West Brom fan mailbag: When will Guochuan Lai sell his majority share?
Every week we’ll be asking West Brom fans on our Facebook account for questions that will be answered by editor Danny Wright. You can join in by following the West Brom News Facebook account and watching out for weekly mailbag posts.
Guochuan Lai’s future at West Brom is going to be a major talking point over the coming weeks with relegation to the Championship seemingly inevitable.
The Chinese businessman’s popularity among the Albion fanbase is at an all-time low and questions are often raised about any potential progress in his bid to sell the soon-to-be-relegated Premier League club.
We asked West Brom fans for their questions for this week’s mailbag and one Albion fan is keen to know “when” a deal for Lai to sell his majority stake.
West Brom News editor Danny Wright has answered:
Lai’s efforts to sell West Brom have been going on for some time now. Former Birmingham Mail journalist Chris Lepkowski, speaking on The Liquidator podcast, has previously reported that some of the interest in the Baggies goes as far back as November.
We started to see more concrete stories about Lai wanting to sell up in January when Matt Hughes of the Daily Mail reported the Chinese businessman was “desperate” to sell amid fears of relegation from the Premier League. Of course, Lai’s nightmare scenario is set to be played out in real life with West Brom’s Premier League status hanging by the smallest of threads.
Takeovers take a lot of time to complete. They aren’t something that just happen over night – they can sometimes take years to complete since the owner first decides he wants to sell up. At this stage, it doesn’t seem as though there been any agreements nor any bids that meet Lai’s valuation. The Mail claims Lai wants £200million for his 88 per cent share in the Albion but was previously offered £130million, which would drop to £105million upon relegation. Clearly, that seems to have been rejected.
Luckily, relegation from the Premier League might not put off interested parties because they might be keen on a cheaper deal for a club that has potential and has very recently shown it can become established in the world’s richest football league.
The Telegraph’s John Percy has recently reported that “a number of parties are poised to move once the season is concluded” so that’s something for Albion fans to possibly look forward to. We’ll see how it goes but hopefully if something does happen, it happens as close to the end of this season as possible as we don’t want to be on the verge of next season kicking off without any new signings made.
In answer to the question, I’d hope that a deal for Lai to sell his majority share is done in June or July. The Premier League season finishes on May 23 and if there’s a buzz of activity around that date, I’d like to think something can be finalised before it’s too late.
In other West Brom news, Kevin Phillips has said whether Matheus Pereira will join Wolves.
Be sure to follow West Brom News on Facebook and Twitter for 24/7 updates on the Baggies and more exclusive interviews with Kevin Phillips.