OK, so let's assume he has spent less than £20m of a £1bn+ fortune, is Tottenham Hotspur actually that good an investment? I mean, what is he getting/likely to get in return?
I'm not asking with any particular agenda here, I'm just curious.
Ah, well that's another matter altogether.
You're now talking about what it has cost ENIC to own what they now own of Tottenham. I used to have all the figures and a list of the key events but not any more, I'm afraid. I'll try to recall it as best I can.
When ENIC first agreed to buy 27% of the club from Alan Sugar in late 2000, they already owned some 3% of the club. They paid Sugar a little over £21 million for that 27%, if memory serves. So their overall investment at that stage was probably around £24 million.
The subsequent January 2004 share issue cost them a further £11 million but increased their shareholding to about 55%.
They subsequently bought the remainder of Sugar's shareholding for £25 million, I think, in 2007. By this stage, therefore, ENIC had paid a total of £60 million for a little over 65% of the club.
ENIC then made an offer for all remaining shares in the club. I vaguely remember that that left them with a shareholding of a little over 75%. If they paid the same for those shares as they had paid for Sugar's, then it would have cost them in the region of a further £25 million - taking their overall investment to £85 million.
Since then, they've also contributed 100% of the £15 million raised in the 2009 share placement. And they might have hoovered up a few more shares too.
So £100 million in total. Maybe a bit more. And, in return, they now own 85% of the club.
Has it been a good investment? Yes. Emphatically so.
When the stadium is built, the club will be worth north of £500 million. So ENIC's profit will be north of £300 million or, in percentage terms, 400%. Not bad. Not bad at all!
