Fayed Flogging Fulham ?

[themn]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...sell-Fulham--EXCLUSIVE.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

EXCLUSIVE: Fayed in secret talks to SELL Fulham after 16-year stint at Craven Cottage

By CHARLES SALE
PUBLISHED: 22:30, 9 July 2013 | UPDATED: 22:30, 9 July 2013

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End of the road: Mohamed Al Fayed is understood to be on the verge of selling Fulham​

Fulham owner Mohamed Al Fayed is understood to be on the verge of selling the club after investing £200million at Craven Cottage over the last 16 years.
Potential buyers from America are interested and the Premier League are well into the complex process involved when a club in world football's richest league changes hands.
Talks are also taking place with Fayed's advisors and a deal could be completed in time for the start of the season next month - and possibly even by the end of this week.
However, such is the secrecy with which 84-year-old Fayed conducts his business - typified by his sale of Harrods to Qatar Holdings - that executives at Fulham have little or no information about the potential sale that is being conducted through the chairman's office.
Selling Fulham, now established in the top flight, could make sense at this time for Fayed if he has found the right buyer with deep enough pockets.
The billionaire, who bought the club for £6.25m in 1997 and has since lent them about £200m interest free, is not prepared to put in any more money.

Sky's the limit: The businessman has lent Fulham about £200m interest free since buying the club in 1997

There is speculation that another owner of an NFL franchise may follow in the footsteps of the Glazer family (Manchester United), Stan Kroenke (Arsenal) and Randy Lerner (Aston Villa) in buying into the Premier League.
Also, during talks over Fulham's funding of their proposed new Riverside Stand, one potential investor has indicated an interest in buying the whole club.



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[Squiggles]

I hope he's told to take that bloody statue with him.

 

[themn]

Hahahaha !

 

[gkmacca]

And the bad news for al Fayed: the investor has set off to the airport through a Paris tunnel.

 

[SummerOnions]

hahahahahah

 

[Rosco]

The Jacksonville Jaguars owner is the buyer - Shahid Khan

 

[LeTallecWiz]

The Jacksonville Jaguars owner is the buyer - Shahid Khan

I'm trying to remember if the Jags are doing things 'the right way' in the NFL -- but I can't think of anything positive (drafting, or FA, wise). Anything we should be 'worried' about?

 

[Rosco]

They're a middling team aren't they ?

 

[LeTallecWiz]

They're a middling team aren't they ?

I think that would be a fair way to describe it, yes.

 

[Athens]

The Jacksonville Jaguars owner is the buyer - Shahid Khan

They will change the name of Fulham to The Michael Jacksonville Jaguars

 

[Rosco]

It's hard to know what to expect, but despite taking the club to the Premier League with his spending, Al Fayed and whoever was working with him never really managed to tap into any significantly increased fanbase.

As a result he needed to keep funding the team to keep it in the Premier League.

The new owners will have a bit of a challenge - the one thing that increases attendances is a new stadium. And the one thing that increases interest in the club is instant success.

FFP prevents the latter and current attendances probably means the other isn't an idea.

It could be another QPR situation

 

[LeTallecWiz]

I hope not re: QPR ... I actually have no problems with Fulham for some reason.

 

[Whirly]

Khan has only owned the Jaguars for a few seasons now, and the team hasn't sucked any less since then. Definitely not a "middling team" though, that would be an organization like the Chargers or Cowboys. The Jaguars are one of the worst franchises, historically and in terms of popularity in the entire league.

They haven't done much right or wrong in the last few seasons, it's more a case of draft picks not panning out. They haven't been stupid in free agency though, unlike say the Bills(Mario Williams). Only blip might be letting Derrek Cox go, but I am not sure what the Jags cap situation was.

 

[juniormember]

Say he sells the club for 100m. Will he still be owed 200m from the club?

 

[Rosco]

Whatever the sale price it wouldn't make sense for the club to owe Al Fayed after the sale.

 

[juniormember]

Whatever the sale price it wouldn't make sense for the club to owe Al Fayed after the sale.

So the price would include the debt?
Would it really not make sense?
I don't know if Fulham is worth 100m but say it is...
Option a) would be to pay 300m to Al Fayed and be done with it.
Option b) could allow the new owners to spend 100m initially, while paying back the loan through structured payments, allowing space to manoeuvre for initial investment in the playing staff and infrastructure.

Obviously b) wouldn't be an option if Al Fayed insists on getting everything in one go...

 

[King Binny]

http://sg.sports.yahoo.com/news/profile-fulham-owner-khan-front-personal-234756844.html

New Fulham chief Shahid Khan, the Premier League's latest foreign owner, is likely to break the mould and be one of the most open and public of billionaires to take control of one of England's top flight clubs.

Other international owners such as Russian Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) and American Malcolm Glazer (Manchester United) rarely talk to the media or engage with fans but Khan has shown that he enjoys attention.

When Khan bought the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011, he brought his yacht into port in the northern Florida city and set about a series of community meetings with local politicians and fans.

"He is kind of a rock star with the fans," Alfie Crow, editor of the Jaguars' fan blog 'Big Cat Country,' told Reuters.

"He comes out to practice, interacts with the fans and talks to them. He is very much out there and engaged. He has really energised people."

Any trepidation Jaguars fans initially had about the team's new owner quickly dissipated as he won them over with his charm, not to mention a thick handlebar mustache and flowing hair that is a marked change from the staid image of the traditional NFL owner.

Khan, after all, is far from a typical owner of an American sports franchise.

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, where he not surprisingly fell in love with cricket, Khan moved to the United States as a 16-year-old, sleeping in a YMCA and washing dishes on his way to earning an engineering degree at the University of Illinois.

He ended up buying the first company to give him a job, transforming Flex-N-Gate into a lucrative car parts business. In 2010 he was making his first move into the sports world with an attempt to buy the NFL's St. Louis Rams.

The man who foiled that attempt was Stan Kroenke, who took majority ownership of the Rams. At Fulham, Khan will be in close proximity to Kroenke, the majority shareholder in London club Arsenal.

While Khan missed out on the Rams he did win friends in the NFL's elite ownership group and that helped him when he finally got into the league with the Jaguars.

"I thought, I have developed a love and affection as a fan for the sport and I'd like to be part of it," he told Reuters in an interview last year.

As well as engaging with the local fan base, Khan has emphasised the opportunities to "put Jacksonville on the map" by taking the Jaguars to London for an annual game over the next four seasons.

It was typical of Khan's approach though that he responded to speculation that his move for Fulham might have a negative impact on the Jaguars by emailing the team's season ticket holders to reassure them.

"Fulham F.C. will operate as a fully stand-alone business from the Jaguars. Fulham and the Jaguars each have a great responsibility to their players, fans, partners and communities, and both deserve nothing less than a 100 percent commitment from ownership," he wrote.

"In short, our pledge to you - a Jaguars franchise that is proud, bold and committed - remains unchanged.

Fulham season ticket holders can expect the same sort of hands-on attention, including fan forums, emails, media appearances, the kind of things that most foreign Premier League owners shy away from.

"I want to be clear, I do not view myself so much as the owner of Fulham, but a custodian of the club on behalf of its fans," said Khan.

"My priority is to ensure the club and Craven Cottage each have a viable and sustainable Premier League future that fans of present and future generations can be proud of."

The Premier League, with its unrestricted free-market approach to wages and transfers, is a very different world to the closed, salary-capped business model of the NFL, and it will be fascinating to see how Khan approaches Fulham.

However it turns out, Fulham fans are certainly going to know they have a new owner.