The accounts for Birmingham City’s 2020/21 season were published on the Companies House website on Tuesday. The accounts make for some grim reading thanks to the restrictions placed upon the club by the Covid pandemic and confirm just how important the sale of Jude Bellingham was to the continued existence of the club.
One of the most complex things to understand about Birmingham City is just who owns the club. While the simple answer would be to point to the Hong Kong listed company Birmingham Sports Holdings, the ownership of that company is opaque due to the number of investment vehicles incorporated in the British Virgin Islands who own stakes in the company. Throw into the mix people owning stakes in the club directly and you’ve got a mess.
The second article in my series looking at where Birmingham City have spent money in recent years focuses on St Andrew’s stadium. The stadium has been the centre of news throughout most of the current regime’s tenure due to the sale of the stadium to Birmingham City Stadium Ltd to get around P&S rules; the closure and partial reopening of the Tilton and Kop stands due to structural issues and the ground share deal with Coventry City FC.
Birmingham City Stadium Ltd confirmed a raft of changes to Companies House yesterday which sees the exit of former Blues CEO Ren Xuandong as a director along with Edward Zheng Gannan. More importantly, Vong Pech and Kang Ming-Ming were newly appointed as directors in a move which would seem to confirm the sale of the St Andrew’s by Birmingham Sports Holdings is complete.
