Sheikh Mansour has no intention of selling Manchester City, according to chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak.
And Al Mubarak declared that the City Football Group, which includes 11 clubs, is worth at least $10bn now, from an initial value of around $100m when Sheikh Mansour, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family, bought the English club in 2008.
City have spent heavily on transfers and wages in the last 18 years but have also won – including eight Premier League titles, three trebles and the 2023 Champions League – and Al Mubarak argued they have invested with a purpose.
He said: “Sheikh Mansour, when he looks at this club, he sees it as a long-term investment. Not just Sheikh Mansour. Sheikh Mansour of course and the shareholders who have invested in this club over the years buy into the vision that we’re going to invest in something that’s going to grow in value over time.
“Of course, His Highness has no intention of selling this business, but over time, new shareholders come in at different value points that show how that value is really growing.
“So, this club, when Sheikh Mansour first invested in it, the value was $100-120 million back in 2008. Then over the years we’ve had multiple stop points where the value went from $120 million to $1bn, the value of the group became $1bn. Then it became $2bn, then it became $3bn, then we had investors come in and actually invest in the club at $3bn.
“We continued to grow; we continued to grow the value of this business while always keeping the profits and the revenue in the business because that helps to keep growing this value that we’re creating. Then we went up to $5bn and then more money came in, investors buying into this strategy, buying into this value creation and putting money into it.
“And again, Sheikh Mansour took a very important choice which was that the money stays in because we’re going to keep building this. And this went up from $5bn to $6bn, to $7bn, to north of $8bn dollars. If you’re going to sell all this today in the market, you wouldn’t sell it for less than $10bn minimum. That’s value creation.”
The American fund Silver Lake paid $500m for a stake in CFG in 2019 and now has an 18 percent shareholding, while the Abu Dhabi United Group holds 81 percent.
Besides Manchester City, CFG own all of Melbourne City, Montevideo City Torque and Troyes, almost all of Lommel, Bahia and Palermo, a majority stake in New York City FC and minority stakes in Girona, Yokohoma F Marinos and Shenzhen Peng City. They also have several partner clubs.
