China’s Fosun to pay £45m for Wolverhampton Wanderers

China’s Fosun to pay £45m for Wolverhampton Wanderers

Tycoon Guo pledges to return Wolves to English Premier League after latest Chinese football acquisition

© EPA

Chinese tycoon Guo Guangchang has promised to take Wolverhampton Wanderers back into the Premier League and “stay there” after his Fosun Group agreed to pay £45m for the second-tier football club.

“Our goal is crystal clear,” said Jeff Shi, the Fosun executive leading the deal. “We will do our very best to help take Wolves back to the Premier League as soon as possible.

“We believe the club and the fans belong at the top of English football and getting there is our first priority,” he added.

Mr Guo, sometimes referred to as China’s Warren Buffett, joins the growing list of Chinese businessmen betting on European football clubs.

The Fosun chairman is the second Chinese tycoon to invest in a Championship club, after the relatively unknown Tony Xia agreed to buy Aston Villa in May.

China is represented in the top flight of English football by CMC Capital partners, a media investment group led by Li Ruigang that paid $400m for a 13 per cent stake in Manchester City.

Mr Guo is a close friend of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who bought into China’s top club two years ago and is regularly cited as a potential buyer of top-flight European sides.

In June, retail group Suning agreed to pay €270m for a 70 per cent stake in Inter Milan. Last year Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, paid more than $50m for a stake in Spain’s Atlético Madrid.

The football-related acquisitions are part of a larger buying spree by Chinese companies, which spent more than $100bn on overseas deals in the first quarter of this year. That was more than they spent in all of 2015, itself a record.

Like Mr Buffett of the US, Mr Guo has used insurance group cash flows to fund a variety of acquisitions. But a second-tier Midlands club that has not won a trophy in 36 years represents something of a departure for Fosun, which boasts a number of glamorous brands such as Club Med and Cirque du Soleil.

Fosun’s chairman was at the centre of a media firestorm in December when he disappeared for several days to help in a police investigation that did not concern his company. People familiar with the situation say Mr Guo was asked to clarify his dealings many years earlier with a former Shanghai vice-mayor who is at the centre of a corruption probe.

Mr Guo was later released and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

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