Foreign Tycoon investment ?

Subject, apparently, to final EFL approval.

Connor Southwell, EDP:
https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/23828423.norwich-city-analysis-mark-attanasio-shareholders-vote/

 

Attanasio's view of the way forward for the club post AGM:

Attanasio wants to retain City’s self-funding tag – but is willing to move the goalposts on what that looks like and means in the future. The American businessman, who is awaiting EFL ratification to take up his increased shareholding in the club, is prepared to invest from his own pocket into the playing squad to support sporting director Ben Knapper and look at infrastructure projects. Self-funding moving forward will be about retaining funding within their ownership group rather than a reliance on third-party loans.

“We look at the loans that come from us as self-funding,” Attanasio told the Pink Un. “One of the things that Delia and I were talking about after the meeting was that the plan is still to be self-funded. We need to get a plan from Ben (Knapper) as to what he wants to achieve. We had some meetings today about how we can expand the stadium, and the training ground and all of that requires capital.

If you’re going to try and shift the roster in any way, and Ben (Knapper) is talking about making it younger, then that requires some capital. We are going to put a list down of everything that we want to achieve and then we will prioritise. Self-funding is the best programme because it keeps us in control. Once you bring it third parties, and it depends on the structure, we aren’t looking for big loans from other parties because then they have that hammer on you. In terms of equity investments, if you had a passive partner that provided a lot of capital on a very long-term basis, like 15 plus years, we would consider it based on what is best for this club to make sure we retain control."

 

For those who haven't already seen it, there is an excellent post by Parma ham's gone mouldy, on his "State of the nation" thread on the Pink'Un forum, summarising what he took from the AGM and subsequent informal discussions with some of the principal participants. In contrast to Parma's usual elaborate prose, the style of this post is minimalist, a series of bullet points unerringly picking up on how much has already changed behind the scenes despite the common perception of a measured, "slowly slowly" hand-over of control by DS & MWJ.

https://forum.pinkun.com/index.php?/topic/150296-parma’s-state-of-the-nation/page/38/#comments

(scroll down to Parma's second post, 9th on the page)

 

Parma knows what he's talking about in both on and off the pitch and this is no exception. Attanasio and Knapper will bring a culture change, but that will take time and money we don't yet have. Parma has some praise for Delia considering her limited means in the modern football environment, but he is less forgiving of Webber.

"She has been a wonderful benefactor to Norwich. She gave what she could. It wasn’t enough and as time went on we had to injure ourselves to survive without even much of an overdraft. We were scarred by debt in a world that had fallen in love with it, got addicted to it and used it as a financial game of pass-the-CDF-parcel. It was all a bit of an anachronism and - along with Webber’s desire to polish his own buttons - it cost us Farke, a year of Buendia at the top level when we were on the up and left us with daft players we shouldn’t use, who in the end nobody wanted. Plus of course it cost us the entire positional Play club-wide education. Very expensive that bit I’d suggest. I suppose you could argue that Delia’s relative football poverty is to blame for Webber’s twisted sporting contortions, though goodness me he could hardly have sent us into a worse tailspin if he had tried."

 

That last sentence (highlighted by me) is Parma downplaying the mitigating circumstances, but the fact is, Delia's limited funds, exacerbated by her fear of debt and consequent insistence on self-funding, did tie Webber's hands in the summer of 2021 and made the sale of Buendia pretty much inevitable. As Parma himself points out, if Attanasio had been on board, and just the funds he's put into the club this year had been available, it is quite possible, even likely, that the three signings we tried to make, on Farke's insistence, at the beginning of that transfer window, could have been persuaded to come. And as a result, Normann, Gilmour, Kabak, Rashica, Sargent and Tzolis would likely never have pulled on a Norwich shirt.

 

Final EFL approval has now been granted and the Attanasios have taken 40.4% ownership of the club to make them joint majority shareholders

https://www.canaries.co.uk/content/club-statement-april-24-2024

 

Good news. A definite sense of the club moving forward.

 

Agreed, not really sure why the process seems ti have taken so long. Perhaps because we’ve been aware of the situation for some time and this information isn’t typically released at other clubs?

 

My best guess is that it will be because Attanasio is not a majority shareholder yet, it’s a conditional deal for the future. So they’ve dallied over approving it as it’s not like an immediate takeover where the assessment needs to happen swiftly.

 

As I understand it, the explanation relates to an inaccuracy in your earlier post on this topic where you say "the Attanasios have taken .........." In fact, an entity called Norfolk FB Holdings, led by Mark Attanasio, has acquired a 40.4% interest in the club, making the group joint/equal majority owners with DS and MWJ. The delay in EFL approval was because it required due diligence to be performed on all the individuals and/or entities involved in Norfolk FB Holdings, not just Attanasio.

[Edit]
"The process proved lengthier than many imagined owing to every member involved in the group being individually checked for proof of funds—but it has finally been confirmed and the shares formally handed to the 65-year-old." (EDP)

 

If you're a foreign country though, you just make a company, pay the fee (bribe) and you're in!

 

How long does it take to check a few bank accounts?

 

What about their piggy banks too?

By the way, if you haven't been following the corresponding thread on the Pink'Un forum, the post by MC_NCFC at 11.40 Wednesday, and subsequent replies, are worth checking out.

 

From the aforementioned poster on the Pink'Un thread:

"[MA] also has some unusual arrangement with individual investor player ownership. The Sara purchase was financed by him and some investors into his group. It’s a complex arrangement but essentially, to simplify it, a few people own Sara’s commercials. Any money made on a sale to another club provides them in dividends. MA’s plan is to create several of these deals going forward, he/his investors will finance future prospects to provide a return in a certain timeframe. It’s a new way for investors to make money in a quicker timeframe than stocks/shares/funds in which they are tied in for significant periods before being able to redraw any increase in value.

My understanding is we are the first club of our kind to create this innovative model. It should fund significant signings but we won’t see them for long before they are shipped off for a profit to please the investors. Furthermore, the plan I believe is, after proving the concept, to then create a fund/group several players into an investment. They plan to buy another club in Europe to do something similar but also to allow them to move players around that aren’t quite working out in the UK.

Overall I think it brings us benefits but changes the playground sufficiently for us and European football. I can’t remember which football association/group he’s applying to become president for but he’s trying to move the goal post diffidently at the top.

It's also interesting how he’s trying to reshape golf with the PGA. As well as what he’s done in Baseball. He’s a big character with huge ambition in sport but there is no doubt about it, this is about making money out of money for MA. I think it’ll be good for us, for where we are as a club, and allows us to step up as a significant player in shaping finances in football."

 

Thats interesting, but smells a bit off to me. If that is happening it risks being banned due to being a thinly veiled third-party ownership wheeze.

It might technically avoid the TPO ban, but it sounds like it’s against the spirit. And we all know FIFA will just invent their interpretation of the rules to make it hard for any club which isn’t one of the ‘big’ ones.

 

https://x.com/novy_williams/status/1799107426110812210

Interesting!

 

Maybe we become the Portuguese Posso?

 

The Pinkun has now picked up the story:

https://www.pinkun.com/sport/norwic...-city-mark-attanasio-linked-benfica-interest/

 

I wonder if there's some potential use in a Portuguese affiliate for work permits for South American players? At least from the point of view of trading/developing players, which it seems is important to Attanasio's way of making a profit?

I don't know the specifics, but Portuguese clubs are able to sign players from South America much more easily than we can (and the reduced language barrier obviously helps too with Brazilians). If Benfica sign a South American and loan them to us, are there work permit restrictions on the loanee coming to the UK?

Benfica sign the player cheap/young, use Norwich to develop them and build their profile in England, and then they're sold for a big profit with Attanasio laughing all the way to the bank.

 

Is that "Pozzo" or "Possum"?