How the price of Shilen Patel’s takeover of West Brom compares to the Aston Villa and Birmingham City takeovers | OneFootball

FLW compares the cost of Shilen Patel’s takeover at West Brom to West Midlands rivals Aston Villa and Birmingham City.

West Brom fans were jubilant when the takeover of Shilen Patel and Bilkul Football Group was completed.

After a dismal seven-year stint under Guochuan Lai, which included two relegations to the Championship and mounting piles of debt, Albion were saved by the American, who has his eyes set on returning the Baggies to being an established side in the top-flight.

Following in his father Kiran’s footsteps, Shilen is a businessman based in Florida. The Tampa-born man received a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Babson College in 2002, followed by an MBA from both Columbia University and London Business School. This successful education set Patel up to become a very talented businessman.

Shilen would sell his first company, Visionary HealthWare, in 2011, which was even before he received his MBA in 2013. He continued in the family tradition, becoming founder and CEO of HealthAxis, which is a health insurance-focused software company in his hometown of Tampa.

The company has been a huge success, netting $45 million in revenue in 2021, with Patel remaining in post to this day.

This has led to Patel having a net worth of around $100 million (£75.3 million), as per Birmingham Live, allowing him to build on his love for football following his minority stake in Italian Serie A side Bologna.

Now the chairman and owner of a football club for the very first time, Patel will be hoping he can use his wealth and the plans he has in place to help Albion get back among England’s elite.

With this in mind, Football League World compares the cost of Shilen Patel’s takeover at West Brom to Aston Villa and Birmingham City’s.

The cost of Shilen Patel’s West Brom acquisition

Reaching an agreement to acquire an 87.8% shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, serial investor Shilen Patel brought his stake for a reported figure of £60 million.

It was a far cry from Guochuan Lai’s £200 million purchase of the Black Country outfit back in 2016, with drops down to the Championship along with club mismanagement resulting in the Chinese businessman suffering such a significant loss on investment.

With the Baggies in deep financial concern at the time, the pressure was on for Lai to sell, with Patel buying the club for a cheaper fee than originally anticipated, particularly as Albion were still competing at the top end of the Championship and have had chances to achieve promotion back to the Premier League.

While it is yet to be achieved, Patel has the opportunity to watch the club thrive and develop back into a Premier League side, giving him the chance to make a healthy profit from his original investment.

Shilen Patel’s buy of West Brom is more than Aston Villa and Birmingham City buys

According to a report by Bloomberg, Aston Villa majority shareholders Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens brought a 55% stake in the Villains back in 2018 for around $39 million, which equates to £30 million.

At the time, Villa had just been beaten in the play-off final by Fulham, but would get their revenge the following term when victorious over Derby County at Wembley to secure a place back in the top-flight.

Both billionaires, Sawiris and Edens have injected significant investment into the club since taking over the Villans, propelling the Midlands outfit to high times in the Champions League and consistently fighting for a top four spot in the Premier League under Unai Emery.

Meanwhile, Patel’s buy of West Brom is also more expensive than Birmingham City’s, with American financier Tom Wagner buying a 45.64% stake in Blues back in May 2023.

Eventually, Wagner and his consortium will own 100 percent of the club, and an announcement via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has confirmed that it will cost Wagner and his team £22 million.

Nevertheless, Wagner does possess an abundance of wealth, announcing in April 2024 that Knighthead had purchased a 48-acre plot of land in the east of Birmingham for the building of a brand-new Sports Quarter, which will include the construction of a state-of-the-art 60,000-seater stadium to call their new home.

That project is estimated to cost between £2-3billion, with Wagner also having plans in place to become a Premier League outfit by 2026.

There appears to be strong ambition from owners across the major clubs in the West Midlands, and hopefully they can all be Premier League sides and compete with each other in the same season, with that not being witnessed since 2011.