Allams article in Times today - two pages

Interesting read

 

Do you have to join The Times online to view the article?

 

I think so

 

Hopefully this helps:
Assem Allam arrived penniless in the UK 40 years ago. Now he’s almost as rich as the Queen and has bought Hull City football club as a thank you to everyone who helped him

At the end of last season, a banner was unfurled in the east stand at the KC stadium, home to Hull City football club. “Thank you Mr Allam,” it said. Assem Allam, sitting opposite the banner in the director’s box, was visibly touched. “It was fantastic,” he remembers, talking six months later in the chairman’s suite at the ground. “People on the street still come up to me and say ‘thank you for saving our club’. I’m pleased they say ‘our club’ because it is their club, not mine.” A noble sentiment but, financially speaking, untrue: Allam has pumped £43 million of his own money into the club since buying it a little over a year ago.
In the autumn of 2010, following what appeared to be (even by football standards) quite outrageous profligacy during its two-season spell in the Premier League, my home-town club was on the brink of going into administration. This would have incurred a ten-point deduction. Already relegated to the Championship, a slide back into the lowly obscurity from which the club had only recently emerged was a real prospect. Ernst & Young, the accountants, said that Hull might well not recover from administration, that the club might cease to exist. The man who stopped that happening is a 72-year-old businessman who isn’t from Hull, didn’t have any particular affinity for the club and isn’t even a football fan.
Rather than being the time-honoured tale of local boy makes good buying respectability and admiration, or the more recent narrative of super-rich man wanting a plaything, Allam’s magnificent gesture in saving Hull City is more about identity and simple gratitude. “I wanted the club to survive for the benefit of the community,” he says. “I knew it would hurt the city if the club failed.”
When I watched a game with Allam the day after our interview — City contrived to lose 3-2 to Burnley despite leading 2-0 — it was apparent the genial Mr Allam was not the world’s greatest expert on the beautiful game. But then he has never pretended to be. I saw Mr Allam’s eldest daughter Eman, whom I happen to know is a talented athlete because I went to school with her in East Yorkshire 30-odd years ago, explaining the nuances of the game to her father several times. He spent as much time observing the crowd as the pitch, smiling benignly all the while. “This is my reward,” he says, gesturing at the 20,000-odd crowd, not many of whom, such is the lot of the committed fan, look very content, but without Allam would have to find something else to be unhappy about on a Saturday afternoon.
Allam bought Hull City because he wanted to say thank you to a city that years ago welcomed him and allowed him to flourish. Allam came to East Yorkshire from Egypt in 1968, a refugee from Colonel Nasser’s dictatorship, part of the emigration of educated Egyptians that resulted in the young heart specialist Magdi Yacoub settling in Britain. As the son of a wealthy conservative family, Allam opposed Nasser’s nationalisations and attempts to foment revolution abroad. “I spoke out against Nasser, they arrested and tortured me many times, lashes on the naked body.”
With Egypt once again gripped by political unrest I rang Allem yesterday, wondering what he made of the Port Said football tragedy. “There has been football at Port Said for many years,” he reflected sadly. “Nothing like this has ever happened before, it is the worst disaster in the country’s football history.”
He feels that as long as Egypt’s youth continue to feel so marginalised, his country of origin will remain unstable. “I personally feel it may have resulted from mistakes made by the youth revolution last year because of a lack of political experience. They achieved a phenomenal feat in getting rid of Mubarak, but they left his top aides in position to continue his work.”
Allem’s response to his country’s woes back in the Sixties was to leave. He arrived in Hull — five shillings on the train from King’s Cross — to visit his sister, married to a doctor working locally. He had managed to smuggle out a quantity of dollars, procured on the black market in Cairo, and took them to the Midland Bank. “They rang me the next morning and told me they were all fake,” he laughs. That setback left him with just £20 to his name, although he had assets in Egypt. Yet last year his engineering company, Allam Marine, was valued in The Sunday Times at £220 million and his personal fortune estimated at £287 million, which almost matches that of the Queen. “I’m rich on paper, but where is it?” he says. “If I have 50 quid in my pocket I’m a happy man.” Hold on, I say, what about that Rolls-Royce in the car park? “I paid for it in instalments,” he giggles. Roller apart, Allam is not an extravagant man. He still lives in the house he bought in 1977 when I was at school round the corner with his daughters — although, to be fair, he has had a swimming pool put in.
Allam’s drive, ambition and work ethic are typical of many immigrants. He still works 12-hour days, despite having slowed down in recent years. What made him different to many new arrivals was that he also had a formidable education. Trained as an accountant, he also had an MBA when he got to Britain, both of which he put to good use through the Seventies as a financial manager for the Charterhouse merchant banking group, which at the time owned dozens of industrial subsidiaries to which Allam, a rising star, was successively posted to balance their books.
When, in 1981, Charterhouse decided to sell the company he was seconded to, Tempest Diesel, he bought it. Thirty years of hard work later, he is the largest manufacturer of industrial generators in the UK. Not only has he not moved manufacturing to China, he exports to that country, besides many others. “Nothing I make is not made in Britain,” he says. “I deal with higher labour costs here by being more productive and efficient than the Far East. I have a duty to be here and create jobs.”
He has never thought of moving somewhere more glamorous, initially because his three children were settled at school, latterly because “I have had a comfortable peaceful life here, no worries, I am able to concentrate and achieve what I have achieved”.
He has not, he says, ever experienced a shred of antagonism or even unpleasantness based on his race or religion (he is a non-practising Muslim). Quite the opposite. “My theory,” he says, with enviably scant regard for the prevailing orthodoxy, “is that discrimination is caused by the minority making themselves different, by telling the [indigenous] community ‘I am not one of you’. Ninety per cent of my friends are British. If I have an Egyptian friend it’s because I like him, not because of his origins.”
Nowadays, of course, it might be argued that his wealth insulates him from prejudice, but his high opinion of the British in general and the people of Hull in particular goes back, he says, to his early impoverished days in the late Sixties, a time when the city was (even more so than now) pretty much homogeneously white working class. “I loaded trailers at a flour mill, then I was a welder in a factory. The foreman there, a man called John Mainprice, I would love to see him again, he gave me every hour of overtime there was.”
A few years later, shortly before he joined the merchant bank, Allam saw a business opportunity to export wool. “I went to the Midland Bank and asked to borrow £400. The manager asked what collateral I had; I said ‘nothing’. He nearly fell off his chair laughing, but he gave me the money, 400 quid, no security.” A few weeks ago, Allam invited the bank manager, Peter Carver, to the KC stadium as his guest. “I was so pleased to be able to thank him and tell everyone the story.”
Allam obviously sets great store by seeking out and repaying those who offered him a helping hand. He tracked down his former professor from his postgraduate studies at Hull University, a man who tried to persuade him to apply for political asylum. “I refused,” Assam recalls, “I chose to come to England, I wanted England to choose to have me.” His benevolence regarding Hull City should be seen in that context, that of a man who wants to be accepted and who wants to say thank you.
“As a businessman I always believed none of us have machines to print money. We all make money out of our communities and there must come a time to give back to that community.”
Do wealthy business people, I ask, give back enough? “No,” he says, “they used to, 60, 70 years ago.” He cites several local philanthropists from the 19th and early 20th centuries. “These people disappeared. What’s gone wrong? The answer is the plc. It’s not their money any more, they’re reporting to shareholders.”
Allam does not have that constraint. He owns his company 100 per cent. “It was always in my mind to donate money, as soon as my company was on strong ground.” He has given millions to medical research projects at Hull University and the nearby Castle Hill Hospital. He also funds a hospital near Luxor, helped to build a cathedral in Cairo and donates significant amounts to local sports teams and aspiring athletes, particularly squash players, that being the game he used to enjoy most himself. “Name a sportsman with an Asbo,” he says, “you can’t! Sport is the most powerful tool to correct society.” Despite such generosity, no one took much notice before his involvement with Hull City. Now, his face is in the Hull Daily Mail every other day. “Everything else didn’t matter,” he laughs, “it’s because of the football.”

 

Part 2 (hoprfully?)
Having initially thought his investment might amount to around £12 million, Allam watched as the full debts of the club were revealed during due diligence. At £27 million, his accountants advised him to pull out.
“I thought about calling a press conference and saying to the people of Hull, ‘please find another chairman’. I am pleased I was patient and the extra millions did not deter me.” In pure business terms, of course, the acquisition made no sense. “There is no benefit to my business whatsover,” he admits. “Quite the opposite.”
Having said that, Allam does not intend “to join the lousy business practice. Yes, the economics of football are crazy, but not with me. We owed £40 million, we had too many players and they were paid too much. Thirty-four people had company cars, including part-time secretaries. Now, we don’t owe anybody anything. We’ve got the right squad now: young, loyal, ambitious. The highest salary is £28,000 a week, which I inherited. There’s nothing to say you can’t run a football club on sound business lines.”
Something is working: having been close to the relegation zone when he came in, City are now in the play-off positions for promotion and playing attractive football under a new manager, local hero Nick Barmby.
Usually when a local benefactor comes in, a starstruck boyhood fan who’ll pay a fading talent 50 grand a week just so he can have a beer with him after the game, costs spiral. But to Allam, footballers are employees like any other. “I’ve worked hard for my money,” he says. “I still do. I’m not going to throw money at anybody.”
Fair enough, but as a supporter of the club and someone who wants to see the city thrive, I’m delighted this engaging man has, if not thrown, then at least gently pushed, so much cash in the right direction. Such generosity puts many others to shame.

 

Thanks - a nice read if nothing particularly 'new' in there. Was it in the sport pages?

 

lovely stuff. I still reckon some people have doubts and are a bit sceptical but that might just be remnants of their feelings to the previous regime (PD+PB)

 

Very interesting read and a reminder of how grateful we should be to the Allams for saving our club. Football fans do make me laugh sometimes (and cry at others - those booing the other day for instance) as they think that other people should just constantly put their own money into something which on the whole never makes any kind of decent return. So as an investment, a football club is usually financial suicide, but thanks to the benevolence of Papa Allam, our club has a future and with a manager in place who deserves our patience.

 

Great read.
However eccentric the guy seems, I for one am glad he bought the club.

 

Big effort Doggy,thank you

 

How humbling - we are so very fortunate for this man to have chosen to live among us.

 

Really interesting read -thanks Doggy for taking the time to pass it on. Just as a matter of interest who's the author?

 

Puts into context the situation which we could have been in and where we are now! We got very lucky with Mr Allam and he deserves a big thank you. Shame, we haven't got a song for them!*
The whole team needs our support over the next few months for one last push. Starting with 3 points on Sat!*

U.T.T*

 

Good read, its about time that we the fans gave him something back.

 

Cheers for that, interesting and thoughtful stuff. I asked the wife to pick up a copy of the Times so I could read it there, but she came home with the Telegraph!

 

Many thanks for posting this, a very interesting read, and nice to hear there are at least one or two philanthropists about.

 

I honestly couldn't be arsed to call you anything !

 

Suspicion is fine, everyone has some selfish reason on some level for doing anything they do, until you identify it you don't know whether to be worried or not. Sometimes it'll be financial reasons, which doesn't make sense in this case, sometimes it's personal like doing charity work because you feel good for having done it.

I don't buy the "when you make money in an area you should return it" feeling. You've made the money because you've provided a service, there's no need to return it back. I can see a desire to repay the people who directly helped him, the foreman and the bank manager for example, but I'm not sure about the City as a whole.

That article though, somewhere in it there was a comment about him needing to feel accepted and that's the kind of feel I've got from it. I think that's the nearest to sinister we're getting with this. He does seem to do a lot of things to be accepted by everyone, as though he has difficulty feeling he has been. I mean he's still living in the same house he was before he was ridiculously rich, just like trying to fit in with the locals, and the gifts to the city. He's done something for all the sporting teams now hasn't he? It's like a much more expensive version of the uncool kid at school doing the cool kids' homework so that they can be part of their group.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing either. If that is the case, then for him to get what he needs from it the club needs to thrive so that's good for all of us. It's no different to when AP was here the first time, he was a businessman so he was here because he'd seen an opportunity to make money. Our situation was such that he had to make us successful to be able to get a decent return, where previous owners could asset strip us there was no choice.

 

You know I used to know him when he was a welder. He used to go into CD Holmes club on a weekend on West Parade and sit at the end of the bar with his family.
My dad and his mates used to call him king farouk cos he used to wear a fez. I think he used to like a shot of whiskey back then, this would be 1974 time. If my dad was alive today I'm sure he would be stunned to see that he bought Hull City Football Club.
Had dark black hair back then and a big moustache and glasses but he always had extremely bushy eyebrows that he still has now

 

It might all be bollocks, it's just the impression I got reading the article.