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Ordos
Whilst Blues have been slogging hard on the football pitch, Carson has done it again. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, he’s been chasing deals within the People’s Republic of China, to expand the “Birmingham” brand name and to bring in more money for the club. This time, it was representatives from the city of Ordos which is in the Inner Mongolia province of China who Carson entertained on a private yacht in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong.
Ordos is a strange city – it boasts a huge new district called Kangbashi, a newly built conglomerate full of high rises, yet hardly anyone lives there. As you can see from this photo-essay in Time Magazine, it’s eerily clean; a beautiful city but with no signs of life at all. Most of it’s citizens live in the nearby Dongsheng district, and indeed it was the party apparatchik from Dongsheng along with the Mayor of Ordos who met with Carson.
Carson has done his homework though; Ordos is the second richest city per capita in the PR China, richer than Shanghai. The area has massive coal reserves, and the ambitious Mayor of Ordos sees these co-operation deals as a way to kick start development and to bring more people to live within the sumptuously built buildings. With virtually no tenants – residential or commercial Ordos could be seen to be a blank canvas, a chance for Birmingham to be in on the ground level in a major Chinese development.
Like before, the details of Carson’s little soireé in the harbour are pretty much under wraps; as yet nothing has been announced to the HKSE and the news agencies have released little precise details about the deals that have been signed.
In other financial news, Pollyana Chu has released her interest in shares in BIH now that the fully underwritten placing of shares has been completed. Judging by hits on this blog, there has been some interest by Blues fans in Dr Chu’s interest in BIH; I think now it can be re-affirmed once again that Dr Chu was acting as a broker for the 450million shares being placed, and she isn’t the shadowy backer of the club that people might have thought she was.
Another person who was seen to have taken a substantial holding in the club was Mr Pan Chik, of Astrum Capital Management, but he too has also disposed of his BIH shares within one week of buying them, leaving just three main shareholders once more – Carson Yeung, Vico Hui and Liu Xingcheng – as the club have declared all along to the Premier League.
The holding company have also extended the “best offer” placing of 1.1billion shares by a further two months, with the final closing date now set at May 25. This share issue, which could raise around £18million in cash for the club has now been extended by three months further than first anticipated; one hopes that if we can guarantee our Premiership status we will be seen as a more worthwhile investment and new investors may come forwards.
As more details about this and any other deal come forward, I will endeavour to do my best to continue to post it on this blog.
Tags: BIH, Carson Yeung, Chinese Media, HK, Liu Xingcheng, Pollyana Chu, Vico Hui
One Response to “Ordos”
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Interesting stuff. Thanks for writing this.