It’s said that one of the easiest ways to make a small fortune is to start with a large one and buy an English football club. It looks as if the latest person to learn that lesson is American auto parts millionaire and NFL team owner Shahid Khan.
Fulham might have looked like a good buy when he purchased them and if they had stayed in the Premier League they might well have been. Former owner Mohammed Fayed pumped £218m into the club to enable it to punch beyond its weight.
It’s said that one of the easiest ways to make a small fortune is to start with a large one and buy an English football club. It looks as if the latest person to learn that lesson is American auto parts millionaire and NFL team owner Shahid Khan.
Fulham might have looked like a good buy when he purchased them and if they had stayed in the Premier League they might well have been. Former owner Mohammed Fayed pumped £218m into the club to enable it to punch beyond its weight.
Now Khan has to drag it out of the lower reaches of the Championship where the Cottagers ended up this season. There are plenty of other owners with big wallets or substantial parachute payments to compete with,
It has now emerged that Khan paid £121m cash for Fulham in July 2013, not the £150m-£200m suggested at the time. The purchase price was £108m more than the net assets of just £13m of the Bermuda company Big Cat Holdings which owned the club, Craven Cottage and the training ground.
Fulham lost £33m in 2014, compared with £2.7m in the last Fayed season, on revenues up from £73m to £91m. Khan had to inject £26m in interest free loans in his first year of ownership. By December those loans had risen to just under £50m and were converted into shares.