Sports investing is not for the faint-hearted, as one Saudi prince has apparently found out.
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Saud has gone to the High Court over a company set up to acquire interests in young footballers emerging from academies.
Al Saud claims a young entrepreneur, Edward Blackmore, persuaded him to put €400,000 (£320,462 at the time) into Back Talent between 2013 and 2014.
Other shareholders include the golf stars Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood and the veteran agent Andrew “Chubby” Chandler.
Al Saud says he put in a further £450,000 for a 50% stake in a Saudi joint venture that was “never incorporated”. The prince alleges that he challenged 38-year-old Blackmore, who refunded him with a cheque — which bounced.
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Al Saud claims he then demanded the return of his original investment, which he believed had grown to £1.7m. He says this also failed to materialise.
The prince is now suing Blackmore, who was linked to an abortive takeover of the French football club Nice last year. Blackmore does not respond to Prufrock’s emails.
Scottish bus king bills £337 for calls
The Stagecoach chairman Sir Brian Souter is famous for carrying his personal effects around in a plastic bag, so it’s no surprise the bus baron watches every penny in the boardroom.
The transport group’s annual report reveals that Souter claimed £337 for home telephone calls in the past year, despite his estimated £920m fortune and £219,000 annual fee.
Does Souter, 63, struggle to get mobile reception in the recesses of his 22-bedroom mansion in Perth? Or is his phone buried at the bottom of one of his carrier bags?
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Tycoon’s golden gift to a banker
The passing of 90-year-old Michael Sandberg, the chairman who set HSBC on the road from colonial lender to global bank, leaves the Honkers and Shankers with a bit of a poser.
When Sandberg retired in 1986, he received a lavish present from Li Ka-shing, the now 88-year-old tycoon whose British investments include mobile network 3.
It was Sandberg who elevated Li to the top of Hong Kong business by selling him a stake in the colonial trading house Hutchison Whampoa — and lending him the money to buy it.
At a party for Sandberg, Li unveiled a solid gold model of Norman Foster’s Hongkong Bank building so large that it took guests’ breath away. But the trophy never made it back to Hampshire, where Lord Sandberg (he was ennobled in 1997) retired.
Prufrock’s man in a rickshaw maintains the gilded gift is still sitting in the vaults of the HSBC building it was modelled on. Perhaps the bank might auction it for a noble cause.
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Teatime drama at Poundstretcher
Are tempers becoming as overextended as the coins at Poundstretcher?
A rumour is swirling around the Leicester head office of Crown Crest, which owns the discount chain, that a member of staff has been sacked for buying the wrong biscuits for Aziz Tayub. The 61-year-old boss was supposedly taking tea with one of his sons.
Martin Collinson, company secretary, does not quite deny the story, but says: “In any event, we don’t have a need for anyone to buy biscuits — we have a warehouse on site full of every variety imaginable!”
Just saying . . .
“I don’t think anybody is likely to follow us down this route”
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