West Ham Takeover

This hasnt really come up but on the 8th of June i.e yesterday,West ham got taken over by a bank.

They were owned by Hansa Holding,an Icelandic consortium vehicle.This went Bankrupt and so the banks who were owed money from this "Company" took ownership.

70% of West Ham is now owned by Straumer-Burdaras Bank,this was an investment bank based in Iceland that was closed by regulators in march of this year and is now nationalised like Anglo Irish bank.
So 70% of West Ham is now owned by the Icelandic government/people.

30% is owned by Byr and MP,these are both Icelandic banks also,im not sure if they are nationalised but they probably are considering Iceland's destroyed banking system.

For those of you that dont know,Iceland is probably in the worst position financialy in the Europe,much worse than Ireland.
In fact the media liked to joke when the Irish banks were nationalised and everything looked like we were going down the tubes,that Ireland was Iceland with different letters.

This leaves West Ham in a dire situation.The Banks will probably try to offload the club asap because they need the money and West ham seems a good proposition after Zola's good work this season but they may not.

I foresee them giving West Ham no or little money for transfers and they could decide to try to sell the clubs assets to raise money,i.e players etc.

On Sky news they were interviewing players and asking them were they happy with their clubs new owners etc.I dont know what they are playing at but the club has not been taken over,its been seized as an asset.

The media said Liverpool could be taken over by RBS if Gillette and Hicks failed to pay their loans and that it would destroy the club and it would be stripped of its assets to balance the books,well this has just happened with West Ham so it will be interesting to see what happens.

http://www.straumur.net/en/Information-for-creditors/Investor-Relations/Financial-releases/?xml=PR/200906/1320924.xml%26usercontrol=/Web/Units/PressRelease.ascx

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Iceland is not in the EU

That_Guy

Sullivan Teeny Backhoe wrote: »

This hasnt really come up but on the 8th of June i.e yesterday,West ham got taken over by a bank.

They were owned by Hansa Holding,an Icelandic consortium vehicle.This went Bankrupt and so the banks who were owed money from this "Company" took ownership.

70% of West Ham is now owned by Straumer-Burdaras Bank,this was an investment bank based in Iceland that was closed by regulators in march of this year and is now nationalised like Anglo Irish bank.
So 70% of West Ham is now owned by the Icelandic government/people.

30% is owned by Byr and MP,these are both Icelandic banks also,im not sure if they are nationalised but they probably are considering Iceland's destroyed banking system.

For those of you that dont know,Iceland is probably in the worst position financialy in the E.U,much worse than Ireland.
In fact the media liked to joke when the Irish banks were nationalised and everything looked like we were going down the tubes,that Ireland was Iceland with different letters.

This leaves West Ham in a dire situation.The Banks will probably try to offload the club asap because they need the money and West ham seems a good proposition after Zola's good work this season but they may not.

I foresee them giving West Ham no or little money for transfers and they could decide to try to sell the clubs assets to raise money,i.e players etc.

On Sky news they were interviewing players and asking them were they happy with their clubs new owners etc.I dont know what they are playing at but the club has not been taken over,its been seized as an asset.

The media said Liverpool could be taken over by RBS if Gillette and Hicks failed to pay their loans and that it would destroy the club and it would be stripped of its assets to balance the books,well this has just happened with West Ham so it will be interesting to see what happens.

For some reason I laughed.

Des

Des wrote: »

Iceland is not in the EU

Sorry,I thought it was.I should have checked.
Doesnt really change what happened though,leaves the club in a worse position if anything as Iceland is on its own in terms of its financial situation and it is a dire one.

leninbenjamin

Very scary time for West Ham, really do feel for their fans. However I can't see the dooms day scenarios people talk about coming about. There are simply too many people interested in owning premiership clubs these days, so I'd imagine there'd be more to be gained by not stripping them of their assets just yet. Someone could get a decent sized club for a knock-down price out of this. But it will be a scary enough Summer for them, they will probably have to offload a few players to keep them ticking over.

leninbenjamin

leninbenjamin wrote: »

Very scary time for West Ham, really do feel for their fans. However I can't see the dooms day scenarios people talk about coming about. There are simply too many people interested in owning premiership clubs these days, so I'd imagine there'd be more to be gained by not stripping them of their assets just yet. Someone could get a decent sized club for a knock-down price out of this. But it will be a scary enough Summer for them, they will probably have to offload a few players to keep them ticking over.

I would tend to agree with you,I just listed it really because this is held up as the doomsday scenario for clubs with high debt like Liverpool and Utd,so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.