Birmingham City Fans Can Delay No More
Birmingham City Fans Can Delay No More
By Mark on Feb 18, 2025 in Finance, Latest | 4 comments
"I'm as mad as hell and I can't take it anymore," said Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in the 2025 film Network. Birmingham City fans clearly can't either. The Blues are mired in a Championship relegation battle. The club and parent company, Birmingham International Holdings (BIH) continue to lose multi-millions despite selling almost every decent player manager Lee Clark has had. And in advance of BIH's Extraordinary General Meeting, which approved plans for it to financially restructure – and borrow – its way out of its financial woes, fans arranged their first public display of disaffection, a banner protest based around the slogan "DelayNoMore," urging club president Carson Yeung to do just that in selling the club.
Immediately after the EGM, the club's sole paid director, Peter Pannu, suggested that Blues' future looked "bright," which disaffected fans have treated as rhyming slang. And any remaining faith in Yeung will have dissolved among fans who read BIH's announcement concerning its much-trumpeted relisting on Hong Kong's Stock Exchange (HKSE). Pannu has made a huge deal of BIH's relisting because the project was his responsibility as BIH's top executive, and it actually was a huge deal, for BIH at least, as demonstrated by share-trading activities since the relisting on February 7th, including progress on BIH's long-promised "disposal" of its interest in Birmingham City PLC with a 12% shareholding just bought by what BIH coyly referred to as "a Beijing-based advertising business."
A "confidentiality clause does not allow for the identity of individuals to be made public at this moment," but the business was soon revealed as "Beijing Triumph International Media Advertising Company," although media advertising in China won't do Blues much good as Championship strugglers, if it didn't help them as a mid-table Premier League outfit. Buoyed by the success of "his" relisting project, Pannu deemed "local radio personality" (copyright: the Birmingham Mail newspaper) Tom Ross worthy of a half-hour telephone interview on Free Radio on February 7th. And even for Pannu, it was self-serving tripe. He blamed everyone and everything but himself, Yeung and the weather for City's woes. He claimed to recognise that he and Yeung had to "repair their relationship" with fans and media ("that's why I'm speaking to you, Tom"). But he destroyed much of this repair work before it started by lecturing fans and media on their "responsibilities" to himself and the club.
The interview, the first Pannu had given the station for thirteen months allowed him to explain the EGM's significance to City and update on any club sale and Yeung's intentions. Admirably, Ross kept his counsel through the codswallop and intermittent sense…
