Sale of Chelsea: who are the key people behind the buying consortium?
Chelsea’s new owners are all but confirmed, with the club agreeing to the terms of its £4.25 billion ($5.2 billion) sale to a consortium led by Todd Boehly.
But who are the key people behind the consortium?
BBC Sport takes a look.
Todd Boehly
Todd Boehly leads the consortium. It owns 20% of the seven-time World Series of Baseball champions, the LA Dodgers, and is also a co-owner of the USA women’s basketball team, the Los Angeles Sparks.
Along with Mark Walter, he also owns a 27% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise.
In 2015, Boehly founded Eldridge Industries, a private holding company that invests in multiple industries. Through Eldridge, he has invested in life insurance companies, real estate companies and technology companies, as well as Bruce Springsteen’s song rights and sportsbook company, DraftKings.
In the food industry, he has notably invested in Aurify Brands – which owns restaurant chains such as Le Pain Quotidien – as well as in the American brand Chuck E. Cheese.
He is also acting CEO of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Capital of Clearlake
Clearlake Capital is a Californian private equity firm, which reportedly owns the majority of Chelsea shares.
Led by Jose E. Feliciano and Behdad Eghbali, it has more than $72bn (£58bn) in assets under management and has led or co-led more than 300 investments.
However, to date, none of them have been in sports, with their portfolio focusing on the software and technology, energy, food and consumer services sectors.
Mark Walter
Mark Walter is the Managing Director of Guggenheim Partners, a private global financial services firm headquartered in New York and Chicago. Guggenheim Partners has more than $310bn (£250bn) in assets under management.
Like Boehly, Walter, 61, is also a co-owner of the LA Dodgers, which won the 2020 World Series, and has a stake in the LA Lakers. In 2012, he was named the eighth most influential person in sports by the Sports Business Journal.
His personal investments include stakes in plant-based food maker Beyond Meat and online car seller Carvana.
He and his wife also own a wildlife sanctuary in Florida, which is home to threatened and endangered species.
Hansjoerg Wyss
Swiss billionaire Hansjoerg Wyss is worth $5bn (£4bn) and amassed his fortune through the sale of his medical device maker Synthes to Johnson & Johnson in 2012.
He holds stakes in the biotechnology companies Novocure and Molecular Partners.
According to Forbes, Wyss, 86, is “one of the most philanthropic people in the world”, signing The Giving Pledge in 2013 and agreeing to give away the majority of his fortune.
He has made significant donations to environmental and scientific causes, with his charitable foundations’ assets totaling almost $2bn (£1.6bn).
In 2014, he pledged $120 million to two Swiss universities, the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, to help establish a center to accelerate medical breakthroughs, as he wrote in The New York Times in 2018 that he would donate $1 billion to conservation efforts around the world over a decade.
The consortium also includes US public relations officer Barbara Charone, British businessman Jonathan Goldstein and British journalist Daniel Finkelstein.
