City Ownership

[wahablue]

Chris in London/An excellent,well thought-out detailed response.Thank you.

 

[bluemonkey71]

Chris in London/An excellent,well thought-out detailed response.Thank you.

what he said ^^

 

[Bluemoon115]

After the whole Toxic Shinatwatra affair I'd have thought people would approach this a little less blindly.

The fact that it was edited out of the published interview strongly suggests that the club do not want it publishing. The extent of the reasons is up for debate, but why change something if there's nothing to hide?

 

[Didsbury Dave]

(Long post)
Much as I admire Damocles, I think he’s got the wrong end of the stick on this one.

If you equate ownership with ‘who provided the money that was used to buy the club’ the answer is ‘Sheikh Mansour’ via of course ADUG. There is not a scrap of evidence to suggest anything else, and the Club at the time of the takeover was explicit that ADUG was funded entirely by Sheikh Mansour’s personal wealth – ie not for instance from the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth fund or from other members of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi. Sheikh Mohammed has not parted with a penny towards the purchase of the club or its subsequent funding. To answer Damocles’ question, our investor is Sheikh Mansour, no-one else.

So, why does the manager imply something different? Because I suspect that Sheikh Mohammed has a significant degree of influence over the direction the club takes without actually owning any part of it. And I rather doubt that amongst the Abu Dhabi ruling family, he and Sheikh Mansour are the only ones whose opinion counts. There are a number of influential voices there, even though the club belongs to Sheikh Mansour and Sheikh Mansour alone. (I also suspect that somebody somewhere suggested to RM that it might be a sensible or diplomatic thing to say).

We need to remember that notions of ownership in royal circles, especially middle eastern ones, do not exactly correspond with the ordinary concept of ownership in western societies. I own my house, which means I can mortgage it and sell it if I want. The Queen ‘owns’ Balmoral, Windsor, Buck Pal, etc, but could she sell or mortgage them? No. The reality is that she holds them on trust for her successors, and ultimately for the nation. That trust isn’t set out in writing anywhere, but it is there, nonetheless. Comparing ordinary concepts of ownership with the ownership of assets by royal/ruling families is a bit like comparing apples and pears.

Of course, the Queen does own other assets in her personal capacity, like her dogs and horses, which she can dispose of at will. Sheikh Mansour’s ownership of City perhaps looks on the face of it like a personal investment, not an asset he holds for the greater good of his nation. Yet we all know that City wasn’t purchased as a cash-cow, like the Glazers purchased United, nor was it bought for reasons of personal vanity, like Abramovic bought Chelsea. On this forum we know better than most how naive it is, as many lazy London based journalists have done, to consider City just as being a rich Arab’s plaything that one day he will get bored of. The purchase of City, albeit by one wealthy individual in his private capacity, is part of an extremely long term plan intended to benefit the entire Emirate. Heartening though it is to see pictures of our owner and his children wearing City shirts, the reality is that our club is now a significant publicity machine for the entire Abu Dhabi economy. Etihad Airlines’ logo is beamed to millions of people from Singapore to Buenos Aires. Tourism to Abu Dhabi is on the up.

The ruling family’s ultimate aim of course is to put Abu Dhabi in a position so that when the oil in Abu Dhabi does eventually run out, the Emirate remains an economic power and does not revert to being a strip of land in the desert as it was for all but the last 50 years or so of its existence. If you go there, you will notice other aspects of nation building – infrastructure (roads, hospitals etc), the new financial district they are building there. It is all part of a long term plan and City is a small but important feature of that. The comparison with the Queen owning Balmoral etc is not an exact one, because nobody suggests that City is now owned on trust for the people of Abu Dhabi, but it illustrates that in Sheikh Mansour’s circle, even assets owned personally are not always acquired simply for personal satisfaction.

Given the very long-term nature of the plan, and the nature of the dynamics within the ruling family, it is inconceivable that this is not a plan which the very highest echelons of the ruling family in Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed included, have not had significant involvement with. I grant you, it stretches belief to imagine that Sheikh Mohammed is involved to the level of deciding that we should go for Dzeko in January rather than Torres, but the idea that he has had nothing to do with the project is it seems to me equally inconceivable. Is anybody suggesting that one day Sheikh Mansour woke up and decided to buy City, the club he’d been following since he was a lad? No – we were chosen carefully as being the club who was (a) available (thanks, Frank) and (b) the best option to provide the long-term success story that the owner and his family want it to be. Who else did they (I emphasise ‘they’) look at – Villa? Spurs? Everton? Who knows, who cares – they chose us. Sheikh Mohammed was undoubtedly part of that process just as the various other influential figures in the ruling family were. Neither the owner nor the others in the decision-making circle were driven by a desire to see City succeed for the sake of the club, but because of what that success and exposure will bring to Abu Dhabi in the wider context.

All this of course, is what makes Sheikh Mansour the perfect football club owner. The one thing he is not doing it for is to make money. The sovereign wealth fund does that. As has been said elsewhere, there is not a scrap of evidence or even the whisper of a suspicion about him in terms of human rights abuses. He bought City because his Emirate, Abu Dhabi, needs is to put itself on the map – and owning the most successful football club in Europe will certainly do that. His uncle is part of the decision making process, not part of the ownership structure. Sheikh Mansour craves success in the EPL and the Champions League because the world has an insatiable appetite for those two competitions. Abu Dhabi wants success, and has virtually unlimited resources to achieve it. We are the vehicle for that success, so let’s enjoy the ride.

Brilliant post Chris, and I'm happy to take that as the reason behind the comment. Unusual it was missed from the website quote though.

One little tip....noone calls it the "EPL"...;-)

 

[CTID1974]

Chris in London/An excellent,well thought-out detailed response.Thank you.

what he said ^^

and here as well, risked a kicking at work reading it, but a great post !!

 

[Chris in London]

Brilliant post Chris, and I'm happy to take that as the reason behind the comment. Unusual it was missed from the website quote though.

One little tip....noone calls it the "EPL"...;-)

I suspect it was edited out of the OS to avoid the sort of reaction this thread has generated.

BTW - "EPL" = 3 characters; "Premier League" = 13 characters.

After a post that long, you are suggesting I should have made it even longer?

;-)

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Brilliant post Chris, and I'm happy to take that as the reason behind the comment. Unusual it was missed from the website quote though.

One little tip....noone calls it the "EPL"...;-)

I suspect it was edited out of the OS to avoid the sort of reaction this thread has generated.

BTW - "EPL" = 3 characters; "Premier League" = 13 characters.

After a post that long, you are suggesting I should have made it even longer?

;-)

It's about credibility, Chris ;-)

 

[CTID1974]

After the whole Toxic Shinatwatra affair I'd have thought people would approach this a little less blindly.

The fact that it was edited out of the published interview strongly suggests that the club do not want it publishing. The extent of the reasons is up for debate, but why change something if there's nothing to hide?

Because the press might have a field day with it as they do everything else related to the club at the moment, and seeing as 95% of them wouldn't be bright enough to pick up on mancinis speech, they'd only trawl the website fishing for crap to report about at a later time ?

 

[Ticket For Schalke]

After the whole Toxic Shinatwatra affair I'd have thought people would approach this a little less blindly.

The fact that it was edited out of the published interview strongly suggests that the club do not want it publishing. The extent of the reasons is up for debate, but why change something if there's nothing to hide?

http://www.mcfc.co.uk/Video/Interviews/Homecoming-Mancini-speech

maybe they were waiting for this.

 

[Bluemoon115]

After the whole Toxic Shinatwatra affair I'd have thought people would approach this a little less blindly.

The fact that it was edited out of the published interview strongly suggests that the club do not want it publishing. The extent of the reasons is up for debate, but why change something if there's nothing to hide?

Because the press might have a field day with it as they day everything else related to the club at the moment, and seeing as 95% of them wouldn't be bright enough to pick up on mancinis speech, they'd only trawl the website fishing for crap to report about at a later time ?

So because some half arsed Journo who people will scarcely believe might write nasty things about us, we shouldn't ask questions about the ownership of the club?