It’s been two months since news broke of the Often Partisan Limited bid to take over Birmingham City with very little updates on progress. Although the radio silence has been understandable after the Maxco fiasco earlier in the season, the longer it has gone on the more nerves are starting to show among Blues fans.
Birmingham Sports Holdings published their interim accounts for the six months ending December 2022 on Tuesday afternoon. As expected, the Hong Kong listed company have posted another loss, but while the accounts are unaudited there are a few bits we can take from it that tell us more about the state Birmingham City is in right now.
With both the previous Maxco bid and the current Often Partisan Limited offer for the club, there is a long drawn-out multi-stage process to complete the deal. Part of the issue is a two-year period put in place for Birmingham Sports Holdings to find another company to replace the club in the group, before finally relinquishing control.
Both Birmingham City and Hong Kong parent company Birmingham Sports Holdings released statements on Wednesday confirming the end to negotiations with Maxco Capital Ltd. Both of the statements made took a somewhat “bitter ex” theme, with the wording suggesting it was incumbent owners who terminated talks rather than Maxco.
Birmingham Sports Holdings announced their latest accounts to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Friday afternoon. The accounts are for the year ending 30 June 2022 and correspond to the 2021/2022 football season for Blues. While the company once again made a loss, the amount BSH lost has been reduced, which will surely please investors.
It’s been three days since Paul Richardson and Maxi Lopez turned up at St Andrew’s to tell the world that they’d exchanged contracts and were to become the next owners of Birmingham City. While there has been fairly extensive reporting of their meetings with club officials, the silence from Hong Kong has continued.
It’s now been over eight weeks since Blues fans were told in a Birmingham Mail / Mirror report that the takeover was “close”. Despite being told in an announcement to the HKSE three weeks ago that Vong Pech had agreed to sell his share and a “deadline” being given by Bassini of June 30, as Blues fans we still await any official confirmation that any deal has been done.
June has almost come to an end and as it stands, there is no official word that Birmingham City are any closer to being takeover. While there have been rumours about Laurence Bassini visiting B9 in the near future, there has been no direct quotes from the Bassini camp in recent days and his self-imposed deadline of tomorrow may well come and go without anything being completed.
The first official communication that a partial takeover of Birmingham City is underway was made yesterday as Birmingham Sports Holdings made a voluntary announcement to the stock exchange. The announcement confirmed that BSH had been informed by Vong Pech that he was selling his 21.64% stake in Birmingham City plc.
Once again, takeover fever is in abundance in Birmingham City fans. According to the Mirror, even the grammatical tense surrounding the takeover has changed with reports that Laurence Bassini has bought the club. With lots of rumour flying around and precious little actual information I wanted to put together some reasoned thoughts on what the hell is going on.
