Birmingham The Subject of Takeover Bids

News has been flooding through from the Mail (Tom Ross) and BBC WM (Mark Regan) that there are offers on the table from four interested bidders; and those offers will be put to the BIHL board next week.

It is not surprising that interest is increasing in Birmingham as it would appear that there are several people trying to drum up interest. Pannu’s contract with Birmingham ends this year and it he be potentially trying to secure a sale before then.

Panos Pavlakis and Victor Ma Shui-cheong are new additions to the board in Birmingham but their instructions were to find investment.

Tom Ross broke the news and in his article makes clear he would prefer a UK-based consortium to take over at Birmingham. Lucky Tom, there is one in his report, with two Birmingham City fans backing them.

Whether it is very helpful to pick a preferred bidder at this stage is unclear, nationality to me has no baring on their ability to run the club well.

The other bidders include an Australian and Chinese group respectively; any is fine should they meet the credentials of a football club owner.

But could Tom’s beloved British bid of £32 million be dead in the water?

Often Partisan has pointed out that Paladini’s bid was given the cold shoulder as a result of it being played out in the press, not only is that considered contrary to Chinese custom but it is also some bad faith.

By that I mean it is a cheap way of applying pressure to BIHL to sell up.

Pannu in the past has not responded to such methods and some people on the Often Partisan site have expressed a disliking of the media revelations.

Furthermore Mark Regan revealed that he got the information from an email he had been sent. That could be an obvious sign of a deliberate leak by the interested party to apply pressure and to make them the preferred bidder.

But should Ross and Regan have to keep such news quiet in the best interests of BIHL? or is it their duty to tell the supporters what they know?

What we do know is that news of bids should go to the HK stock exchange first, BIHL may not react well to this not being the case.

Finally there has been suggestions that the take-over rumours are a ploy by Ross and co to drum up season ticket sales.

How silly! It is well known BIHL want a sale of BCFC (all be-it with an initial 25% sell off moving to the whole club) to imply such a conspiracy theory is just looking for something that isn’t there.

Collin Tattum writes ‘There is a realisation in Hong Kong that Blues have to be sold, and soon.

The identities of the people involved are not known.

But the group containing Blues fans are, insists a source with knowledge of their background, ‘wealthy, big-hitters`.’

Often Partisan cautiously put forward ‘What worries me is that damage has been done to this bid now; not necessarily because I want a UK bid to succeed but because I want the best bid to succeed and it could reduce the options available to the BIH board.’

Should news like this be in the public domain? or should Ross and co of kept quiet until next week? Do you care about the nationality of the new owners?

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