Chelsea Holdings Limited have purchased 1,000 new shares in the club, although it may not be for new signings.
The owners of Chelsea have purchased £140m worth of fresh shares in the football club.
As per filings on Companies House made public on Monday, Chelsea Holdings Limited, the holding company that owns the club, purchased 1,000 new shares at a price of £1.4m per one pence share.
The injection of fresh capital into the club comes at the start of the January transfer window but isn’t necessarily earmarked for new additions, especially given Chelsea’s significant transfer outlay of more than £1bn over the last three transfer windows and likely need to be mindful of remaining compliant with the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).
The additional capital will most likely be to bridge the financial gap that has been created with regards to the club not making European football this season and the lucrative sums that come with competing, and the likelihood that it will be the same story next season.
While the transfer fees for accounting purposes have been amortised, in Chelsea’s case over periods of seven, eight and nine year contracts, a tactic that saw both UEFA and the Premier League impose a maximum of five years over which a transfer fee could be amortised, the West London side still have considerable financial obligations around those transfers that would impact cash flow.
Now 18 months into the reign of the Todd Boehly/Clearlake Capital consortium that acquired the Stamford Bridge club through the requirement of Roman Abramovich to sell in May 2022, instalments for the significant number of players that the club have purchased will start to be required.
While the club sold talent to aid their position from an accounting perspective, those deals would also be subject to instalment plans, meaning that Chelsea would have to find a way, without the expected Champions League money that Boehly and Clearlake planned for, and the additional costs incurred through the termination of employment of both Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter as managers of the team, to ensure that there is positive cash flow.
Chelsea Holdings Limited consists of 11 directors; Boehly, Behdad Eghbali, Jose E. Feliciano, Hansjorg Wyss, Barbara Charone, Daniel Finkelstein, Mark Walter, James Pade, Chris Jurasek, Jonathan Goldstein and David Barnard.
The shares likely won’t be used to help fund additional club purchases to add to the ownership’s multi-club model, with the shares purchased in Chelsea Holdings Limited and not BlueCo 22 Limited, the investment vehicle behind the plans to acquire further clubs which consists of Boehly, Eghbali, Feliciano, Pade, Walter and Wyss as directors.
Last year BlueCo completed the purchase of a controlling interest in French side Strasbourg, with the Chelsea owners looking to add further clubs, potentially in Portugal and Africa, as they seek financial and competitive synergies that will ultimately benefit the most prized asset in their sporting portfolio, Chelsea.
football.london
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