The future of West Ham United appears to hinge on the fate of the Gold family’s 25% stake in the club.
It’s an open secret that Vanessa Gold, the last surviving child of former chairman David Gold, is keen to offload her late father’s shares.
Claret & Hugh has long been told that majority shareholder David Sullivan has no interest in exercising his option to buy. That leaves Daniel Kretinsky, who could become majority shareholder were it not for his existing stake in Sparta Prague.
West Ham chairman David Sullivan owns 38.8% of club shares
C&H has also learned there was genuine outside interest in the Gold shares, with tentative discussions held. However, talks broke down quickly, underlining how difficult it is to attract fresh investment under West Ham’s current fragmented ownership construct.
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That’s not to say the club lacks appeal. As we’ve often reported, Albert “Tripp” Smith has experience brokering billion dollar deals and many believe this was the reason he bought into West Ham.
Tripp-Smith could hold the key to any West Ham sale
The problem remains that any new investor would need to spend hundreds of millions without gaining full control, hardly an attractive proposition. Meanwhile, Sullivan shows no sign of selling, and some suggest the current valuation is inflated.
Protests and the Fan Advisory Board’s recent vote of no confidence have been noted by shareholders, with nerves growing behind the scenes.
If the aim of supporter action was to attract media attention, it has succeeded — catching the eye of Kretinsky. But with the Czech billionaire unwilling to part with his 27% stake cheaply, West Ham remains gridlocked.
Kretinsky holds 27%, Tripp Smith 8%, and the Gold family’s 25.1% would immediately hand a buyer potential control if other stakeholders followed suit.
The point about stadium ownership doesn’t ring true. By the time our ‘peanuts’ lease expires, grounds like Spurs and Everton will be 80+ years old and will be old and tired, and needing to be demolished and rebuilt. Therefore we will be in the same position as them, albeit without the benefit of owning the land. But who knows what might be available in 2120?
We might not like the stadium, but if we owned it as a capital asset, it would be a depreciating drain on cash with increasing maintenance costs as it ages. There’s also the immediate tax advantage of allowances against lease costs.
To put the cost into context, we pay less for the stadium each year than the average EPL player wage. Guido Rodriguez costs the same as the stadium.
No only is the ownership fragmented but also the owners don’t own the stadium. Not an attractive proposition just investing and buying shares in a club without getting any of the control in return. Any new owner would have to buy everyone out and then build a brand new stadium somewhere to all intents and purposes they would be just buying the West Ham name and brand. But if current owners don’t want to sell there’s nothing they can do.
I’ve said it before on here but nobody wants a piece of a club. They want it all or nothing. So to get new owners you would realistically have to have at least Sullivan’s shares up for sale as well. I can’t see many people wanting to work with him. Having your own stadium also seems to be something investors like, especially foreign ones. The whole infrastructure of the club is not elite level as it should be from the training facilities to the scouting network. It is a hard sell at the moment. In an ideal world I imagine any potential new owners would want one hundred percent of the shares or close to it. As it stands, with three major shareholders, I unfortunately cannot see a way we attract new investment unless they all agree to sell up or someone comes in with an offer they can’t refuse. Don Corleone maybe? Other clubs have not struggled for buyers, the Premier League is so attractive lots of people want a piece of it, just not a piece of West Ham in its current format. Such a shame. We need new owners more than anyone.
I believe any investor who has interest in buying majority shares in our club will have major problems Sullivan and Kretinsky will not go cheaply. Kretinsky in my opinion hasn’t been the man we thought he would be investing heavily into the club which is a disappointment for me