The Chinese owners of Birmingham City Football Club have agreed to sell their shares to US hedge fund manager Tom Wagner.
Chinese investor Paul Suen’s Hong Kong-listed Birmingham Sports Holdings Ltd. will transfer its 24% stake in the Championship tier club’s owner to Shelby Companies Ltd., an entity managed by Wagner, according to a club press release confirming a Bloomberg News report. Co-owners Oriental Rainbow Investments and Achiever Global Group also agreed to transfer an additional 21.64% to Wagner, as well as St. Andrew’s stadium, and all loans owed to them by the organization, according to a Birmingham Sports exchange filing.
Consideration for the deal is about £5.3 million ($6.7 million) in cash, along with a series of subsequent payments if Birmingham City FC is promoted to the English Premier League and remains there in its first two seasons, according to the filing.
Wagner will own about 45.6% of the football club after the deal, which is subject to approvals including from the English Football League, the press release shows.
Shares of Birmingham Sports were unchanged after trading resumed Tuesday. The company has a market value of about HK$540 million ($68.8 million).
Wagner is a co-founder of Knighthead Capital Management, which oversees about $9 billion and focuses on event-driven investing and distressed credit. The financier joins other US buyers targeting the lower UK leagues, boosted by a strong dollar and Americans’ growing interest in British football. US-based investors have bet on teams including Ipswich Town, Lincoln City and Crawley Town.
The Knighthead team and Wagner will attend Birmingham City’s final match of the season on Monday, the press release shows. Birmingham City will face off against Sheffield United, which has just secured a promotion to the Premier League.
In April, a Knighthead subsidiary set up Shelby Companies, a business registered in Birmingham that has the same name as a fictional firm in crime drama Peaky Blinders. Last year, Wagner led a group including Tom Brady and former world No. 1 tennis player Kim Clijsters to buy a pickleball team.
Founded in 1875, Birmingham City FC has struggled financially since being relegated from the Premier League in 2011. The club, which finished its season in the second-tier Championship in 17th place, reported a pre-tax loss of £24.8 million for the year ended June 2022. In accounts for the period, the club’s directors said “major repair works” were needed at St. Andrew’s stadium.
(Updates with details from the exchange filing from second paragraph and shares in fifth paragraph.)