Manuel Pellegrini Experience Financed By Tripp?

News has reached us that West Ham United's unprecedented spending is due to continue, there are two 'massive' deals that could come to fruition within the next few days that push the club's expenditure towards the £150 Million mark! Hammers fans used to a diet of failed promises and bargain basement buys and loan deals are understandably finding things difficult to take on board, quite frankly the sums being totted around are virtually unbelievable, not since the times of the Icelandics have West Ham been so active at the top end of the transfer market and even then the calibre of players targeted was not as high.

This of course leads us to the question that most fans of the club and fans of other clubs are asking, "where s the money coming from?" News that co-owners David Gold and David Sullivan had taken out a £50 Million short term loan seemed to cover the financial black hole, but the projected future spending has to have been factored in to the equation, so where is the additional funding going to come from? Well, Tripp Smith, a senior managing director of Blackstone and co-founder of the asset management group GSO Capital Partners, became a minority shareholder of West Ham in September last year. The club remained under the control of Sullivan and Gold as Mr Smith acquired his 10 per cent stake from CB Holding, an Icelandic group that gained the shareholding following the collapse of the Icelandic Stramur Investment Bank in 2009. According to documents filed in Companies House, Mr Smith became a new director of West Ham United’s parent company, while the Icelandic director Robert Svanstrom departed the group, the price paid by Tripp Smith still remains unclear.

There is a weird financial anomoly when it comes to buying shares in a company that is sometimes called green labeling in broker slang, essentially the new purchaser of shares can raise the share capital of the company in a positive way to support the company's stability. Incoming investment has to be met pro rata by the other share holders in order to maintain their levels of share holding, if not incremental shares in the company can be 'aggresively' attained, this situation is commonly known as an aggresive take over.

Now we are in no way suggesting Tripp Smith is attempting in any way to take the club over, but his actions may well have triggered the latest spending spree, for example Tripp may have put say £30 Million in to the club for the 10% of shares he purchased from Robert Svanstrom's organisation and at board meetings, to which he is fully entitled to attend, can ask to see that the investment is being used to good effect. We at the Org are of the opinion that measures are already in hand to begin the process of acquiring the London Stadium outright, the Alexander Athletics Stadium in Birmingham is due to have it's capacity increased to 50,000 which will make it the ideal all the year round stadium for track and athletics in the future.

West Ham United, obviously with additional investment on board, will be able to purchase the Stadium and finally make it fit for purpose, which means the tax payer might finally start to get back the money it always should have had and would have had if the stadium had been designed correctly with a view to the future in the first instance.

It will take a few quid though! - Ed