The Takeover: Champagne Celebrations Date Confirmed

For those of you who have not seen the original announcement, you can view it at this link.

Rather than write a huge long piece about this announcement, I have put together some questions and answers just to confirm what is now going to happen.

Is July 13 the day we can open the champagne?

Yes, it is. The EGM is the final step in this process, with shareholder approval being the final thing that needs to be given before the deal goes ahead.

We already know from the announcement at the start of May that thanks to irrevocable undertakings by Paul Suen and Lei Sutong, the result is a foregone conclusion and that it will be approved.

Does this mean that the Circular Is no longer important?

For some people, the Circular won’t be important as they were only waiting for that to be dispatched so we knew the day of the EGM.

However, for nosy people like me the Circular is still important as it will contain the real meat of the deal.

For example, I think the Circular could have the names of the new people who will be on the board of the club, along with confirmation of people moving into key positions like CEO.

All of the contents will have been approved by the HKSE, which is why we now have a date when it will be published and why a date for the EGM has been confirmed.

Will we find out when the rest of the club will be sold to Shelby Companies Limited?

Due to the delicacy of the situation, I do not believe there will be any proper confirmation of when that will happen.

However, I don’t think it’s that important now. We already know that Shelby Companies Limited will be the ones running the club and making the decisions as the EFL require it.

We also know that BSHL cannot take any money out of the club as any money owed to Shelby Companies Limited from what they have put in will take precedence.

Most importantly, we’ve heard Tom Wagner speaking on a Bloomberg Round Table event about how the loan SCL are making to the club is the leverage to force BSHL to part with the rest of it at some point.

The onus will now be on BSHL to get their arses into gear to find a new company to replace BCFC as their revenue earner.

What will happen to almajir.net once the EGM is approved?

As many people will know, last year I promised that when the takeover goes through I will retire from writing this site.

While I’ll be honest that I don’t want to completely retire from writing stuff for this site, I will confirm right now that the frequency of articles will almost certainly drop significantly, and that my other website bshlout.co.uk will be closed.

I’m intending in the next week or so to write a meta piece on my Medium blog to talk about that a bit more detail.

---

It seems weird that only yesterday I was telling people that patience was needed, and today the thing we needed to be patient for has finally been confirmed.

The final words of the BSHL chapter of Birmingham City are now being written, and a new era is to begin very soon.

I hope you’re as excited as I am.