Is Abramovich too good for Chelsea

Whilst most people in the UK know that Roman Abramovich is a billionaire (estimated at $18.2 billion net worth), they are more likely to associate him with piling bundles of cash into London based Chelsea Football Club.

The headlines today proclaim that Abramovich is piling so much money into the club that it is giving Chelsea an unfair advantage. In fact since his take over the club has made losses of £228 million while at the same time spending £276 million on players – it just happens that he has that kind of credit limit at hand.

The governing body of European football has been asked to review a cap on the spending allowed and also a review on the salaries of some players.

Whilst Abramovich is most likely to be photographed on the stand at Chelsea, he is still very actively involved in running and controlling his billions. Abramovich grew rich from the Yeltsin privatisation period, first moving into oil through shares in Sibneft, then later moving into the commodities market building up controlling interest in Russian Aluminium, the worlds second largest producer of Aluminium.

According to Russian newspaper Vedomosti, Abramovich is still hard at work and is now looking to extend his interests in commodities with an approach to buy British company Oriel Resources Plc, a Kazakh nickel and chromite mining group. The paper said Alexander Nesis, co-owner of IST group, and Alexander Mamut, co-owner of Ingosstrakh, had proposed to merge Oriel with their own assets after which a majority stake would be offered to Roman Abramovich.

Recently the ‘Abramovich effect’ has seen a multitude of high rolling billionaires settle in the UK, even though their power and wealth creating machines lay in far off lands – we’d like to see a few more share Roman’s interest in football, then –perhaps- England could one day be ready to take the world cup home.