How it started
History
Registered in the Cayman Islands, Grandtop International Holdings Limited (GIH), through its subsidiaries (Dollar Concept International Ltd., Fanlink Far East Ltd., Sun Ace Group Ltd., Leader Ahead Investments Ltd., East Step Trading Ltd. and Gala Consultants Group Limited.), engages in sourcing and trading apparel. It is involved in trading sportswear and other apparel, and provision of entertainment services in Hong Kong, Macau, and the United Kingdom. The company is based in Central, Hong Kong.
Birmingham City FC takeover
In 2007, GIH bought 29.9% of shares in the English Premier League football club Birmingham City F.C. They followed this with an offer to buy the club, but failed to meet the completion deadline of 22 December. In Summer 2009, GIH made another offer to buy the club, taking full control from 1 October in an £81.5million deal.
It became the intention of Grandtop, subject to shareholder approval, to change the company name to Birmingham International Holdings Limited.
The ownership has changed over the years. In March 2011, new shares were issued (from 3,187,753,400 to 3,637,753,400), of which Carson Yeung held 16.25% and in April, Yeung through his British Virgin Islands (BVI) company, bought 315,000,000 shares from the public, meaning he owned 24.91%. On 4 May, extra new shares – issued to independent third parties – made Yeung's ratio decrease to 23.3%. However, on 12 May Yeung's company bought 170,000,000 shares, meaning he owned a total of 26.31%. The total shares owned by other major shareholders Vico Hui and Liu Xingcheng (Chinese: 劉星成) remained unchanged, but the ratio changed in 2011. Although Yeung bought the shares of the company, he also injected other business into the company, meaning he received money from the company. Yeung was arrested in 2011 for money laundering.
From Wikipedia’s article on Birmingham Sports Holdings, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2