Skip to main content

Villa owner exits UK but affirms his support for club

Nassef Sawiris, who is Egypt’s richest man and co-owner of Aston Villa, has told the Financial Times that he recently moved his residency from London to Italy and Abu Dhabi.  In an interview at his long-standing office overlooking Mayfair’s Berkeley Square that he has since vacated, he said the decision to move abroad after 15 years of living in the UK was due to a government crackdown on non-domiciled residents announced by the previous Tory administration.

Sawiris, whose net worth was estimated at $9bn by Forbes, is the youngest son of the late Onsi Sawiris, who founded a construction company in the 1950s and built it over decades into a large multinational corporation now called Orascom Construction. As the business grew, the family diversified, entering the cement industry and expanding operations from Egypt into other emerging markets.

The UK “gave me a home when the Muslim Brotherhood came to Egypt and I will always be in debt”, he said. “I’m keeping my house, I’m growing my investment in Aston Villa, looking at expanding the stadium. And it hasn’t changed my love for this country.”

Exiting UK taxpayers face limits on how much time they can return to spend in the country each year, in many cases 90 days annually, with just 30 days permitted for work. Sawiris will use some of those days to visit and attend matches of at Aston Villa, which exited the Champions League last week despite a spirited attempted comeback in the second leg of the quarter-final against Qatar-owned Paris Saint-Germain.   The club is supported by the Prince of Wales.

He and US billionaire Wes Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, acquired a 55 per cent stake in the club for £30mn in 2018, rescuing it from financial crisis and returning it to the Premier League, where the team currently sits in seventh place.

Sawiris and his partners have invested heavily into the football club to improve performance. However, the club is not yet profitable and previously sold young players to comply with Premier League financial regulations that limit how much teams are allowed to lose.

Sawiris has complained that the rules are anti-competitive and prevent challenger clubs from closing the gap with the likes of Manchester City and Liverpool.   He told the Pink 'Un, “The Premier League is under the impression that what makes it great is Manchester United and Liverpool and Chelsea and Arsenal, so they have to cater for these guys. But what makes the Premier League great is that Manchester United get their butts kicked by Brighton.”

Aston Villa will see the capacity of its stadium boosted to more than 50,000 seats from current levels of 42,000, as part of a plan by Sawiris to invest around £100mn more into the team. However, development is pending local officials moving ahead with expanding rail links.

 

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's no deal say Spurs insiders over Taiwanese takeover

Senior figures at Tottenham Hotspur insisted on Friday that they had not been informed of any deal to sell Daniel Levy’s stake in the club. A business group, Eight Sports Capital — which is said to include a billionaire Taiwanese financier — claimed that it had an agreement in place to buy a 24.99 per cent stake in ENIC, the club’s majority owners, from Levy, who owns 29.88 per cent. The Times has been told Ng Wing Fai and Brooklyn Earick form part of the group, having both been linked previously to potential takeovers of the Premier League club. The Taiwanese businessman, Richard Tsai, is also said to be part of the consortium. He is reportedly worth £7 billion.  Last year Earick, the former DJ and tech entrepreneur, was part of an attempted £4.5 billion takeover, which was “unequivocally rejected” by Spurs.  An ENIC spokesperson said: “We can confirm that neither ENIC nor THFC are aware of any sale by Daniel Levy’s Family Trust of its minority stake in ENIC, THFC’...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spurs CEO attacks luxury training base

The Tottenham Hotspur chief executive Vinai Venkatesham has issued a withering assessment of the way the club was run under Daniel Levy, likening the state-of-the-art training centre to a five-star hotel rather than a centre of high performance.  Venkatesham was appointed to his role in April 2025, having stepped down as chief executive at Arsenal the previous summer. However, he has said that some aspects of the club were “in a significantly worse state” than he expected.  “Our training centre is amazing, one of the best, if not the best in the world,” Venkatesham told BBC Sport. “But when you look around, it looks more like a five-star hotel than it does a performance environment. That will change over the summer. I think there are many areas where the club hasn’t got the right level of expertise.”  He explained that the football side of operations was the club’s main downfall when he arrived last year. [One Spurs fan wryly observed that it was like a water company sayi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fulham requires big funding from owner

After lengthy delays, Fulham’s shiny, new Riverside Stand has finally opened, creating “a unique Thameside destination with first class facilities for supporters and partners on match days, as well as for the wider community year-round”. This ambitious project has increased Craven Cottage’s capacity by around 4,000 to 29,600, while it has also taken advantage of the club’s fantastic location and wealthy catchment area by including two Michelin star restaurants, a rooftop swimming pool, corporate hospitality and event space, all benefiting from views of the Thames. Chief executive Alistair Mackintosh observed, “Fulham is the sort of club that can have a business class or first class and have fans that turn left on a plane.” Indeed, there is also an exclusive members club – with a football season ticket as an optional extra. It’s fair to say that “the times they are a-changing”, as this is a long way from the traditional pie and a pint. However, in a world where clubs face the tw...
Post a Comment
Read more