Swansea City are surrounded with speculation this week. First the agreed departure of Sporting Director, Paul Watson which was decided upon last week, and announced on the Monday. This amid rumours of his departure being abrupt and non conciliatory. The regular failures to build relationships at the Swans within the supposed ‘hierarchy’ - with coaches, employees and managers continues.

For whatever reason.

We have been told there is some pretty big news forthcoming within the make up of the club, the actual announcement which is taking some time has been in the pipeline for months. How long that will take tells us that mediation within the club is ongoing. Again, people can speculate, but it is apparent that changes within the club are underway.

We have been told that it involves financial input on a level that includes known investors to the club plus others. If that is the case, and at this time it is only speculation, it seems Paul Watson leaving is pretty ‘small beer’ by comparison.

As we know current Chairman, Andrew Coleman, Brett Cravatt and Nigel Morris formed some sort of coalition last year to input more money into the club. Cravatt’s involvement possibly somewhat of a surprise, although he had invested before that. When he joined the board last summer he was quick to point out. "I am fully committed to using my knowledge to improve the club in multiple capacities with an emphasis, given my background, on data science and analytics as well as marketing and sponsorships”

We shouldn’t take our eye off him at the moment.

At the same time Nigel Morris, Capital One founder, took up around 19.4% of the club diluting both majority share holders, Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan to an extent. However, it seems on latest information that both Levien, Kaplan, Jake Silverstein and Andrew Coleman hold the biggest influence over the Swans. Be that through the ‘investment vehicle’ (the LLC in the USA ) that all four have heavy interest in or indeed within the club. The five financial inputs over the past sixteen months, which we believe is around twenty six million pounds is eye watering, but football finance expert Kieran Maguire answered some of the questions as to why. "It's an acknowledgement that if you want to go and play in the Championship playground it's a very expensive exercise to go through. The average losses are four hundred thousands pounds a week. How do you circumvent that ? One of the ways to do that is to issue shares. That's what we've seen here, with Swansea.

And of course it’s cheaper than taking out loans.

Staying with Nigel Morris, in 2024 he has been as busy as ever, his keen business interest via QED is FinTech, basically financial technology. It’s all about the improvement and delivery of financial services, and the billions that can be made from investments. Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman founded the company in 2007, and today the value is multi millions. The investments made could be around the billion dollar mark. Essex born Morris talks so eloquently, and with his proven track record on business, investments and delivering success he has to be the most vital cog in any Swans investment. QED has invested in more than two hundred companies, including twenty eight unicorns (start up companies valued over a billion dollars) In September 2021, QED announced it had closed a substantially oversubscribed $1.05 billion fund, including $550 million in QED Fund VII for early stage investments - and $500 million in a new Growth Fund.

These are the levels Nigel Morris (below) is working at, and it far outweighs in experience anything any person in the present or past at Swansea City has brought to the table. We will stop there, but it gives us extreme confidence he is, and has invested in Swansea City.

Brett Cravatt (below left) is also a venture capitalist, and has seen tremendous financial success since launching Centerfield in Los Angeles in 2011. He is joint CEO / President with Jason Cohen (below) and their trading, investments and portfolio has turned heads. They’ve attracted multi millions of dollars in funding, one over one hundred and fifty million, but Brett has diversified his interests far broader than that. They continue to acquire companies, and like Nigel Morris he has interests in FinTech.

The Swans have streamlined the clubs finances over the past four months or so massively. In fact it really does go back to August last year when players left and contracts for new additions were lowered. That just isn’t it though. Whatever is in place, and there is something coming our way which will no doubt change the influence at Swansea City it is taking some time. We can speculate as much as we want, an entire takeover seems a tad too much at this time. A selection of investments with an overall view to new ownership is more likely.

Then of course, Levien and Kaplan are involved in these discussions, how difficult are they making it for some positive progress ? We have been told there is a split in commitment at the club now. Andrew Coleman remains resilient and forthright in his belief he can make Swansea City a success. If that’s the case we believe he will be a part of any investment that liquidates even further the majority shareholding, even though he is a part of it. If he was to team up with Brett Cravatt and Nigel Morris and AN other, which is not impossible then he will of course increase their control of the club and the shareholding as a team.

What we do know is that over the past few months there have been rival discussions by interested parties, and the club hierarchy are aware of this of course. The clear feature has been that to make the club more viable is that it pays off what it can debt wise, which has been done. It lowers its outgoings whilst still presenting a buyer or new investment with a competitive Championship club with a bright investment opportunity. We think they have done that as well. However, also to the detriment of some of the current contractual situations within the first and U21 squads. Coleman stated in the summer. “We have been working diligently to put the building blocks in place to turn around the footballing and financial performance of Swansea City”

The reason below is clear.

Swiss Ramble also have picked up on our report that Andrew Coleman (below) by his own words was Chairman in May 2023 then changed it to August 2023 stating he was not in post when the summer dealings last year were in place. In fact Coleman had been in discussions to invest in the club since February of that year, you know, around the time Steve Kaplan met with Russell Martin in London before Millwall away in March 2023. Maybe Russell Martin is the reason, and not for just the obvious things ?

So let’s sum this up.

⚽️ Is there talks ongoing for an overhaul of the whole club and new ownership to be in place before the end of this year ?

Possibly not.

⚽️ Is there interest in a group of known and two unknown investors to club together and remove the dogged resistance of Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan ?

We believe that’s more probable in the long term with agreements in place to remove their overall influence - and in time leave.

⚽️ Are these talks ongoing ?

You can bet your bottom dollar they are, and they have been for some time. You can add to the mix our experiences of the majority shareholding, and their drawn out discussions in every financial matter since they took over in 2016, as holding up this process.

⚽️ Will Andrew Coleman remain ?

As it stands we think yes, Kieran Maguire points out that ownership of a club like Swansea City is ‘trophy ownership’ Now we may not know our way round the big world of the football finance industry, but we know about people. Coleman, if he does finish at the Swans will in no way want to be heading back to the USA with a failed venture. And in any event he is to be congratulated in a way for his belief he can get this right, and indeed for placing the club in a better position for a sale or investment. And this is the reason why this is all taking so long, ego’s … and big ones at that. The other matter will be the make up and split up of the LLC in the USA. If certain American interest remains there has to be an agreement in not only how that works out, but of course with regards to the overall picture with Swansea City.

You can understand why it takes so long, but it is most certainly down to what has been (since the last investment in the summer) a process which we think commenced in July this year. So that’s the final question.

⚽️ Will these talks lead to a change in the demographic at Swansea City ?

The simple answer is - Yes.

This report has been complied over a number of weeks, we have left out certain pieces of information to protect our sources.

Photographs Open Source, Licensed from Reuters & Brett Cravatt

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