Hecky ....... and potential new owners

Yep - neither would I put in a couple of hundred quid in if I thought there's a good chance I'd lose it.
Which is one of the points I'm making here - IMO the deal has not progressed as far as many on here might be thinking it has.
Why would someone get involved with a business that they are unlikely to acquire?

There maybe, and I say maybe, because it wouldn't surprise me if people attending the Q&A this week come out of the meeting as confused as before they went in - but there just maybe a bit of clarification this week at the Q&A.

 

Ask him when yer go down ..

 

I look forward to hearing your report of the meeting , assuming that with all the unanswered questions you crave to know , you will be the first one through the doors when they open

 

I'm thinking of buying Sheffield Wednesday. I really really want to buy them

I'm sure they'll let me talk to the players and encourage them to immediately run to the corner flags and politely applaud as they roll the ball for the opponent to score at every kick off.

I'd have a word with the manager and tell him he'd be sacked but retained as a hot dog seller while appointing Lee Johnson as Manager (oh come on, it would just be funny!)

I'll also ensure players are given 1000% pay rises on 18 year contracts with a bonus based on the number of times they lay on the floor and wait for the referee to tickle their bellies.

I'd like to take all the roofing off as it would let more light in and suggest they play games at 1am to fit in with their international fans.

And I'd build dams under the ground to flood the pitch and have paddy fields in each of the goal mouths.

I'm sure they'd let me do all of those things on the basis that I said i'd really like to buy them.... no damage could be done at all.... could it?

 

I'd actually be very surprised if at of the people involved, if it does go ahead, use their own money. That's not how a wealthy person makes more. You leverage other peoples. Often to the indebtedness of the business you've acquired.

 

It's not all his money anyway mate. As part of a consortium, hes probably got to run everything past the other members.

 

Your a crank!!!!!! What you think doesn't really matter in the real world!!!!

 

Absolutely, money will be from markets and leveraged investment funds. May even be where the money comes from to buy the club, Who knows, It will happen or not in its own good time, and that's fine by me.

 

All of that based on fact of course

 

Sorry, I thought a thread devoid of fact and crammed full of personal hyperbole and conjecture didn't merit any audited facts at this time on Sunday, my humble apologies.

 

So you are saying Hecky is a liar then ?

 

Goodnight and sweet dreams

 

Lol !!!

 

I’m all for a mass debate but there’s nothing to debate here...

 

It’s an easy way for him to stop having to answer questions he can’t answer anyway due to aforementioned Non Disclosure Agreements

 

No.
Why couldn't Hecky just say - I'm sorry I cannot divulge any information or talk about any communication regarding the new owner.
But he didn't - he said - I haven't spoken to him only to say hello.

Like I've said - you would have thought if the deal was getting close then there would have been more interaction between Lee and Hecky - especially with regard to two areas - making sure the squad was strong enough for the Championship and making sure Hecky knew he still had a job after the take over.
But there's been nothing.

Now we have had the usual guys pouring out the usual childish sarcasm (and you know what they say about sarcasm) regarding this thread - but in my view this could be serious stuff for the club.
Would hate to lose Hecky.

 

When it happens it happens.

As long as it is done the right way I have no issues.


Constantly worrying about it is not healthy.

 

Of course I am concerned - all of us that have an interest in BFC should be.
And Im sure all of us would have a much enjoyable life if we knew that we had a owner that at long last was capable of providing the right level of backing to our manager - who in my opinion is one of the best managers in the football league.

Hecky with a bit more buying power - how good would that be for Barnsley Football Club ??? !!!

 

You are worrying about things that are beyond your control.

Leave all that to the legal team involved.

 

Beijing’s endgame: football with Chinese characteristics
Tycoons bought up clubs as part of Xi Jinping’s bid to boost the country’s overseas image. But an investment crackdown may leave some politically isolated

© Noma Bar

November 9, 2017 5:01 am by Ben Bland in Hong Kong andMurad Ahmed in Wolverhampton


The crowded Billy Wright pub in Wolverhampton, a working-class city in Britain’s West Midlands, is an unlikely jumping off point for President Xi Jinping’s global mission to boost China’s influence.

Yet, as Kevin James drinks with fellow Wolverhampton Wanderers fans in the pub close to the football club’s Molineux ground, he pays tribute to the Chinese conglomerate that bought the team in July 2016. It has pumped in tens of millions of pounds, bought foreign players, cut ticket prices and catapulted the club, which last won a major trophy in 1980, to the top of the second tier of English football.

Fosun’s £45m ($58m) purchase of Wolves forms part of a wider spending spree in response to Mr Xi’s call for a football revolution, with Chinese tycoons investing more than $2.5bn over the past three years in 20 European clubs from giants like Manchester City and AC Milan to smaller outfits such as FC Sochaux, in France, and England’s Northampton Town.


Four of the top teams in the West Midlands — Aston Villa, Birmingham City, Wolves and the Premier League club West Bromwich Albion — are now Chinese owned. “Off the pitch, they [Fosun] have been fantastic,” says Mr James, a season-ticket holder for 30 years. “They have been listening to the fans. They want the fans back.”

The unfashionable club, 140 miles from London and in a region that has been in decline for decades, seems like an odd investment for Fosun. Although profitable,Wolves’ revenues are unlikely to make much of an impact at its Shanghai-based parent company, better known for its pharmaceuticals business, real estate and assets like Club Med and Cirque de Soleil.

Bankers say tycoons like Fosun’s Guo Guangchang were keen to win the favour of Mr Xi, a football fan, and help China acquire the overseas experience needed to develop the domestic game. In 2015, Mr Xi launched a sweeping plan to turn China into a football forceto embody his muscular vision for the “great rejuvenation” of the nation. Boosting China’s influence in the world’s most popular game is part of a wider push to increase the country’s soft power and earn China its rightful place on the world stage.


Sergio Aguero with Xi Jinping and David Cameron during the Chinese premier's October 2015 visit to Manchester City. The visit heralded a 13% investment in the club from Chinese investors
Many of the tycoons who leapt into football also had their own financial motivations, hoping to take advantage of cheap financing to buy clubs before selling them on for a profit. But the financially fragile and emotionally fraught world of European football carries risks for the Chinese Communist party and politically connected tycoons.

Fearing that the surge in deals was getting out of hand, the government started to tighten scrutiny of overseas sports acquisitions at the end of last year. In August, it formalised a wider crackdown by restricting investments in sectors that had seen a flurry of what it deemed “irrational” deals including property, cinema and sport.

Having sparked the initial investment frenzy, Mr Xi had grown wary of his name being used to justify questionable deals, according to two senior executives active in Chinese football. “Originally everyone thought that so long as the Emperor likes it, we can do anything in football,” says one of the executives, referring to Mr Xi. “But they forgot that the Emperor also has to be careful about financial risks in the system.”


Mr Xi’s goal to turn the world’s most populous nation from a football backwater into a “great sports nation” is extremely ambitious. He wants to build thousands of soccer schools, host the World Cup and transform the national team, ranked 57 in the world, so it can hold its own at the sport’s premier international tournament.

The “extensive development” of competitive sports has helped boost the appeal of China’s “underlying values” and increase its “soft power and international influence”, Mr Xi told delegates at the Communist party’s five-yearly congress last month, where he was confirmed as the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. “The wave of positive energy felt throughout society is building,” he said.


Chinese football fans during a World Cup qualifying match. The country failed to make next year's tournament in Russia © Reuters
China’s president is not the first authoritarian leader to see the promotion of sport as a way to win popular support at home and burnish the country’s image overseas. But the scale, ambition and financial backing that Beijing brings to key state projects is on a level that is already transforming global industries from robotics to solar.

Exporting soft power is difficult for China’s Communist party because its overt rejection of democratic values and intensifying clampdown on criticism project a harder edge overseas. Football, which lacks the political complications of other sectors like media and education, should be an easier win.

“There is a lot of cachet in Chinese [buyers] acquiring football assets in the west,” says Jonathan Sullivan, a political scientist at the University of Nottingham who is researching the country’s sporting ambitions. “It is a good look for China to be involved with famous global cultural assets like Atlético Madrid or AC Milan.”


The estimated $2.5bn invested in European clubs in the past three years pales in comparison to the $220bn that Chinese companies spent on outbound acquisitions in 2016 alone, a record year for such deals. But the calculation is that football is more likely to win the hearts and minds of the local population than buying sewage treatment plants or factories.

“It’s about soft power,” says a second Wolves fan. “It’s about coming in and investing in a neglected area that’s been overlooked for years. People in the West Midlands like the Chinese. They’re seen as a moneyed, successful people. They are doing a lot more for us than the British government.”

However success is notoriously fickle in football. Previous waves of European football club acquisitions by US, Russian and Middle Eastern buyers have done little to improve perceptions of those countries. Will China be any different?