Former Thai president Thaksin Shinawatra seems to have pocketed as much as £50million as a result of selling Manchester City to the Abu Dhabi-based group ADUG earlier this month.
Shinawatra invested less than £80m pounds of his own cash into City when he became the club chairman in June 2007 but he decided to sell to ADUG for £200m, pocketing a cool £50m.
Even though the sale was forced, the fact that Shinawatra was able to flip the club like some kind of beach-side villa for a massive profit is likely to invite interest from more bored billionaires to do the same. Football clubs as a plaything to spend some money on is bad enough, but if football clubs are looked at as short-term investments to be sold immediately then we’re in real trouble.