Who Is The Owner of Norwich City FC?


Who Is The Owner of Norwich City FC?

Who Is The Owner of Norwich City FC?

Norwich City Football Club, popularly known as the Canaries, is an professional club in English football located in Norwich, Norfolk. Norwich will be competing in the Premier League in the 2021-22 season, after being promoted to the top flight of English football after being the Champions of the 2020–21 EFL Championship. Norwich City FC was founded in 1902 and since 1935, the Canaries have played their games at home at Carrow Road. Norwich City fans’ chant song “On the Ball, City” is the oldest football chant in the world and still sung in the stands to date.

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Norwich City have notched up the League Cup twice, but have never won the League, with their highest ever League finish coming in 1992-93, finishing third in the Premier League.

Wynn-Jones and Smith and and the Takeover of Norwich City FC

Who Is The Owner of Norwich City FC?
Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones

Norwich City FC is a public limited company that comprises approximately 8,000 individual shareholdings. Since purchasing the shares of Norwich City from Geoffrey Watling back in 1996, English television cook Delia Smith and husband Michael Wynn-Jones have been the joint majority shareholders of the club.

In 2006–07, during Norwich City’s annual general meeting, Delia Smith and Wynn-Jones intimated that they would be open to proper offers to buy the majority stakes in the club which they were holding, making it clear that the prospective buyer should be investing heavily in the squad, and make improvements to the team.

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Who Is The Owner of Norwich City FC?
Smith and Wynn-Jones are regular attendees to Norwich matches

“The only way we would relinquish our shares is if somebody is going to put money into the football … Only if they put money into the squad – not if they buy our shares, we don’t want money. It has to be that there is money for the squad, serious money for the squad.” was formally announced by the board of directors of Norwich City.

On 8 May 2007, it was announced that Andrew and Sharon Turner bought out all 5,000 shares belonging to former Board member Barry Skipper and gave the club an interest free loan of £2m. After the resignation of the Andrew and Sharon Turner as the club directors, there was a £2 million hole in Norwich City’s budget, but Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones later injected £2 million into the club’s funds to avoid financial problems for the club.

In the 2011 Annual General Meeting joint majority shareholder Delia Smith and Stephan Phillips were re-elected as directors and new director Stephen Fry was formally re-elected, after having joined the Board the previous year in August.

Wynn-Jones and Smith owned 63% of the club’s shares when they first bought it in 1998, but it reduced to 57% in 2006 and a further fall in 2015 saw their shares at 53%. They also wrote off a £2.1 million of debt that the club owed them in 2013 , with further estimates proving that Wynn-Jones and Smith have invested around £12 million in the club since 1996.

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Roy Waller later mentioned that Wynn-Jones and Smith are “crucial to the club’s success”, investing a lot with “very little return”. It was also noted that Wynn-Jones attends every Norwich match and often sits with the fans rather than being in the directors’ box.

Net Worth of Norwich City owners Wynn-Jones and Smith

Norwich City owners Wynn-Jones and Smith

Wynn-Jones and Smith hold 53% share of Norwich, alongside minority shareholders who hold the remaining 47%, with the owners making decent investment in the club and signing to lead them to the 2020-21 EFL Championship win and secure qualification to the Premier League once again. Currently, Wynn-Jones and Smith’s estimated worth is reportedly £30 million, the least of any Premier League club owners.

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