker1234]

Birmingham in crisis as owner Yeung has assets frozen by Hong Kong court

BIRMINGHAM owner Carson Yeung’s personal assets are set to be frozen by a Hong Kong court – and that could spell trouble for the Championship club.

Yeung is currently on bail in the Far East on money-laundering charges totalling £59million.

Now prosecutors have started moves to stop him accessing his personal bank accounts.

Yeung has under-written loans to keep Birmingham afloat but he will be unable to do so again if the club need an emergency cash boost

The People

[RunRickyRun]

The final whistle?

Natalie Wong

Friday, July 08, 2011

What's known as "the beautiful game" - football - has turned real ugly for Carson Yeung Ka-sing. But the challenge of handling a big reverse on the field of sport fades into relative insignificance compared to what the Hong Kong entrepreneur now faces in a court of law.

To understand why he has been shown a glaring red card, flash back first to the VIP stand at London's Wembley Stadium on April 27. It's Yeung's 51st birthday, he beams and the Carling Cup gleams after his club, Birmingham City, beats Premiership rivals Arsenal 2-1.

Next, forward to May 22 and another London stadium, Tottenham Hotspur's White Hart Lane ground. Here, there's nothing to cheer about for Yeung or Birmingham players and fans. For it's another 2-1 scoreline, but Birmingham is on the wrong end of it. That means relegation from the lucrative Premier League for a club that Yeung took over in 2009 after two years of trying.

Now fast forward to late on Wednesday last week, and Yeung is preparing for a night in a holding cell at police headquarters in Wan Chai. That's as charges of money laundering, with a sum of more than HK$721 million involved, are laid against him. There's also a likelihood his personal assets of about HK$635 million worldwide will be frozen.

It seems these enormous cracks in Yeung's worlds of football and business appeared at about the same time. As Birmingham teetered out of the Premiership, staff at a bank in Hong Kong spotted an unusual pattern in a series of Yeung-lin

ked cash transactions and reported what they saw as suspicious activity to police.

Investigations came to a head last week when Yeung, under arrest, was led by officers of the narcotics bureau's financial investigations unit from his home on The Peak and then his appearance in Eastern Magistrates' Court the next day, June 30. The charge sheet listed five counts of "dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of an indictable offense."

Prosecutor Hayson Tse Ka-sze told the court that Yeung's four Wing Lung Bank accounts and one HSBC account were suspected to have been used for money laundering between January 2001 and December 2007, involving more than HK$721 million.

Three of the accounts were found to have deposits of HK$632 million, but only HK$1.65 million was reported as taxable income. Additionally, two accounts in his father's name had deposits of HK$88.4 million, but only HK$6,880 was reported as taxable income. The money was later transferred on Yeung's instructions.

Denies wrongdoingYeung, who denies wrongdoing, was freed on bail of HK$7 million and will appear in court again on August 11.

Troubled Birmingham's troubled chief is not, however, in any position to fly to the club's St Andrews headquarters in the English Midlands' city to try to administer much-needed emergency treatment. For he had to surrender his travel documents and must report regularly to police.

And what is shaping up to be a long legal tussle also gnaws at Birmingham. If found guilty the boss could be in prison for up to 14 years and face a hefty fine.

Still, Birmingham's situation is so dire that its fate may be sealed even before Yeung's case is completed. It could certainly be that Yeung will no longer be in control of Birmingham City, on which he's reckoned to have spent at least HK$1 billion.

He runs the club through having the title of president and holding 94 percent of parent company Birmingham International Holdings, listed in Hong Kong but registered in the Cayman Islands. Trading in shares of BIH, which was formerly known as Grandtop International Holdings, is currently suspended.

Under Football League rules, any director of a club must step down if convicted in a case involving dishonesty. There's more. The president of the Asia Pacific Law Association, solicitor Phyllis Kwong Ka-yin, points to the expectation the club's finances will be impacted because of a freeze on Yeung's assets.

She adds: "Yeung, as chairman of a listed company, can be recalled by shareholders if he fails to perform his duty during the prosecution period."

For sure, Yeung's arrest compounds the challenge for the famous football club, and there's the prospect of much worse to follow.

Besides having to come to terms with a big drop in revenue because of its second-tier status, Birmingham City must also convince the English Football Association that the club's finances are not a major cause for concern. Failure could lose the club its place in the new season's Europa League, which should be its reward for winning the Carling Cup.

Even if Birmingham City does make it to Europe, there could be impossible struggles on and off the field. For a cutoff of funding from Yeung would mean the club trying to make do with a very ordinary, perhaps wholly inadequate, squad of players, and one scenario is that the club will be put up for sale.

Although club chief executive Peter Pannu has been at pains to stress there is no connection between the laundering charges and Birmingham City finances, an investment banker close to Yeung told Eastweek, sister magazine of The Standard, that the situation is definitely a worry.

"Relegation from the Premiership is expected to result in an estimated HK$100 million drop in revenue over a season," he says. "In addition, as the club's president has been embroiled in a money-laundering probe, it will be more challenging to get advertisements and lure investment."

Birmingham City has also moved to raise cash by selling top players. The expectation around St Andrews of an injection of capital by Yeung is fading.

In the buildup to Yeung's legal strife - and coincidentally by all accounts - BIH executive director Allan Ip Wing- lun and independent non-executive director Chang Kin-man stepped down for personal reasons last month. Manager Alex McLeish resigned two weeks later to join city rivals Aston Villa.

Former Newcastle manager Chris Hughton stepped into McLeish's boots quickly enough, offering fans some hope that the nightmare that started with relegation could actually end.

But then fans saw scenes of the club's president being driven away in a police vehicle and read with bewilderment the reports of the laundering charges. Irking them further was a media swipe about Hughton going on board "a pirate ship."

The new manager has tried to reduce the heat by claiming the laundering charges against Yeung will not affect the club, claiming "they are very much side issues." That's what he says.

Back to reality and, no matter how shocking the charges, it is clear that Yeung was shown yellow cards of caution before the recent up-down tumult.

He had earlier this year been "hounded by numerous creditors in a number of sectors," claimed one source.

One sign of those troubles came when Yeung surprised many who know something of him by mortgaging his luxury home, 31B Barker Road on The Peak, in return for a loan of HK$150 million to support the club's operations.

He had bought the 5,900-square- foot apartment from Joseph Lau Luen- hung, chairman of Chinese Estates Holdings, for HK$146 million - cash - in 2005. Its market value today is estimated to be more than HK$360 million.

Yeung also mortgaged another property under his name last November.

He has also faced other legal problems over the years. A recent one concerned possession of a luxury flat at Ying Piu Mansion in Mid-Levels.

Heritage International Holdings executive director Peter Ong, the younger brother of solicitor and actress Mary Jean Reimer, sought a writ of possession in the High Court for the flat from Yeung and his ex-wife, Li Wing- sze.

Ong said it was supposed to go to him in 2008 as security against the payment of HK$20 million that Yeung promised him for acting as the middleman in the acquisition of Chinese- language newspaper Sing Pao Daily News from the SMI Publishing Group.

Further back, in 2004, Yeung pleaded guilty to charges of failing to declare his interest in a company called Cedar Base Electronic in Hong Kong and paid a fine.

And then there was strife in October 2009 after Yeung completed the takeover of Birmingham City. He was sued by London-based investment bank Seymour Pierce, which claimed a fee of HK$27 million for its role in introducing Yeung to Birmingham. But then that was settled by the club.

As for Birmingham City-related finances, Yeung raised as much as HK$1.3 billion through a share placement, but shares of BIH went down to HK$0.154 at the end of last month before it was suspended from trading. That was a 43-percent drop from this year's peak of HK$0.27, seen in February.

In addition, there has been a lack of return on his investment. Recent club accounts show debts of more than HK$365 million, of which HK$23 million is owed to HSBC. Its freehold land and buildings, including the St Andrew's stadium, have been pledged to the bank as security.

Yeung's business life has been a cause for conjecture for quite a while, including trying to figure just how much he's worth - an exercise that billed him as one of Hong Kong's "mysterious rich."

Details of his start-up years are indeed few. We do know he was 19 when he returned to Hong Kong from London, and it was in the 1990s that, trained as a hairdresser, he opened a barber's shop called Vanity at the Royal Garden Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. Somewhere along the way he was the head of human resources for a gas company.

Then came what were said to be handsome returns on property plays and a move into the mainland with investments in Chongqing, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia.

The Asian financial crisis in 1997 caused him grief along with many others, and investments in penny stocks hurt. But in 2004 Yeung flexed new muscle when he co-founded Greek Mythology, a luxury casino in Macau.

The Macau gambling business is said to have produced big money for Yeung and powered him into influential circles in the mainland.

But activities in Hong Kong business don't appear to have paid off, including taking the major stake in Sing Pao Daily News in 2008. There was bad publicity after claims by former employees about millions of dollars owed in back wages and Mandatory Provident Fund contributions.

Deadly silent

A Sing Pao staffer says most of 200 employees now worry about the daily's finances because of the allegations against Yeung. "The newsroom fell deadly silent when the news of the arrest of out top boss was broadcast on television TV," he says.

"Some staffers have gone through times when they were owed several months' wages. They worry that if Mr Yeung is put behind bars the same thing will happen again or that the company will close."

After Yeung was released on bail, in fact, senior managers of Sing Pao visited his Barker Road home to seek reassurances, but they failed to gain admission.

Yet Yeung enjoys the media, or rather his place in it. He has not been shy about talking publicly on financial matters in another publication he controls, Wealth magazine. The cover story for the inaugural issue was about how he aimed for a profit of HK$2 billion from Birmingham City.

Also playing the field, Yeung laid ambitious plans for football academies in 10 mainland cities.

Yeung is also a far-from-modest giver, claiming to have donated more than HK$60 million to mainland charities since 2008. More than HK$24 million was used to build schools that bear his name.

HK Standard

[myb]

dates are wrong regarding the cup final which (unfortunately) gives it a bit less credibilty. Hope that isn't the case though!!

[Zatman]

phillips and Ferguson are off to blackpool. be struggling for a team at this stage

[Qwpzxjor1]

Cracking signings for Blackpool though.

[RunRickyRun]

dates are wrong regarding the cup final which (unfortunately) gives it a bit less credibilty. Hope that isn't the case though!!

Yeah, there's a couple of factual errors. Yeung's shareholding is around the 25% mark (not the 94% it states) and there is a lot more owed to HSBC than the 23 million HKD mooted. It gives a good idea, though, of the feeling in Hong Kong

[Nigel]

They are still 3rd favorites for promotion which must mean there odds of relagation are quite high, I know where im sticking my money!

[Hev]

What if they get put up for sale and someone MEGA rich buys them??? Don't dismiss it out of hand - remember Man City and Thaksin Shinawatra - everyone was laughing and saying they were stuffed - then along came Sheikh Mansour or whatever his name is!!! Let's hope Carson Yeung can remain in charge.

[VillaAlex]

There's a big difference between Man City and sha.

City already had excellent infrastructure, a good fan base, they were in the Premier League and had a reasonable team. sha have none of that.

Add to the fact that there is now the financial fair play rule coming in, meaning unless a new owner exploited the system, they wouldn't be able to spend very much money as they have very little income.

[Anthony]

They are still 3rd favorites for promotion which must mean there odds of relagation are quite high, I know where im sticking my money!

Just put a tenner on @25/1. Victor Chandler.

[Zatman]

Gardner, Bowyer, Larsson, Jiranek, Phillips gone and looks like Johnson, Dann, Ridgewell Jerome, Foster and Ferguson will follow soon.

That's nearly a first XI from last season all going. Think i might throw money on them going down myself

[AVFC-Prideofbrum]

Can't see them going down, not in the Championship, a lovely mid-table finish would be excellent though.

[TrentVilla]

I can't see them coming up and I can't see them going down but then you never can tell, I didn't think Newcastle would bounce back and I didn't think Leeds would keep dropping so who knows which way Small Heath will go. I think a lot of it comes down to stability, both financial and stability of squad, Newcastle had both Leeds had neither.

At this stage Small Heath are following more of the Leeds model than the Newcastle one but I'd say they still have enough to stick around mid table. You can though never tell, I'm far from convinced about Houghton as a manager and I think he will be exposed this season while off the pitch things could get a lot worse very quickly.

They are in for a tough old season I think and I rather suspect that financially they really need to get back up at the first attempt or their problems are really going to start mounting.

[Genie]

I didn't think Newcastle would bounce back

Really? With that squad you didn't think they'd come back up?

Possibly the strongest squad ever in the Chapionship imo.

[theunderstudy]

Yeah I agree, Newcastle's squad was incredibly strong, they didn't lose Enrique, Nolan, Barton, Guttierez, Harper, Coloccini etc. I knew NUFC would (regrettably) come straight back up.

[Zatman]

I didn't think Newcastle would bounce back

you also expected them to go back down if i remember our discussion at start of last season

[TrentVilla]

I didn't think Newcastle would bounce back

Really? With that squad you didn't think they'd come back up?

Possibly the strongest squad ever in the Chapionship imo.

The point is I didn't expect them to hold onto that squad. Obviously once it became obvious that they would then yes I did.

Anyway, this is way off topic we were talking about Newcastle as a case in point for comparison to Small Heath not actually about Newcastle themselves.

[RunRickyRun]

I thought Newcastle would struggle as well. Don't forget that they got hit for 6 by Leyton Orient in pre season. Maybe only pre season but it seemed to indicate (at the time) that there was a lot of trouble behind the scenes.