Wolves owners Fosun International could have received a discounted rate after buying back around £39million worth of shares in the club.
That is the view of finance expert Stefan Borson, who exclusively told Football Insider the transaction could also be a sign of support for the West Midlands side from the Chinese conglomerate.
The Athletic reported on 6 November Fosun has bought back a minority stake in Wolves from US investment firm PEAK6.
The Chicago-based company only purchased the shares three years ago, with director John Makowiec joining the board at Molineux following the deal.
But after Fosun bought the shares back for $50million (£38.9million), the partnership with PEAK6 has now ended.
Fosun makes sign of support after buying Wolves shares
“It must be a sign of some support from Fosun,” Borson told Football Insider.
“I suspect that it’s come from an arrangement within the shareholder agreement that either allows Fosun to call for those shares and buy them or it’s the expiry of a certain period, which allows the investor to place them back with Fosun, or they were trying to sell them to a third party and Fosun had a matching right to acquire them at the same price that PEAK6 were going to sell them to somebody else for.
“There is a detail that we don’t really understand because, from what we were told, Fosun were actually more sellers than buyers.
“But it may just be that they were happy to take those shares at this price because the price was actually not significantly more than the investors paid for them some time ago, so it’s not been a good investment for PEAK6.
“Therefore, Fosun may think ‘Well, we may as well just take them back at this sort of level. There has been growth in the value of football clubs generally, so actually we’re getting them at an applied discount’.
“Maybe that’s what was going on there.”
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