The men behind the Derby takeover as Mel Morris sells up

(Other contributor: Adam Crafton)

At the end of last week, a Derby County takeover fronted by Sheikh Khaled Bin Zayed Bin Saquer Al Nayhan was approved by the EFL. The Athletic had reported the previous week that they had an interest in buying the Championship club. Now it is set to go through.

So, who are the people involved in the discussions, those brokering the deal with current owner Mel Morris (above, with manager Phillip Cocu) and who may be on the board once the club officially changes hands?

The Athletic takes a look.

At the start of September, a company called Derventio Holdings (UK) Limited popped up on the website of Companies House, the British registrar of companies.

The firm, taking its title from the Roman name for Derby, has Sheikh Khaled — a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family — listed as a person with “significant control”, with Midhat Kidwai named as a director along with Andrew Obolensky and Christopher Samuelson. The latter two have since resigned, which indicates the deal could be close to completion.

Sheikh Khaled is a cousin of Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour and this is not his first attempt at following his relative into club ownership. It is been something he has been keen to add to his Bin Zayed Group (BZG) portfolio which includes construction, financial services and manufacturing.

In 2017, an approach from BZG was made for Liverpool with the bid believed to be worth £2 billion. It was a complex proposal and, in documents seen by The Athletic, there was also a plan to acquire £750 million worth of assistance from alternative investors in exchange for a stake in the Merseyside club and Sheikh Khaled’s company. It was hoped this would boost the value of Liverpool up to £3.5 billion.

BZG is understood to have produced a glossy brochure to champion its bid for the Premier League side and Kidwai, BZG’s managing director, was pictured with Liverpool chairman Tom Werner at a New York hotel during their negotiations.

However, in additional documents also seen by The Athletic, it was when Kidwai was pressed for proof of funds in the form of a £75 million deposit, or even a £25 million exclusivity fee, that talks cooled. Liverpool later declared BZG’s interest as “neither credible nor worthwhile” and made it clear that neither John Henry nor Mike Gordon, the club’s two principal owners, had ever met with the Sheikh or his representatives.

A lack of clarity around funding is why Sheikh Khaled’s proposed takeover of Newcastle United in 2019 was also called off, although the prospective buyers complained that owner Mike Ashley “moved the goalposts” by raising the sale price during negotiations. Ashley has denied this.

Kidwai, the only director currently listed for Derventio, was involved in the Newcastle saga. During those negotiations, he was happy to let fans and journalists have his phone number so he could keep them informed but it is understood the takeover was never really that close.

Kidwai has run BZG for Sheikh Khaled since 2008. The 54-year-old Brit, trained as an accountant after taking an engineering degree at King’s College, London. He later did an MBA at Sheffield Hallam University, before taking a series of managerial roles with UAE-based companies. He has also been listed as a board member for Al Firdous Holding PJSC, a Dubai-based company which offers services for pilgrims visiting Islam’s holy places.

The question most Derby fans will have, though, is just how close are Sheikh Khaled and his cousin Sheikh Mansour?

In other words, can they expect their sheikh to spend more than £1 billion on transforming the Championship club’s fortunes?

The short answer to those questions is “not very” and “probably not”, however it should be noted that Sheikh Khaled has a number of entities within the Bin Zayed Group and it is understood that the entity they have earmarked as the holding entity of Derby County, Bin Zayed International, has net assets of circa £1 billion dollars of its own. The audited financial statements of this company have been provided to the EFL and last week satisfied, and passed, their owners and directors tests.

As for the relationship with Sheikh Mansour, the Al Nahyans, like all other ruling families in the Gulf, have multiple branches and sub-branches. And, in this case, there is actually a legacy of bitter rivalry and even murder.

“The 1920s was a period of particular instability, with several assassinations,” explains Dr Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East expert at Chatham House and Rice University.

“Khaled belongs to a branch that was exiled to Dubai at this time and for a period his family was banned from marrying back into the main Al Nahyan line. They remain quite distant and there has even been some anger among Abu Dhabi’s rulers that the Dubai branch were using the title ‘His Highness’ when, as members of a less powerful branch, they should have been using ‘His Excellency’.

“When Sheikh Khaled emerged in 2019 with the Newcastle rumours, I and others who work closely on the UAE had never come across him before, so he certainly isn’t a major player and it was interesting that a Manchester City spokesperson tried to put some distance between Sheikh Mansour and Sheikh Khaled at that time.”

Newcastle, of course, have since been linked with Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund, but Ulrichsen sees Sheikh Khaled as being more similar to the relatively minor Saudi royal who owns Sheffield United, Prince Abdullah.

As for Obolensky and Samuelson, they brokered the Derby deal but will have no say in the running of the club if the takeover proceeds. The British pair have spent most of their working lives abroad, have together for years, with Samuelson the dealmaker and Obolensky the numbers man.

Samuelson, in particular, has a long track record in the business of buying and selling clubs and garnered somewhat of a mixed reputation within the industry.

A former pupil of Dorset boarding school Sherborne, the 74-year-old is the owner of Geneva-based Mutual Trust, a financial services company that has managed the affairs of hundreds of high-net-worth individuals, including several Russian billionaires. Another of his companies is Socfin, a Gibraltar-based firm that has advised oligarchs and sheikhs on how to buy football clubs.

His links with high-profile Russian exiles Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as well as Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, have brought him to the attention of financial investigators in several countries, including France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. But Samuelson has never been charged with anything and has repeatedly protested his innocence.

The Athletic understands the English Football League quizzed him about these money-laundering allegations when he was interviewed ahead of Aston Villa’s 2016 takeover by the Chinese consortium led by Dr Tony Xia. Obolensky and Samuelson were the brokers for that deal, too, and both were briefly on the board of Villa’s parent company.

Samuelson also tried and failed to buy Everton in 2004. It later emerged the backer was Boris Zingarevich but the Russian oligarch pulled out once his involvement had been made public.

Eight years later, however, Samuelson did help Zingarevich’s son, Anton, buy Reading. The Berkshire-based club were promoted to the Premier League that season and, having passed the owners’ and directors’ test, Obolensky and Samuelson joined Reading’s board.

Reading’s stay in the top flight was short-lived, though, and when Anton Zingarevich refused to pay the second of two instalments for the club in September 2013, ownership reverted to Sir John Madejski.

After several failed attempts to find a new buyer, Obolensky and Samuelson left the board in June 2014. Madejski eventually sold Reading to a Thai consortium a few months later, saving the club from bankruptcy.

Six months after leaving Reading’s board, Samuelson was appointed as a director at English Premiership rugby union side London Welsh. He would resign in June 2016, six months before the 132-year-old club went into liquidation. During this period, he was also linked with an unsuccessful bid for EFL side Bristol Rovers.

It is understood that his commission for brokering the Derby takeover will be around £1 million. Kidwai and Samuelson have both been contacted for comment.

One of Football League’s 12 original members in 1888, Derby were relegated from the Premier League in 2008. They made the play-offs four times in six seasons between 2014 and 2019 but could only manage a mid-table finish last year and have really struggled this season.

They are currently bottom of the Championship, having won just one of their first 11 league games. The club have also been losing millions of pounds in pursuit of the Premier League but were cleared of breaching the EFL’s profitability and sustainability rules in August, although the league has appealed against that decision.

(Top photo: Jon Hobley/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)