By David Owen
May 20 – Unlike, say, FIFA, FEMS is not an acronym that many football fans will be familiar with. But it is a term that more switched-on supporters may soon come to recognise as global investment continues to flood into the game.
FEMS – fashion, entertainment, media and sports – is one of four sectors that Centricus, a London- and Jersey-based global investment platform, looks to focus on as it strives to generate “superior absolute returns” for the “sophisticated, global and long term orientated” investors who constitute its backers.
The Financial Times on Saturday reported it had been told that Centricus was assembling the consortium of international investors that has promised $25 billion for FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s controversial plan to beef up the Club World Cup and introduce a biennial global Nations League. The consortium, the FT wrote, “is being assembled by Centricus, a UK-based group whose founders helped SoftBank to raise its $100 billion Vision Fund, people close to the matter previously told the FT”.
Centricus’s website notes that it “led the structuring and fundraising for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the largest fund raising in the asset management industry to date”. It says the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is lead investment partner, alongside Mubadala of Abu Dhabi.
Softbank and Saudi Arabia are among rumoured investors in Infantino’s plan, which is threatening to split the game.
The website lists a team of 15 individuals, including Nizar Al-Bassam and Dalinc Ariburnu, who are said to have co-founded the business in 2016. Both men are ex-Deutsche Bank, with Ariburnu having also previously worked for Goldman Sachs. These two institutions feature prominently in the CVs of a number of Centricus colleagues.
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