West Ham caught in the middle of a battle of global high finance

Out of credit: Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson’s three-year tenure at West Ham came to an end in ignoble cirumstances
Andrew Hodgson13 April 2012

A complex web of ownership lies behind today's takeover deal for West Ham, but ultimately the club has been placed in the hands of a group of bankers with no background in football.

The move follows the collapse of previous owner Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson's business empire, which was hit by the credit crunch to leave a power vacuum at Upton Park since last autumn.

A new company, CB Holding, today assumed control of the club from Gudmundsson, who has quit the board, and installed former Barclays banker Andrew Bernhardt as non-executive chairman.

But the formal takeover announcement only tells half the story as to who is really running the show in east London.

CB Holding was formed by creditors of Hansa, the investment vehicle used by Gudmundsson to fund his purchase of the club in 2006. By far the largest creditor of Hansa is the Icelandic bank Straumur and it is they - for whom Bernhardt works as head of corporate finance - who are the driving force behind CB Holding.

Yet that does not necessarily mean Straumur are the ultimate decision-makers at West Ham as the situation is further complicated by the bank's temporary nationalisation by the Icelandic government earlier this year.

Straumur is confident a restructuring plan - which will turn it into an asset management company - will remove it from government control but in the meantime its creditors have been taking close interest in its major assets, notably West Ham. Straumur has declined to confirm the identity of its creditors but they are believed to be a group of international banks.

Georg Andersen, Straumur's head of corporate communications, said: "The creditors of Hansa have formed a holding company with the sole purpose of purchasing West Ham.

"It is independent of Straumur and has its own board. We have done this to protect our interests. We think it is necessary to protect the asset of West Ham because of the problems the previous owner ran into."

Gudmondsson orginally bought West Ham in a deal worth £108m and, given the improved Premier League television deal, the club could be now be worth far more.

There have been talks about a possible sale in recent months and Andersen admitted that CB Holding are not in for the long haul.

He said: "I am not going to bulls**t anyone and say we are going to own the club forever. We honestly believe there is no buyer out there willing to pay the true value of the club at the moment. We are realistic enough to know that we will have to hold on to the club for some time - a couple of years, maybe even more - to do so."

The club's new chairman spent 27 years at Barclays and two years at GE before joining Straumur in 2007. He specialises in leveraged finance, a controversial area of banking which focuses on funding firms through high levels of debt. Andersen added: "Andrew is an extremely qualified finance professional and will greatly contribute to the management of West Ham."

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