Ownership
Norwich City FC is a public limited company that, in 2003, comprised approximately 8,000 individual shareholdings. Since purchasing their shares from Geoffrey Watling, Delia Smith and husband Michael Wynn-Jones have been joint majority shareholders.
At the 2006–07 Norwich City FC Annual General Meeting (on 18 January 2007) Smith and Wynn-Jones announced that they would be open to offers to buy their majority stake-holding in the club. However, they made clear that any prospective buyer would have to invest heavily in the squad, with regards to team improving.
| “ | The only way we would relinquish our shares is if somebody is going to put money into the football ... Only if they put money into the squad – not if they buy our shares, we don't want money. It has to be that there is money for the squad, serious money for the squad. | ” |
On 8 May 2007 the football club announced that Andrew and Sharon Turner had bought out all 5,000 shares belonging to former Board member, Barry Skipper and had given the club an interest-free loan of £2m. Mr and Mrs Turner are owners and directors of personal finance company Central Trust.
During July 2008 Peter Cullum declared that he was interested in a takeover of the club, and pledged that he would invest £20m for enhancement of the playing squad. On 8 July the EDP reported that Delia Smith and the board had invited Peter Cullum for talks. Reports later stated that the talks had been terminated with immediate effect, and no deal was to be reached.
On 2 September 2008, Andrew and Sharon Turner announced that they were leaving the football club's board of directors. This left a £2 million hole in Norwich City's budget. On 4 September 2008, Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones announced that they would be injecting £2 million, avoiding financial problems for the club.
The 2011 Annual General Meeting, attended by over 500 shareholders, saw joint majority shareholder Delia Smith and Stephan Phillips re-elected as directors and new director Stephen Fry formally re-elected having joined the Board the previous August.
Read more about this topic: Norwich City F.C.
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