Everyone knows that Birmingham City are owned by a company based in Hong Kong, but how much is actually known about them and what they do? In this second refresher article about the powers that be behind the club, I’ve taken a look at Birmingham Sports Holdings.
Birmingham City scratched out a 0-0 draw with Coventry on Tuesday night at the Coventry Building Society Arena in a game that wasn’t one for the purists. In a performance marred by a ref handing out a harsh red card to Ryan Woods for serious foul play it could have been much worse had Coventry bought their shooting boots and only went to show just how thin the Blues squad currently is.
It’s a bipolar existence being a Birmingham City fan sometimes. On the pitch things look much improved and on Saturday the team scored five goals in the league for the first time in nearly six years in a thumping 5-0 win over Luton. Off the pitch, the rumour mill is in overdrive with whispers of financial meltdown doing the rounds in a vacuum of information.
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.
What’s in a name? Quite a lot if you judge the buzz on some Blues Facebook groups recently. News and pictures that Birmingham City have removed the former sign outside Wast Hills proclaiming the “Trillion Trophy Training Ground” has been met with thoughts that the club is being sold. Unfortunately for them, it’s not the case.
Not much is known about the current largest shareholder in Birmingham City, Vong Pech. Although he owns just over 40% of Blues via Cambodian development company Graticity Real Estate Development Ltd and BVI investment company Oriental Rainbow Investments, nothing has been forthcoming from Vong about his purchase of a tranche of the club. In this third piece on Vong, I’ve taken a look at another project he part-owns in Cambodia, and it’s links to another Hong Kong listed company.
Birmingham City announced on Friday the creation of a strategic committee whose job would be to advise the board on the short-term and long-term strategy of the club. This came at the request of Birmingham Sports Holdings, who had confirmed that the committee would be appointed in announcements made to the HKSE last year.
On Friday, I published a lengthy article outlining just how tangled a web the ownership of Birmingham City FC is. In this article I am concentrating on new shareholders in the club Oriental Rainbow Investments Ltd – and why their investment is indicative of issues the club faces.
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 confirmed in an announcement on Monday to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange the date of an Extraordinary General Meeting to approve the partial sale of BCFC to Oriental Rainbows Ltd. The sale would see Chinese-Cambodian businessman Vong Pech become the largest shareholder in the club.
