DC the "successful businessman" and the failing media

[mike312]

Interesting read in a way, like others have said we don't really know very much about DC, his dealings are a mystery so the op is really just re-iterating this point. Certain things that are happening with our club do concern me but so far have been outweighed by the good stuff. The next 6 months are going to be interesting one way or another, especially if we finish mid-table. 

[vid80]

Ok

[Striggy]

I may be old fashioned and simple but none of that means anything to me.  All i want to do is turn up every Saturday afternoon (well at least it used to be a Saturday afternoon) and cheer my team on.

 

[pazowl55]

DC is here for the long haul don't worry about that.

 

Could have cashed in on any number of our stars to put a bit off money in his back pocket and I believe if he didn't want to be here he would have done.

[adelphi1867]

1 hour 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 reackon that's worth your A*.

[pgmetcalf]

It must be difficult for some of the fans and the media to accept they've been duped into their negative views by the 5th columnist blades on here 

[GoldGigsChris]

Not sure what D Performance is all about, but there's a massive over supply of taxis these days. Drivers are struggling to get enough customers to make it pay.

 

Maybe not the best time to start a taxi company.

[adelphi1867]

I have never wanted any owner/chairman to spend all/most of his family fortune on the club.

All I have ever wanted is for the club top be run properly as a business and raise it's own money, spend that money responsibly in the steady construction of the club, as against an inrush of borrowed cash that we cannot afford.

I think DC has spent enough money, his or others, on the 1st team for now, and should concentrate on spending whatever money there is on building the club and business for the future.

[Ronseal]

6 minutes ago, pgmetcalf said:

It must be difficult for some of the fans and the media to accept they've been duped into their negative views by the 5th columnist blades on here 

Grow up ffs

[adelphi1867]

2 minutes ago, GoldGigsChris said:

Not sure what D Performance is all about, but there's a massive over supply of taxis these days. Drivers are struggling to get enough customers to make it pay.

 

Maybe not the best time to start a taxi company.

Might just be a way around FFP?.

[Ronseal]

11 minutes ago, pazowl55 said:

DC is here for the long haul don't worry about that.

 

Could have cashed in on any number of our stars to put a bit off money in his back pocket and I believe if he didn't want to be here he would have done.

What stars could he have 'cashed in'..theres no evidence anybody made a concrete offer for any of our players..nobody else would pay thrm what we are..not in this division

[marshy]

For goodness sake please stop quoting the who bloody post. It takes ages to scroll through the whole bloody thing again. 

[nevthelodgemoorowl]

Well student, you have started with a reasonable hypothesis, but that is all it is.

 

Complete your investigations.

 

Write up your report.

 

Publish your conclusions. That's the way academics work isn't it ?

[np pontefract]

48 minutes ago, Ian_D said:

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

 

You must be proud of yourself !

                    

[room0035]

The only question I have if anyone can answer it is has DC putting any money in to the club or is he using the fans to do it.

 

The first full year DC was here Carlos first as per our filed account Turnover went up 50% and the season tickets and match day tickets went up 50%, the sponsorship and corporate sponsorship dropped because of the insane price structure and the final accounts showed a loss of £9.75m. If DC put in all the money that everyone said he has then why were the accounts a near £10m loss, would they no show a no loss no profit.

 

Last season he launched the 3 year season ticket, so presumable he will have 2 - 3,000 extra season ticket money for the next few years, no accounts for the 2016/17 have been filed yet so don't know how big the losses are for that but if he treats the money for the season ticket correctly all other things being similar we have another loss year of £10m so now after two season of DC the club is £20m in debt becuase he does not seem to be putting any money into the club..

 

The things that makes me think we the fans are financing everything and not the chairman, is because of the strange ideas coming out of the club that in the scheme of things make no money or very little and not the volumes to progress anything such as the i167 idea and other ideas making next to nothing asking fans to pay for it. We then every time we wanted a player used FFP as an excuse, we don't see to pay fees for players up front but over a few years.

 

Like I said I am speculating but based on what happens at the club and the very cloak and dagger information that we never get until they need money out of us, I personally think he has no money and should the fans stop buying the tickets and the merchandise. We will get the arbitrary chairman's statement that the club needs us and we are all in it together when in fact other than purchasing the club DC has contributed nothing.

 

If what I have said is true then it makes an even more mockery of the club insane pricing of sponsorship and corporate boxes, reverting to 2015/16 price of £20,000 a box and advertising of £1,500 for a 6" boards in the stadium this would fetch in well over £1m into the club, shirt sponsorship of £1/2m (fairly standard for a championship team), Stadium Sponsorship name rights of anywhere from £1m - £3m - this could be £3m to £5m we are missing out on each season.

[Almat]

What I've basically been saying for a while but the unabridged version 

[bigdan2003]

Don't quite understand it all, but if you look at TUF's report for 2014 there seems to be some subsidiary firms that DC is a director at...

 

Chansiri Real Estate Co Ltd

Gemini & Associates

Gemini Water Craft

 

https://issuu.com/ar.tuf.si/docs/20150318-tuf-ar2014-en

 

[cookeh]

1 minute ago, room0035 said:

The only question I have if anyone can answer it is has DC putting any money in to the club or is he using the fans to do it.

 

Elev8, D Taxies, etc all appear to be shell companies set up by the chairman to funnel money into the club while sidestepping the FFP rules. That is him putting money in. How much, we wont know. But again.. you not knowing , doesn't mean the worst and most nefarious scenario possible is true.

 

We have some proper tin foil hat fans tbh.

[HirstWhoScoredIt]

1 hour 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)

Brilliant OP.

[bigdan2003]

3 minutes ago, bigdan2003 said:

Don't quite understand it all, but if you look at TUF's report for 2014 there seems to be some subsidiary firms that DC is a director at...

 

Chansiri Real Estate Co Ltd

Gemini & Associates

Gemini Water Craft

 

https://issuu.com/ar.tuf.si/docs/20150318-tuf-ar2014-en

 

 

Also....Tom Whitworths book about Wednesday through the modern era mentions all of the above.