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The dramatic race to buy Manchester United has taken yet another twist after entrepreneur Thomas Zilliacus confirmed he has launched a bid to buy the club.
Wednesday was a night of chaos as the 9pm deadline United had set for interested parties to lodge their second bids to either buy or invest the club was extended after the leading bids from Qatar bid of Sheikh Jassim Bin Hamad Al Thani and Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s INEOS group were not submitted.
While Sheikh Jassim and Ratcliffe are both looking to buy the club from the Glazer family, the possibility of the current owners staying in control, with fresh capital being offered up by a financial institution or hedge fund, hasn’t been ruled out. But there are more parties looking to buy the club and Zilliacus’ proposal may be the most novel and ambitious of them all.
The 69-year-old has proposed a move that would see his group finance half of the purchase of the club while the other 50 per cent would come from United supporters themselves. But who is he?
Name: Thomas Henrik Zilliacus
Born: March 15, 1954
Age: 69
Nationality: Finland
Residence: Singapore
Net worth: Zilliacus’ worth is not publicly known
Who is he?: Zilliacus began his career in business for Finish mobile giants Nokia as global head of corporate communications in 1980 and headed to Singapore in 1986 to lead the company’s entry into the Asian market. In his positions, he played a big role in the company’s shift towards technology, specifically mobile phones and away from the manufacturing of rubber products.
He left Nokia in 1993 and founded his own investment company named Mobile Future Works. He remains chairman of the company to this day and is active in several areas including digital media, real estate and e-commerce. It has a controlling stake in more than 150 businesses, has offices in Asia, Africa and Europe and the company claims to have a combined market value of more than $3billion.
Zilliacus has also held several board and advisory positions and has several more business ventures including XXI Century Capital, the investment firm owned by his holding company which his bid to buy United has been submitted through.
Sports experience: Zilliacus was chairman of Finland’s most successful football club HJK from 1982-1986 and after moving to Singapore ran the team Geyland International between 1989 and 1995. He also owned the very successful ice hockey side Jokerit until the club was sold to Russian investors in 2012. He was also a keen football player himself in his student days and once took a term off from his studies at Helsinki University to spend a season in the academy of Brazilian giants Fluminense.
The bid: Zilliacus has proposed a bid which will be half-funded by United supporters and will allow fans to have an equal say in all ‘issues that relate to football decisions at the club.’
”Any sport club ultimately should belong to its fans,” he said in a statement. “The current development, where billionaire sheikhs and oligarchs take over clubs and control them as their personal playgrounds is not a healthy trend.
