Aston Villa now valued at over £1bn as Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris update confirmed
Today at 12:47 PM
The latest official update from behind the scenes at Aston Villa appears to have revealed how highly the club is valued by its main shareholders, Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris.
Edens, a private equity billionaire, and Sawiris, Egypt’s richest man, first bought into Villa in 2016, with their NSWE consortium paying £30m to take a 55 per cent stake from previous owner Tony Xia.
They have since taken full control of Villa, who they now own through their V Sports investment vehicle, which also owns a stake in Portuguese side Vitoria, as well as partnerships with several other clubs.
Many supporters consider Edens and Sawiris to be dream owners, with the pair bankrolling the club to the tune of hundreds of millions in order to get them into the Champions League.
Their financial clout has been complemented by smart football calls too. Hiring Unai Emery as manager was a masterstroke, while the capture of legendary sporting director Monchi is considered a coup.
Yes, they flirted with the upper limit of the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) last season and the margins will be tight again in 2024-25, but they have avoided a breach so far.
And Villa’s decision to back Man City in their challenge against the Premier League‘s APT rules – which govern commercial deals with owner-linked companies – shows the scale of their ambition.
Earlier this year, Edens and Sawiris put an additional £50m into the club via a share issue, and they have recently filed paperwork with Companies House that shows they have made a similar move in October.
And the mechanics of that deal have unveiled something interesting about the club and its ownership structure.
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Private equity firm now have almost as much power at Villa as Edens and Sawiris
Edens and Sawiris are not the only shareholders in Villa holding company V Sports.
Last year, the Midlands club announced that Atairos, a private equity firm with around £5bn of assets under management, had acquired a stake in the company.
Until recently, the London-headquartered firm owned 21.3 per cent of V Sports and, by extension, 21.3 per cent of Villa.
But they increased their stake to 26.5 per cent in August and now, as confirmed by a Companies House submission, they have increased their stake again to 31.1 per cent.
They have done so via a £50m share issue, which – as detailed by finance expert Greg Cordell – dilutes Edens and Sawiris’ stakes by 2.61 per cent respectively.
That leaves the two men with 34.46 per cent stakes, only marginally greater than Atairos’s shareholding.
Edens and Sawiris’s long-term plan
If they were to sell the club tomorrow, Edens and Sawiris would secure a massive return on the money they have pumped into the club.
But, like many other owners, the pair believe that there is unrealised value in owning a Premier League club that could increase their return by an order of magnitude further down the line.
It is unlikely that Edens and Sawiris both view Villa as a vanity project and are pumping in hundreds of millions solely to see the club succeed on the pitch – eventually, they will want to cash in.
It is even less likely that Atairos are in football for charitable reasons. And that means that all three of Villa’s main shareholders will be waiting for the opportune moment to secure a huge return.
Private equity firms typically demand a return on their investment in five to seven years, but that timeframe seems unlikely at Villa.
Instead, the owners look like they are in it for the long haul as they await finding the golden goose in terms of increasing revenue and thereby the club’s enterprise value.
