Crystal Palace £350m takeover target for FOUR groups including ex-Man City owner and Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra

CRYSTAL PALACE are a takeover target for FOUR separate groups – including one that involves former Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra.

Sunsport revealed that a Chinese businessman was shown round Selhurst Park and the club’s training ground last month.

It is understood that the individual in question is Singaporean Chinese and a business associate of Shinawatra, whose interest in Palace first emerged earlier in the year .

A deal involving the former Thai Prime Minister would be difficult to get past the football authorities after he was all but forced to sell City in 2008 in the light of corruption charges laid against him in his homeland.

And in any case Shinawatra’s group is not currently in pole position to take over Palace.

Nor is a USA-based consortium which is interested in buying out existing major shareholders Josh Harris and David Blitzer.

The two other potential bidders, whose precise identity remains unclear, are in a stronger position and are hoping to beat each other to being granted a period of exclusivity in which to complete a deal.

£350MILLION PROJECT

What they would be committing buying into is a £350m project to transform Palace.

That would be the price of acquiring the club’s shares and funding the £100m upgrade of Selhurst Park, on top of the £30m bill to revamp the Academy.

That’s the vision that current chairman Steve Parish is trying to sell to new investors after US financiers Harris and Blitzer decided they wanted to sell their stakes.

Parish, Blitzer and Harris all own 18 per cent of the club. The rest is split mainly between small US sharedholders who came in with the Americans and Parish’s partners in the consortium that bought Palace in 2010 – Stephen Browett, Jeremy Hosking and Martin Long.

The estimated cost of buying Palace lock stock and barrel is £185m, plus repayment of about £30m of debt.

It is believed that Parish would be prepared to sell part of his stake in order to do the right deal and that the two groups leading the field would want him to remain at the club in some capacity.

Parish vowed to Palace fans in April that he would not rest until the stadium and academy projects were delivered.

The club has planning permission from Croydon Council to build a new Main Stand and boost the capacity of Selhurst Park from 26,000 to 34,0000, although agreement is yet to be reached on associated transport and community investment.

Last year Palace acquired a 75-year lease for the land at their Academy site in Beckenham, paving the way to enhance the club’s already impressive youth development programme.

The arrival of Harris and Blitzer in December 2015 was supposed to mark a new era for the club but they have provided neither the funds nor the enthusiasm required.

Parish and his fellow Palace supporters will hope he finds the right people this time.