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DC the "successful businessman" and the failing media


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3 minutes ago, StudentOwl said:

Right, straight off the bat this is going to be a horrible long essay OP... for those whose time is precious or attention span is wavering or for the just plain indifferent I'll pop a "too long didn't read" sentence or two at the end in bold and itallics if you want to skip to that. For those sticking around, I can't promise this'll be the most coherent post as it's largely a stream of consciousness, but I'll do my best to justify the use of your time reading this.

______________________

 

First things first: I'm going to deal with facts as much as I can. Anything that's speculation will be clearly said as such, and I'm hoping you'll all agree that any rare speculation in here is a fair conclusion

Second things second: This is not a character assassination of DC. I make no claims to knowing what he's like as a person or businessman. 

 

When DC took over of SWFC, I like everyone else was delighted. Here we had a consortium led by a "distinguished businessman" who came from a very reputable and wealthy family. Naturally the imagination ran wild and figures about net worth were being bandied about with glee. Finally we were in the money. I don't need to dwell on what we already know about the last couple of years, but I mention this as it's often an explanation for what's currently going on. I argue it shouldn't be.

 

 

DC's wealth

The Thai Union Group (TUG) was founded in 1977, and according to their own website by 1988 had a capital of 25 million baht (approx. £570k, or £1.4 million as a modern day equivalent according to Bank of England's inflation calculator). This is important because DC would have been around 20 years old at that time- he wasn't born into extortionate wealth. I have no idea if his family were wealthy before this (I suspect they were relatively speaking, but that's speculation), but certainly they weren't international heavyweights like today. In terms of DC's personal wealth and affiliation with TUG, it's hard to say how much involvement he has beyond being related to the founders. His shareholder % isn't public knowledge, but he isn't on the board of directors, and according to TUG's own website his father (Chairman and co-founder) owns ~5% of shares, while his brother (CEO and co-founder) owns ~10% of shares. It's also worth noting that his father has an estimated worth of ~$700 million USD (~£530 million) according to Forbes. (Speculation time) This suggests to me that while DC is going to be far wealthier than you or I will ever be, any personal wealth he's obtained from TUG is not so substantial that he can afford to input many tens of millions of pounds into a football club. Certainly he can afford to buy a club and invest a decent portion off the back of this wealth, but not to megabucks levels (end of speculation).

 

So if DC is going to personally finance a push to the Premier League, it can be argued he'll need more money. Fortunately we were told when he first joined SWFC he is a "distinguished businessman" who "owns companies in real estate and construction". Here's where things start getting sketchy for me, and at the time I didn't really clock it because I along with everyone else was so excited about the incoming good times. And it starts with a simple question. What companies?

 

 

"Successful Businessman"

The media today are lazy, they tend to copy and paste news stories between each other, which is fine for getting information and a story out quickly, but bad for actually checking the integrity of the information they're posting and printing. It's very common in articles about pseudoscience, particularly climate sceptics. Someone running a blog will make a claim or statement (often erroneously), this will get picked up by another blog, which will then get picked up by another blog etc. and by the time the Chinese Whispers finish you'll find a blog saying "A scientist says X". In reality it was an electrical engineer or something. While a slight tangent, the point is that there's a pattern you can spot on the internet of people just copying what they've seen without any digging, which leads to an echochamber of ignorance if the original information is misrepresented. It follows a pattern, and it's a classic pattern that was seen with this information about DC being in construction. From the original Star article cited at the bottom of this post, we get this: http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/sheffield-wednesday-working-with-fire.html

This: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-404028937.html

and this: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/yorkshire-post/20150303/281496454743017

 

Now before anyone kicks off... I'm not saying DC lied. I have absolutely zero doubt that he owns companies in real estate and construction. What I do wonder, however, is how much of a money spinner they are for him... and whether anyone in the press actually bothered to ask about these businesses credentials. As I alluded to above... I'm not sure there's a Sheffield Wednesday fan who can name any of these companies or any of their projects. The media haven't reported these, and no amount of attempting to research it on the internet has yielded results. I don't expect an exhaustive list of Thai building projects on google, but I would expect even a medium-sized company to have public records of ownerships, list of directors etc... yet there's nothing. I'd welcome anyone being able to offer any information on this... if you can find DC's companies or affiliates, please do pop it in here. 

 

The point... a common defence of DC on here is that he's a "successful businessman" (Quotation marks used to quote any number of people that have used this phrase on Owlstalk). My retort to this is... where's the evidence? Not one Wednesday fan can name me his company. He has a very wealthy family so it's impossible to attribute how much wealth is from his own ventures, but we have been given absolutely zero evidence from the media that he is any sort of successful businessman beyond the same repeated empty statement. He could well be a fantastic business mind and leading construction tycoon, but without anyone actually fact-checking this claim and providing a company name we have no idea of his acumen at all.

 

The only evidence we do have of his business acumen is what we have seen at Sheffield Wednesday. During that time, we've seen record shirt sales, season ticket sales and general increase in income. We have also seen a continuing malaise in our commercial department, with many local businesses priced out of sponsorship or matchday boxes at Hillsborough. We've also seen ticket prices increase to effectively the highest in the division whilst being in one of the poorest areas of England. 

 

Finally, we get on to Elev8 and D-Performance. Now with these two areas I'm going to be cautious because I don't even want to flirt with the big "L" word that Neil still gets twitchy over since the Dave Allen days... But we have here two new companies that no-one has really heard of involved with the club in a big way. One has something to do with energy drinks and is also manufacturing our beloved kit. The other was registered in July and is one of the main sponsors around the stadium and is a taxi service that doesn't appear to be available for the average Joe of Sheffield. Certainly no contact details are findable on the internet, so it's not something currently actively advertising on the internet for use by average members of the public. Again, I want to deal with facts as much as possible so I'll be making no conclusions on these things. I'll only ask Owls fans to consider what their thoughts would be if they heard of the events in this paragraph occurring at another Championship club. 

 

 

The bizarre (some speculation)

This irks me. Narratives have frequently changed over the last couple of years. I don't need to go into Doyen and recruitment etc and don't plan to: It's largely unfounded speculation but there's certainly an element of something not sitting right with a lot of people there and with a thread already about it I have no interest in repeating the discussion. One example I would like to look at it Carlos. As of May 2016, he signed a brand-spanking new three year contract with us. As of the beginning May 2017, his contract was imminently expiring again and it turned out he only signed a one year deal. Another is that at the point of taking us over DC was heading a consortium. Then he wasn't. We then have the repeated whispers coming out of Hillsborough of long-term staff leaving highly dissatisfied. We have the repeated whispers of everything needing DC's go-ahead, to the extent that it includes the type of tiles in the toilets. We have cakeball. We have a starting XI worth of signings that never play. We have the kit debacle. Pricing for pretty much everything comes in this section too. Did I mention we have Doyen? Again I'm being careful with wording here, but we have a series of consistently difficult to understand and increasingly difficult things to justify coming out of the club coupled with what can be very contradictory information coming out in the media. 

 

 

Conclusion

So what was the point of this essay post? I'm basically done and wondering the same thing. I think it's that as a fan I'm tired of trying to look at the rose garden while the flowers die around me. Whilst on the pitch (largely) we've been good for the last couple of years, there have been some unaddressed questions that could perhaps do with answering... you can overlook them when times are good, but it's wrong to do so. We also have inconsistencies that are rarely addressed. Being speculative, there are question marks over just how much more money we can expect to be pumped into SWFC- and I'd hazard a guess that's largely dependent on who our "friends" are and how deep their pockets are. Finally, and being objective again, I have this: The next time you want to defend what seems a strange decision by saying "But DC's a successful businessman", you're only saying that because The Star said he was. We actually have nothing concrete to say whether DC is one of the greatest business minds of our time or an essentially failed entrepreneur. As far as I'm concerned he could be either, I've got no evidence either way... but that doesn't make me automatically believe in the affirmative. Let's judge what decisions are made on merit rather than on what we imagine any past potential business ventures might be. As for the media and their role in all this... ask the right questions. You're flat out not doing your jobs if you can't report basic facts like DC's businesses and make basic enquiries about things such as Doyen which are already in the public domain. 

 

_______________________________

 

tl;dr: Goes into info about what DC's wealth could be based on familial ties. Absolutely no evidence that DC is a successful businessman (or even a failed one, there's just no evidence full stop). Media hasn't asked the right questions and has ultimately let inconsistencies slide. Something isn't sitting right with me. 

 

 

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/who-is-dejphon-chansiri-1-7135144 (Dejphon Chansiri- distinguished businessman)

http://www.thaiunion.com/en/about/company/company-history (Thai Union history & links to share %'s)

https://www.forbes.com/profile/kraisorn-chansiri/ (Kraisorn Chansiri, DC's dad's, net worth)

http://www.bizstats.co.uk/ltd/d-performance-limited-10857680/ (D-Performance)

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11703/10295675/carlos-carvalhal-reveals-new-sheffield-wednesday-deal-ahead-of-championship-play-off-final (Carlos' 3 year deal)

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/sheffield-wednesday-doubts-grow-over-carlos-carvalhal-s-owls-future-1-8529818 (Carlos' 3 year deal expiring after 12 months)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31040959 (Dejphon Chansiri- head of a Thai consortium)

 

We'll be reyt... lol

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9 minutes ago, StudentOwl said:

Right, straight off the bat this is going to be a horrible long essay OP... for those whose time is precious or attention span is wavering or for the just plain indifferent I'll pop a "too long didn't read" sentence or two at the end in bold and itallics if you want to skip to that. For those sticking around, I can't promise this'll be the most coherent post as it's largely a stream of consciousness, but I'll do my best to justify the use of your time reading this.

______________________

 

First things first: I'm going to deal with facts as much as I can. Anything that's speculation will be clearly said as such, and I'm hoping you'll all agree that any rare speculation in here is a fair conclusion

Second things second: This is not a character assassination of DC. I make no claims to knowing what he's like as a person or businessman. 

 

When DC took over of SWFC, I like everyone else was delighted. Here we had a consortium led by a "distinguished businessman" who came from a very reputable and wealthy family. Naturally the imagination ran wild and figures about net worth were being bandied about with glee. Finally we were in the money. I don't need to dwell on what we already know about the last couple of years, but I mention this as it's often an explanation for what's currently going on. I argue it shouldn't be.

 

 

DC's wealth

The Thai Union Group (TUG) was founded in 1977, and according to their own website by 1988 had a capital of 25 million baht (approx. £570k, or £1.4 million as a modern day equivalent according to Bank of England's inflation calculator). This is important because DC would have been around 20 years old at that time- he wasn't born into extortionate wealth. I have no idea if his family were wealthy before this (I suspect they were relatively speaking, but that's speculation), but certainly they weren't international heavyweights like today. In terms of DC's personal wealth and affiliation with TUG, it's hard to say how much involvement he has beyond being related to the founders. His shareholder % isn't public knowledge, but he isn't on the board of directors, and according to TUG's own website his father (Chairman and co-founder) owns ~5% of shares, while his brother (CEO and co-founder) owns ~10% of shares. It's also worth noting that his father has an estimated worth of ~$700 million USD (~£530 million) according to Forbes. (Speculation time) This suggests to me that while DC is going to be far wealthier than you or I will ever be, any personal wealth he's obtained from TUG is not so substantial that he can afford to input many tens of millions of pounds into a football club. Certainly he can afford to buy a club and invest a decent portion off the back of this wealth, but not to megabucks levels (end of speculation).

 

So if DC is going to personally finance a push to the Premier League, it can be argued he'll need more money. Fortunately we were told when he first joined SWFC he is a "distinguished businessman" who "owns companies in real estate and construction". Here's where things start getting sketchy for me, and at the time I didn't really clock it because I along with everyone else was so excited about the incoming good times. And it starts with a simple question. What companies?

 

 

"Successful Businessman"

The media today are lazy, they tend to copy and paste news stories between each other, which is fine for getting information and a story out quickly, but bad for actually checking the integrity of the information they're posting and printing. It's very common in articles about pseudoscience, particularly climate sceptics. Someone running a blog will make a claim or statement (often erroneously), this will get picked up by another blog, which will then get picked up by another blog etc. and by the time the Chinese Whispers finish you'll find a blog saying "A scientist says X". In reality it was an electrical engineer or something. While a slight tangent, the point is that there's a pattern you can spot on the internet of people just copying what they've seen without any digging, which leads to an echochamber of ignorance if the original information is misrepresented. It follows a pattern, and it's a classic pattern that was seen with this information about DC being in construction. From the original Star article cited at the bottom of this post, we get this: http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/sheffield-wednesday-working-with-fire.html

This: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-404028937.html

and this: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/yorkshire-post/20150303/281496454743017

 

Now before anyone kicks off... I'm not saying DC lied. I have absolutely zero doubt that he owns companies in real estate and construction. What I do wonder, however, is how much of a money spinner they are for him... and whether anyone in the press actually bothered to ask about these businesses credentials. As I alluded to above... I'm not sure there's a Sheffield Wednesday fan who can name any of these companies or any of their projects. The media haven't reported these, and no amount of attempting to research it on the internet has yielded results. I don't expect an exhaustive list of Thai building projects on google, but I would expect even a medium-sized company to have public records of ownerships, list of directors etc... yet there's nothing. I'd welcome anyone being able to offer any information on this... if you can find DC's companies or affiliates, please do pop it in here. 

 

The point... a common defence of DC on here is that he's a "successful businessman" (Quotation marks used to quote any number of people that have used this phrase on Owlstalk). My retort to this is... where's the evidence? Not one Wednesday fan can name me his company. He has a very wealthy family so it's impossible to attribute how much wealth is from his own ventures, but we have been given absolutely zero evidence from the media that he is any sort of successful businessman beyond the same repeated empty statement. He could well be a fantastic business mind and leading construction tycoon, but without anyone actually fact-checking this claim and providing a company name we have no idea of his acumen at all.

 

The only evidence we do have of his business acumen is what we have seen at Sheffield Wednesday. During that time, we've seen record shirt sales, season ticket sales and general increase in income. We have also seen a continuing malaise in our commercial department, with many local businesses priced out of sponsorship or matchday boxes at Hillsborough. We've also seen ticket prices increase to effectively the highest in the division whilst being in one of the poorest areas of England. 

 

Finally, we get on to Elev8 and D-Performance. Now with these two areas I'm going to be cautious because I don't even want to flirt with the big "L" word that Neil still gets twitchy over since the Dave Allen days... But we have here two new companies that no-one has really heard of involved with the club in a big way. One has something to do with energy drinks and is also manufacturing our beloved kit. The other was registered in July and is one of the main sponsors around the stadium and is a taxi service that doesn't appear to be available for the average Joe of Sheffield. Certainly no contact details are findable on the internet, so it's not something currently actively advertising on the internet for use by average members of the public. Again, I want to deal with facts as much as possible so I'll be making no conclusions on these things. I'll only ask Owls fans to consider what their thoughts would be if they heard of the events in this paragraph occurring at another Championship club. 

 

 

The bizarre (some speculation)

This irks me. Narratives have frequently changed over the last couple of years. I don't need to go into Doyen and recruitment etc and don't plan to: It's largely unfounded speculation but there's certainly an element of something not sitting right with a lot of people there and with a thread already about it I have no interest in repeating the discussion. One example I would like to look at it Carlos. As of May 2016, he signed a brand-spanking new three year contract with us. As of the beginning May 2017, his contract was imminently expiring again and it turned out he only signed a one year deal. Another is that at the point of taking us over DC was heading a consortium. Then he wasn't. We then have the repeated whispers coming out of Hillsborough of long-term staff leaving highly dissatisfied. We have the repeated whispers of everything needing DC's go-ahead, to the extent that it includes the type of tiles in the toilets. We have cakeball. We have a starting XI worth of signings that never play. We have the kit debacle. Pricing for pretty much everything comes in this section too. Did I mention we have Doyen? Again I'm being careful with wording here, but we have a series of consistently difficult to understand and increasingly difficult things to justify coming out of the club coupled with what can be very contradictory information coming out in the media. 

 

 

Conclusion

So what was the point of this essay post? I'm basically done and wondering the same thing. I think it's that as a fan I'm tired of trying to look at the rose garden while the flowers die around me. Whilst on the pitch (largely) we've been good for the last couple of years, there have been some unaddressed questions that could perhaps do with answering... you can overlook them when times are good, but it's wrong to do so. We also have inconsistencies that are rarely addressed. Being speculative, there are question marks over just how much more money we can expect to be pumped into SWFC- and I'd hazard a guess that's largely dependent on who our "friends" are and how deep their pockets are. Finally, and being objective again, I have this: The next time you want to defend what seems a strange decision by saying "But DC's a successful businessman", you're only saying that because The Star said he was. We actually have nothing concrete to say whether DC is one of the greatest business minds of our time or an essentially failed entrepreneur. As far as I'm concerned he could be either, I've got no evidence either way... but that doesn't make me automatically believe in the affirmative. Let's judge what decisions are made on merit rather than on what we imagine any past potential business ventures might be. As for the media and their role in all this... ask the right questions. You're flat out not doing your jobs if you can't report basic facts like DC's businesses and make basic enquiries about things such as Doyen which are already in the public domain. 

 

_______________________________

 

tl;dr: Goes into info about what DC's wealth could be based on familial ties. Absolutely no evidence that DC is a successful businessman (or even a failed one, there's just no evidence full stop). Media hasn't asked the right questions and has ultimately let inconsistencies slide. Something isn't sitting right with me. 

 

 

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/who-is-dejphon-chansiri-1-7135144 (Dejphon Chansiri- distinguished businessman)

http://www.thaiunion.com/en/about/company/company-history (Thai Union history & links to share %'s)

https://www.forbes.com/profile/kraisorn-chansiri/ (Kraisorn Chansiri, DC's dad's, net worth)

http://www.bizstats.co.uk/ltd/d-performance-limited-10857680/ (D-Performance)

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11703/10295675/carlos-carvalhal-reveals-new-sheffield-wednesday-deal-ahead-of-championship-play-off-final (Carlos' 3 year deal)

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/sheffield-wednesday-doubts-grow-over-carlos-carvalhal-s-owls-future-1-8529818 (Carlos' 3 year deal expiring after 12 months)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31040959 (Dejphon Chansiri- head of a Thai consortium)

probably shouldn't quote all that

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Wednesday fans have a long history of seeing one thing that seems out of place (often due to just not having the information) and then deciding that there's some great conspiracy, and snowball a couple of fairly normal things into an "OMG!" furore.

 

Can summarise the OP as:

Don't know how rich DC is.
Don't know all DCs business interests due to language barrier and lack of familiarity with Thai record keeping practices.

Some aspects of running the club are going well, some could be better.
Elev8 seems like a fairly standard way to evade FFP rules.
Reporters can be a bit crap. (I work for a news organisation, i can confirm this to be true).
Not all of our players play every game.. (shock?)

Doyen *gasp* which no one really knows the agreement with or how they actually interact with club staff.
 

Overall, i think it'd be fair to ask for clarity on Doyen's relationship at the AGM, but otherwise it seems like pretty normal running of a football club.

In the last 20 years had plenty of times where we've been run a lot worse.

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I read it. To summarise DC may or may not be a successful businessman. No hard facts either way, with a few speculative kites flown to suggest he may not be.

Fact is he owns and chairs the football club. Simple. So unless there is a more successful owner out there (with the requisite documentary evidence) waiting to step in and buy DC out, I guess we need to focus on how we get on against Barnsley !?!?

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There was that list just recently (there was a thread on it) of the worth of the Championship owners. I don't know who published the original list but rather than say unknown, they had actually made a stab at quantifying DC's wealth (C £570m iirc) . This makes me think they must have had more detail than the lazy some shares in TUF and 'a construction compnay'.

 

But then again perhaps they just plucked that out of the air. :tango:

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3 minutes ago, debram said:

Doesnt tell us anything, just ask questions of the integrity of DC basically.

Yeah...

 

The whole “successful” businessman thing seems to have upset a few. 

 

His family own TUF, right? 

 

Perhaps his “success” derived from having done a good job working in the family business? 

 

 

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38 minutes ago, StudentOwl said:

Right, straight off the bat this is going to be a horrible long essay OP... for those whose time is precious or attention span is wavering or for the just plain indifferent I'll pop a "too long didn't read" sentence or two at the end in bold and itallics if you want to skip to that. For those sticking around, I can't promise this'll be the most coherent post as it's largely a stream of consciousness, but I'll do my best to justify the use of your time reading this.

______________________

 

First things first: I'm going to deal with facts as much as I can. Anything that's speculation will be clearly said as such, and I'm hoping you'll all agree that any rare speculation in here is a fair conclusion

Second things second: This is not a character assassination of DC. I make no claims to knowing what he's like as a person or businessman. 

 

When DC took over of SWFC, I like everyone else was delighted. Here we had a consortium led by a "distinguished businessman" who came from a very reputable and wealthy family. Naturally the imagination ran wild and figures about net worth were being bandied about with glee. Finally we were in the money. I don't need to dwell on what we already know about the last couple of years, but I mention this as it's often an explanation for what's currently going on. I argue it shouldn't be.

 

 

DC's wealth

The Thai Union Group (TUG) was founded in 1977, and according to their own website by 1988 had a capital of 25 million baht (approx. £570k, or £1.4 million as a modern day equivalent according to Bank of England's inflation calculator). This is important because DC would have been around 20 years old at that time- he wasn't born into extortionate wealth. I have no idea if his family were wealthy before this (I suspect they were relatively speaking, but that's speculation), but certainly they weren't international heavyweights like today. In terms of DC's personal wealth and affiliation with TUG, it's hard to say how much involvement he has beyond being related to the founders. His shareholder % isn't public knowledge, but he isn't on the board of directors, and according to TUG's own website his father (Chairman and co-founder) owns ~5% of shares, while his brother (CEO and co-founder) owns ~10% of shares. It's also worth noting that his father has an estimated worth of ~$700 million USD (~£530 million) according to Forbes. (Speculation time) This suggests to me that while DC is going to be far wealthier than you or I will ever be, any personal wealth he's obtained from TUG is not so substantial that he can afford to input many tens of millions of pounds into a football club. Certainly he can afford to buy a club and invest a decent portion off the back of this wealth, but not to megabucks levels (end of speculation).

 

So if DC is going to personally finance a push to the Premier League, it can be argued he'll need more money. Fortunately we were told when he first joined SWFC he is a "distinguished businessman" who "owns companies in real estate and construction". Here's where things start getting sketchy for me, and at the time I didn't really clock it because I along with everyone else was so excited about the incoming good times. And it starts with a simple question. What companies?

 

 

"Successful Businessman"

The media today are lazy, they tend to copy and paste news stories between each other, which is fine for getting information and a story out quickly, but bad for actually checking the integrity of the information they're posting and printing. It's very common in articles about pseudoscience, particularly climate sceptics. Someone running a blog will make a claim or statement (often erroneously), this will get picked up by another blog, which will then get picked up by another blog etc. and by the time the Chinese Whispers finish you'll find a blog saying "A scientist says X". In reality it was an electrical engineer or something. While a slight tangent, the point is that there's a pattern you can spot on the internet of people just copying what they've seen without any digging, which leads to an echochamber of ignorance if the original information is misrepresented. It follows a pattern, and it's a classic pattern that was seen with this information about DC being in construction. From the original Star article cited at the bottom of this post, we get this: http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/sheffield-wednesday-working-with-fire.html

This: https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-404028937.html

and this: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/yorkshire-post/20150303/281496454743017

 

Now before anyone kicks off... I'm not saying DC lied. I have absolutely zero doubt that he owns companies in real estate and construction. What I do wonder, however, is how much of a money spinner they are for him... and whether anyone in the press actually bothered to ask about these businesses credentials. As I alluded to above... I'm not sure there's a Sheffield Wednesday fan who can name any of these companies or any of their projects. The media haven't reported these, and no amount of attempting to research it on the internet has yielded results. I don't expect an exhaustive list of Thai building projects on google, but I would expect even a medium-sized company to have public records of ownerships, list of directors etc... yet there's nothing. I'd welcome anyone being able to offer any information on this... if you can find DC's companies or affiliates, please do pop it in here. 

 

The point... a common defence of DC on here is that he's a "successful businessman" (Quotation marks used to quote any number of people that have used this phrase on Owlstalk). My retort to this is... where's the evidence? Not one Wednesday fan can name me his company. He has a very wealthy family so it's impossible to attribute how much wealth is from his own ventures, but we have been given absolutely zero evidence from the media that he is any sort of successful businessman beyond the same repeated empty statement. He could well be a fantastic business mind and leading construction tycoon, but without anyone actually fact-checking this claim and providing a company name we have no idea of his acumen at all.

 

The only evidence we do have of his business acumen is what we have seen at Sheffield Wednesday. During that time, we've seen record shirt sales, season ticket sales and general increase in income. We have also seen a continuing malaise in our commercial department, with many local businesses priced out of sponsorship or matchday boxes at Hillsborough. We've also seen ticket prices increase to effectively the highest in the division whilst being in one of the poorest areas of England. 

 

Finally, we get on to Elev8 and D-Performance. Now with these two areas I'm going to be cautious because I don't even want to flirt with the big "L" word that Neil still gets twitchy over since the Dave Allen days... But we have here two new companies that no-one has really heard of involved with the club in a big way. One has something to do with energy drinks and is also manufacturing our beloved kit. The other was registered in July and is one of the main sponsors around the stadium and is a taxi service that doesn't appear to be available for the average Joe of Sheffield. Certainly no contact details are findable on the internet, so it's not something currently actively advertising on the internet for use by average members of the public. Again, I want to deal with facts as much as possible so I'll be making no conclusions on these things. I'll only ask Owls fans to consider what their thoughts would be if they heard of the events in this paragraph occurring at another Championship club. 

 

 

The bizarre (some speculation)

This irks me. Narratives have frequently changed over the last couple of years. I don't need to go into Doyen and recruitment etc and don't plan to: It's largely unfounded speculation but there's certainly an element of something not sitting right with a lot of people there and with a thread already about it I have no interest in repeating the discussion. One example I would like to look at it Carlos. As of May 2016, he signed a brand-spanking new three year contract with us. As of the beginning May 2017, his contract was imminently expiring again and it turned out he only signed a one year deal. Another is that at the point of taking us over DC was heading a consortium. Then he wasn't. We then have the repeated whispers coming out of Hillsborough of long-term staff leaving highly dissatisfied. We have the repeated whispers of everything needing DC's go-ahead, to the extent that it includes the type of tiles in the toilets. We have cakeball. We have a starting XI worth of signings that never play. We have the kit debacle. Pricing for pretty much everything comes in this section too. Did I mention we have Doyen? Again I'm being careful with wording here, but we have a series of consistently difficult to understand and increasingly difficult things to justify coming out of the club coupled with what can be very contradictory information coming out in the media. 

 

 

Conclusion

So what was the point of this essay post? I'm basically done and wondering the same thing. I think it's that as a fan I'm tired of trying to look at the rose garden while the flowers die around me. Whilst on the pitch (largely) we've been good for the last couple of years, there have been some unaddressed questions that could perhaps do with answering... you can overlook them when times are good, but it's wrong to do so. We also have inconsistencies that are rarely addressed. Being speculative, there are question marks over just how much more money we can expect to be pumped into SWFC- and I'd hazard a guess that's largely dependent on who our "friends" are and how deep their pockets are. Finally, and being objective again, I have this: The next time you want to defend what seems a strange decision by saying "But DC's a successful businessman", you're only saying that because The Star said he was. We actually have nothing concrete to say whether DC is one of the greatest business minds of our time or an essentially failed entrepreneur. As far as I'm concerned he could be either, I've got no evidence either way... but that doesn't make me automatically believe in the affirmative. Let's judge what decisions are made on merit rather than on what we imagine any past potential business ventures might be. As for the media and their role in all this... ask the right questions. You're flat out not doing your jobs if you can't report basic facts like DC's businesses and make basic enquiries about things such as Doyen which are already in the public domain. 

 

_______________________________

 

tl;dr: Goes into info about what DC's wealth could be based on familial ties. Absolutely no evidence that DC is a successful businessman (or even a failed one, there's just no evidence full stop). Media hasn't asked the right questions and has ultimately let inconsistencies slide. Something isn't sitting right with me. 

 

 

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/who-is-dejphon-chansiri-1-7135144 (Dejphon Chansiri- distinguished businessman)

http://www.thaiunion.com/en/about/company/company-history (Thai Union history & links to share %'s)

https://www.forbes.com/profile/kraisorn-chansiri/ (Kraisorn Chansiri, DC's dad's, net worth)

http://www.bizstats.co.uk/ltd/d-performance-limited-10857680/ (D-Performance)

http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11703/10295675/carlos-carvalhal-reveals-new-sheffield-wednesday-deal-ahead-of-championship-play-off-final (Carlos' 3 year deal)

http://www.thestar.co.uk/sport/football/sheffield-wednesday/sheffield-wednesday-doubts-grow-over-carlos-carvalhal-s-owls-future-1-8529818 (Carlos' 3 year deal expiring after 12 months)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/31040959 (Dejphon Chansiri- head of a Thai consortium)

I couldn't resist quoting all this text and then saying I have nothing to say on it, other than I didn't bother reading it

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I've read it. You have tried to make the case that DC isn't a Rockefeller and have done so on the basis that you can't find much about his businesses on the internet and that he is very hands on even to very small decisions.

 

You may well be right but on the other hand he has invested heavily in the club and playing staff. On the basis of 'the proof of the pudding..' I'll accept him as a benevolent owner of this club.

 

What we think about him does matter much anyway, he owns the club and can do pretty much what he wants with it. There's not much we can do about it. Protests, boycotts etc he can ignore and carry on as he wishes.

 

Personally I think he's been as good an owner as we could wish for.

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I don't mind a long post, especially in queue for young uns shirt, but what really p isses me off is when people quote said long post.

 

Stop it, now 

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