Sincere apologies if this has been mentioned within another thread but I couldn't see one dedicated to the subject. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53331387 Anybody else getting the old squeaky bottom feeling? The future of Asia's biggest budget airline, AirAsia, is in “significant doubt”, auditor Ernst & Young has said. Shares in the Malaysian-based airline fell by more than 17% on Wednesday after being halted earlier in the day. The airline’s founder and chief executive is tycoon Tony Fernandes, who also co-owns Queens Park Rangers (QPR) football club in the UK. please log in to view this image
Didley bought this up in the transfer thread... https://www.not606.com/threads/summer-transfer-window.384001/page-13#post-13986030 I'm not sure how much of the club Fernandes owns these days, with other shareholders like Ruben having significant holdings. Thought I read somewhere on here that the Mittals only have a small holding though (3% rings a bell). We won't be the only club whose sugar daddies have been hit by the pandemic, but I'd like to think we would be an attractive prospect if things did go tits up now that we own our own training ground as well as our ground. Having said that, if our owners were in such financial trouble, would they have forked out for the new training facility at all?
There isn't an airline in the world that won't be on the brink with what has happened this year. Air Asia is about the only real business success TF has had, many others have fared far worse. Could be difficult to refinance in current climate. May be forced to sell stake in QPR if that bad but how much he'd get when we have liabilities is questionable...
I remember when Bernie and Flavio bought us I was so happy thinking we were made. They did get us to the PL of course. Then when TF bought the club, I thought here's a real footie fan, we're sure to crack on now. Not going to make the same mistake with the next owners, as there will be in due course for whatever reason. Only points and which league you're in (and stay in) counts. Everything else is waffle.
We've had this discussion before but would we be happy to be bought by a Saudi Prince, or a Chinese billionaire, neither of whom are likely to have values that we might feel comfortable with?
If we’re winning games then I couldn’t care less if the North Korean government is merrily cheering in the Directors’ Box of the newly named People’s Stadium. Preferably not a Tory donor though.
I for one wouldn't be I'm very old fashioned in that I like club owners to actually turn up to matches and be visible, but that are also not human rights abusers/fraudsters etc I appreciate that there is a declining likelihood of this happening with the type of owners that seem prevalent in the last 5+ years Edit: I'm assuming here that the aforementioned Saudis and Chinese Don't bother to actually attend matches!
Sadly I suspect though that many fans (not specifically at QPR) wouldn't care - winning would be more important that the ethics of the owners
I’d go along with that to an extent. The local butcher or fan done good owning the club is long gone. As long as we’re enjoying what’s on the pitch it doesn’t really matter what league we’re in but if we’re ever to compete at the top level again it’ll probably have to be with some sort of warmonger chucking billions at us in a shiny new stadium near Ruislip.
I too would welcome someone more along the lines of old school owners who had established their livelihood in a given area and continued on to buy a local club and reinvest, however, l tend to think those days are almost gone. The costs associated in owning and running a healthy club are totally ridiculous nowadays, hence the need for a large organisations ( as per Liverpool ). I'm not sold on oil money owners wanting a play thing. Maybe l'm just another old fuddie duddie stuck in a timewarp, wanting things in general to return to the good old days of non signage violated teams shirts, a cold beer and a pie for loose change and a life of simplexity.
Agreed. I'm not sure any billionaire gets to be what they are by being charming, honest, fair to staff etc but I'd prefer success that still left room for us to be liked too!
I agree with all of the above Local owners wanting a football club probably would struggle to invest in any club above League 2 now given the financial commitments Interesting point about whether or not we want other fans to like us Much of other fans dislike seems to stem from the Bernie / Briatore days when the perception was that we were ridiculously minted as a club. We never were as a club, and still staggered on with the same antiquated stadium and crap training facilities. Many fans thought we'd had our comeuppance with the FFP fine, when in reality half the EFL seem to have been employing even more dubious accounting practices I don't care whether other fans dislike us. Let's face it many of us dislike other clubs for sometimes less than fully rational reasons
Do I take it that we only want an owner born within the sound of the Westway, with no political ties to the Tory party or the Republican party, not a fundamental Muslim, not a criminal, with billions he or she are ready to lose on buying a very small football club and who has enough spare time to go to every home game and not interfere with the colours of the team and who only invests their fortune in ethical fair trade companies and who's ancestors had no links to slavery, eugenics or war crimes? Sort of narrows down the available pool of likely owners. Oh, by the way, nobody likes Richard Branson now because he was evil sacking all the trolley dollies from Virgin.
