DC the "successful businessman" and the failing media

[SallyCinnamon]

Just now, SiJ said:

Ah, so it's ok for you to have more faces than a town clock, but not for anyone else.

 

Besides, I actually suggested we needed a long term plan and it was time for DC to start delegating.

I’m not directing it at you ffs. Chill out.

 

All I’m saying is don’t come on here and claim you were warning other fans about DC when threads like this show you clearly weren’t. 

[theowlsman]

Is there a management summary?

[SallyCinnamon]

2 minutes ago, SiJ said:

Ah, so it's ok for you to have more faces than a town clock, but not for anyone else.

 

Besides, I actually suggested we needed a long term plan and it was time for DC to start delegating.

Your first para literally makes zero sense too. The thread a made on Monk was clearly done in hindsight and on reflection I was probably wrong to be calling for his head.

 

What on earth is so wrong about that?! 

[SiJ]

1 minute ago, SallyCinnamon said:

Your first para literally makes zero sense too. The thread a made on Monk was clearly done in hindsight and on reflection I was probably wrong to be calling for his head.

 

What on earth is so wrong about that?! 

It makes no sense and yet you were able to decipher exactly what it was referring to...

 

If people have changed their mind on Chansiri, given what has happened in the intervening years, then is there anything wrong with that? 

 

 

[SiJ]

4 minutes ago, theowlsman said:

Is there a management summary?

Student Owl said DC was crap.

 

Turns out he was right.

[theowlsman]

2 minutes ago, SiJ said:

Student Owl said DC was crap.

 

Turns out he was right.

 

Thanks.

 

It’s a valuable skill is being able to summarise.

 

I’ll have to trust you on this one because I don’t have time to read it.

[0742]

when will student owl become graduated owl?

[@owlstalk]

14 minutes ago, SiJ said:

If people have changed their mind on Chansiri, given what has happened in the intervening years, then is there anything wrong with that? 

 

 

THIS

[daveyboy66]

11 minutes ago, 0742 said:

when will student owl become graduated owl?

When there are multiple- choice degrees as in America

 

[shandypants]

On 23/10/2017 at 11:20, 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)

[SallyCinnamon]

26 minutes ago, SiJ said:

It makes no sense and yet you were able to decipher exactly what it was referring to...

 

If people have changed their mind on Chansiri, given what has happened in the intervening years, then is there anything wrong with that? 

 

 

No not at all. But don’t post in threads blaming other fans for not speaking out against DC earlier when history shows you were actually supporting DC a few years back. 
 

What’s so hard for you to understand about that? 
 

Where was I blaming other fans for wanting Monk to be sacked? 

Edited March 20, 2021 by SallyCinnamon

[StudentOwl]

29 minutes ago, theowlsman said:

Is there a management summary?

 

On 23/10/2017 at 11:20, 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. 

 

On 23/10/2017 at 11:20, StudentOwl said:

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. 

 

[StudentOwl]

21 minutes ago, 0742 said:

when will student owl become graduated owl?

I really need to change my username  

[theowlsman]

1 minute ago, StudentOwl said:

 

 

 

 

SiJ, what’s he saying here mate?

[SiJ]

Oh, he says lots of things.

[vulva]

Even a broken clocks right twice a day. 

[SiJ]

BrokenclockOwl 

 

Not sure that's a great new username tbh.

[Grimesthorpian]

Just a little point about the “copy and paste” media - bear in mind that The Star and YP are part of the same organisation and they have bolt-ons in the shape of their social media outlets so there will be a lot of duplication of facts. Having said that, I’d like to see those who are supposedly ITK have an opinion based on said facts and not be afraid of getting a b@llocking from the top corridor - if ever there was a situation ripe for honest opinion it’s our car crash of a club. At least Studentowl has had a go.

Also, add to that there are a heck of a lot of young on-line wannabbees snapping at the ‘real’ journos heels and, without the contacts and info and undermined by enthusiasm, they tend to parrot other articles.

[daleblue]

50 minutes ago, 0742 said:

when will student owl become graduated owl?

 

If his dissertation's is owt like this then he wont.

[Guest Hornsby]

On 23/10/2017 at 12:20, 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)

Also interesting, when Milan sold club put out a press release saying TUG had acquired Owls.

 

Am buying some  shares of Chansiri family public  firm , so will ask why.