Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters have called for the Fosun Group to sell the football club for a number of years and John Textor is the latest businessman linked with a takeover
Controversial ex-Crystal Palace owner John Textor has made an offer worth £400million to buy Wolverhampton Wanderers amid fan fury with the current ownership at Molineux. Wolves are the only team not to register a Premier League win this season – indeed they’re the only team in the top SIX DIVISIONS of English football without one.
Wanderers’ injury-time defeat to Burnley on Sunday leaves them bottom of the table and six points adrift from safety. After the full-time whistle, the home fans were heard singing against current owners Fosun, which has owned the club since 2016, and confronted head coach Vitor Pereira with chants of ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’.
Now, as first revealed by The Athletic, Textor, who sold a minority stake in Crystal Palace in the summer, is keen to add Wolves to his multi-club group portfolio. It’s reported that an offer of £150m with a further £262.6m in shares has been made to buy Wanderers.
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Textor currently owns stakes in Brazilian side Botafogo, French team Olympique Lyonnais and Belgium’s RWDM Brussels. The American businessman likes Wolves’ long-standing policy of recruiting Portuguese players due to the Eagle Football Group’s (EFG) model of bringing South American talent to Europe’s market.
However, Wolves sources continue to insist they’re not for sale and that they’re merely looking for additional outside investment.
Textor’s bid for Wolves came in the same week a Brazilian court ruled that his actions to step down as club president at Lyon, to ring-fence Botafogo, had to be reversed. Textor successfully avoided an administrative relegation to Ligue 2 for Lyon in the summer, thereby retaining his role as a key decision-maker in France. It is understood that he remains the majority shareholder at EFG, which is Lyon’s parent company.
There’s also the ongoing legal dispute with primary lender Ares Management, which is seeking to recover the $425m (£320m) it lent to Textor to purchase Lyon three years ago. Discussions are ongoing to reach a conclusion, which would see Textor retain Botafogo and Ares acquire Lyon.
Another disagreement, this time with EFG’s shareholders, Iconic Sports Eagle Investment, who believe it had an insurance policy for its $75m investment in EFG, allowing Textor to buy back Iconic’s EFG shares at a set price if its plan to take EFG public failed. In 2023, it did, and Textor did not repurchase the shares within the agreed-upon 12 months.
In the week after his bid to take over Wolves, a court in Florida ruled against Textor’s request to have the case heard in the United Kingdom, as EFG is a UK-based company. That was followed by his appearance at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in a separate case involving Atlanta United and Major League Soccer over the transfer instalments for Thiago Almada, who had joined Botafogo from Atlanta before moving to Atlético Madrid.
On Friday, October 17, an English court ruled against Textor’s application to have Iconic’s claim, valued at £70m, thrown out. A full trial will take place next year.
All this comes after the American lost two cases in Belgium, accusing former RWDM Brussels’ owner, Thierry Dailly, of fraud. He is also facing legal action from former Wolves and Botafogo manager Bruno Lage over jobs he may or may not have been offered elsewhere within EFG.
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