With it now two weeks since the announcement of the takeover by Sumrith Thanakarnjanasuth, I thought it worth pulling together some of the various bits and pieces not just from the past fortnight, but the many months leading up to the takeover. So, what do we actually know so far?
Well, from the official announcements: very, very little. We were told that Darryl is retaining a small stake (less than 10%), that the capital structure of the club has been strengthened and debt reduced, and Tiger has stated that he is in this on his own (with a little advice from others).
As ever, the devil is in the detail. How has the capital structure of the club been strengthened? And what has the debt been reduced to? And to whom is that remaining debt owed? The recent letter to shareholders does shed a little light on this, announcing the issue of 2,411,860 shares in OUFC at £1 a pop. These shares will be allocated to Oxford Investment Holding PTE Ltd (Tiger’s holding company for OUFC) in return for cash investment and Ensco 1070 Ltd (Darryl’s holding co.) in return for “capitalization of certain accrued shareholder debt”. Again, however, there is no detail beyond this. How much cash investment and how much debt reduction?
As Darryl has said that he will be having a shareholding below 10%, it’s reasonable to assume that he’s going to be getting 10% or less of the new shares, with Tiger investing for the other 90%; this would equate to roughly £2.1m cash into the club.
But what about the debt? When Darryl bought the club, the total debt was £8,570,872 with £7,538,878 owed to WPL (give or take a bit as the figures are for year end June ’16, and the deal was concluded a couple of days later).
By June 2015, the debt had grown to £10,589,588, with £5,383,878 owed to WPL (suggesting Ensco had paid them £2.1m for the shares), and £3.2m owed to Ensco. Then, by the last published accounts which were for the year ended June 2016, the total debt was c.£12m, with £10,866,290 owed to Ensco. That figure includes the £4,383,870 which was previously owed to Woodstock Partners, but was bought by Ensco for £1.
So, it will be interesting to see just how much of that debt has been written off, and just how much of Tiger’s £2.4m-ish will be used to pay back some of that debt.
The issue of the £4.3m debenture over OUFC’s assets and future income has been discussed at length already on here. The only note I would make here is that we have moved from a position of soft debt owed to the club’s owner, to a position of hard debt.
Now, one of the key issues for me is just who is involved in this takeover. Back in October I flagged up a number of individuals who may be involved with Tiger to some extent. Since then, it’s been revealed that Taweesuk “Jack” Srisumrid has been involved in, at the very least, an advisory capacity to Tiger. The records at the Singapore equivalent of Companies House show that Oxford Investment Holdings were formed back in August 2017 and reveal another name: Supranee Piamphongsarn, who is listed as a Director of the company along with Tiger.
Who is Supranee “Oil” Piamphongsarn? And if Tiger is in this on his own, why is she a Director of the holding company? Well, she is the wife of Theekharoj “Bank” Piamphongsarn. “Bank” was, possibly still is, a Director of Empire Asia Group, the company founded by Pairoj Piempongsant. Now, those of you who have been paying attention will remember that Pairoj was, along with “Jack”, a representative of Shinawatra during his dealing with Manchester City. And both “Bank” and “Jack” were directors at Reading, despite not officially being shareholders. Also, along with Tiger, they remain directors of the company used to hold the land extracted from Reading.
In August 2017, within a couple of days of Oxford Investment Holdings being formed, “Bank” also replaced Tiger as the Director of Universal UK Investment Co Ltd, the vehicle used for Tiger’s shareholding in Reading. This may be because, according to Companies House records, that company still holds a charge over the assets of Reading FC and this may have been considered a barrier to Tiger taking over at Oxford.
“Bank” is also Executive Director of Reignwood International Resources Investments, a joint venture between the Reignwood Group of China and the Bakrie Group of Indonesia. Reignwood are owned by Chanchai Rouyrungrueng, a man so closely associated with Shinawatra that he was seen as the official representative of his party in Beijing.
Does any of this answer the question about whether Tiger is acting alone? Not definitively. But there is certainly a good chunk of circumstantial evidence here to suggest that he isn’t.
