Birmingham Sports Holdings held their annual general meeting on Friday 30 December at the United Centre in Admiralty, Hong Kong. As a shareholder in the company, I flew to Hong Kong to attend the meeting to ask questions about whether BSH were looking to sell their 75% stake in Birmingham City plc.
It might be relegation worries for Birmingham City at St Andrew’s, but in the Hong Kong it’s very much business as usual for Birmingham Sports Holdings. The HKSE listed company announced to shareholders that it was revising its profit warning upwards to around £7m for the six months to December 31, 2020 – and this came on the back of a share price rise which now values the company at close to £320M.
The recent partial sale of Birmingham City to investment vehicle Oriental Rainbow Investments along with the recent share subscription completed by Birmingham Sports Holdings has complicated the question of who actually owns the club a little bit further. As the structure of the ownership of the club becomes more Byzantine, it’s become increasingly difficult for fans to understand.
Birmingham Sports Holdings broke the news on Friday afternoon that they are proposing to sell a 25% stake in BCFC to Oriental Rainbow Investment Ltd, a British Virgin Islands investment vehicle owned by current BSH shareholder Vong Pech. The deal will see Vong Pech become the largest shareholder in the club among other changes.
Previously on almajir.net I’ve written about a group of large shareholders in Birmingham Sports Holdings I’ve termed “The Faceless Four”. Today I have spent time investigating two of those shareholders to find out more about them and who they are.
