Giacomo Angelini may be the new owner of Standard de Liège but his ‘takeover’ was funded entirely by A-CAP. How is this possible, and what does it mean for the Pro League club?
By Paul Brown and Philippe Auclair
June 2024. With 777 Partners out of the picture at long last and A-CAP desirous to sell all of their football portfolio, Standard de Liège fans hoped that a new owner would soon appear and stop the club spiralling out of control. The club’s hierarchy insisted that offers had been received by Moelis, the bank mandated to dispose of the 777 Partners football empire of dust. But one by one, all of the potential buyers – some mysterious Americans, some mysterious Emiratis – who had reportedly expressed an interest in acquiring Standard withdrew from the negotiating table. There hadn’t been many of them.
Then, on Wednesday 2 April this year, a miracle happened. Standard’s former chief financial officer and recently-promoted CEO Giacomo Angelini, a Liégois by birth, announced that a consortium of unnamed “local investors” he was leading had entered “advanced discussions” to acquire the club and that “an agreement in principle” had been reached. The terms agreed by the consortium, SDL Holding, were far more favourable to A-CAP than those which any previously interested parties had been prepared to accept.
SDL Holding would not only take on the club’s debt, estimated to be just under 30 million euro; it would also pay A-CAP 60 million euro cash for the club, when other bidders had only proposed a symbolic sum for it.
But where did the money come from? Where had Angelini and his friends found such sums to invest in a club whose losses had averaged over 20 million euro per season over the last three years?
King to the rescue
Josimar can now reveal that the funds for this transaction came entirely from A-CAP.
This was confirmed when Josimar reviewed the recently filed financial statements of A-CAP’s insurers. One of them in particular, Atlantic Coast Life Insurance Company, held the first clue, buried in an entry listed under Schedule BA – Part 2 on page 44. There, a loan appears of 62.7 million dollars to “SDL 2025 Holder”, a Delaware-registered company whose ultimate controlling entity is listed as A-CAP’s Chairman and CEO Kenneth King. The use of the “SDL” (“Standard de Liège”) acronym is the giveaway as it is neither imaginative nor coincidental. It was also used by 777 Partners to name the entity which held their shares in the club – 777 SDL BV.
This 62.7 million dollar-loan was made on 7 May, 2025 and is suspiciously similar to the 60 million euro ‘purchase price’ of Standard. It is also not far off the 62.8 million dollars 777 Partners initially paid to acquire the club back in March 2022. Josimar’s understanding is that King’s “SDL” entity was the conduit through which funding was channelled to Angelini’s holding company for the purpose of his takeover.
So an insurance company owned by Kenneth King’s A-CAP, loaned money to a Delaware company also owned by King, which then provided funding for Angelini’s takeover of Standard. This raises questions. Why is King essentially loaning money to himself here? And if Angelini is a real buyer, why isn’t he the initial borrower?
On the same day this loan appears on Atlantic Coast’s books – 7 May – information shared with Josimar by Belgian national broadcaster RTBF indicates that a board meeting took place at Standard de Liège, at which a proposal for a 28.7 million euro capital increase was approved.
It was recorded by a notary four weeks and a day later. But this time the funding didn’t come from King’s newly created entity but from 777 SDL SRL, another subsidiary of the old 777 Partners football holding company Nutmeg which he nevertheless controls, and it wasn’t paid in cash but in receivables (“créances”), with no conditions attached.
But the mystery does not end there. Because on 6 June, when the capital increase was officially announced, another entry appeared in the financials of Atlantic Coast. This time listed under Schedule D, we find an entry marked “Nutmeg Acquisition” for a direct loan of 33.5 million dollars. Based on the exchange rate that day, 33.5 million dollars equates to 28.7 million euro – the exact amount needed for the capital increase.
6 June is an interesting date for other reasons here. It is also the day on which Atlantic Coast made a loan of 1.2 million dollars to SDL 2025 Holder, and on which Haymarket Insurance Company, another A-CAP insurer, made a loan of 500,000 dollars to a second King-controlled Delaware entity called SDL 2025 RCF. ‘RCF’ commonly refers to a ‘revolving credit facility’, and Josimar’s understanding is that these sums were used by Standard for cash-flow purposes. But that’s not all, as 6 June was also the date on which an auction of all the other football club holdings of 777 Partners was held. The auction ended with A-CAP making a credit bid, and seizing them.
A-CAP Corporate Structure Diagram, showing fully-owned subsidiaries SDL 2025 Holder and SDL 2025 RCF.
Exquisite timing
There is one more thing here to note. As shown in the document reproduced below, Angelini did not sit down in front of notary Jean-Michel Gauthy to record the incorporation of his limited company – SDL Holding until 6 May, twenty-four hours before the initial 62.7 million dollar loan of 7 May was recorded. The announcement of the incorporation was published in the Moniteur (the public recorder) two weeks later, as demanded by Belgian law. So when A-CAP and Angelini first announced back on 2 April that a deal between them had been “agreed in principle”, SDL Holding did not even exist.
Then, on the day of the auction of 777’s football assets, Belgian media reported that Standard’s shares had been officially transferred to Angelini’s new holding company; but it is only in August that the “old” order gave way to the new, with the resignations from the club’s board of A-CAP nominees David Shaw, Pierre Locht and former England 2018 World Cup bid advisor and British Olympic Association CEO Andy Anson. Standard legend and former Belgium manager Marc Wilmots and lawyer Pierre François, another name associated with Standard’s better years, took their places on the board, much to the satisfaction of the fans.
It is possible to see what happened at Standard as a masterstroke from Kenneth King, whose insurers had been pumping money into the club via loans to 777 Partners for months and receiving nothing in return. Following the transfer of shares, those loans have essentially been repackaged, and Angelini, rather than 777 Partners, is now on the hook for the money.
The picture looks quite different from Standard’s perspective, however. On the surface, the worst outcome – a bankruptcy which looked likely when 777 Partners began to collapse – has been avoided. But the ball has merely been kicked into longer, more distant grass. Angelini, or whoever succeeds him, will have to repay all loan funding provided by A-CAP, which Josimar understands comes at a rate of interest which will rise incrementally from 7 to 11 percent. Local and national media have not been fooled by the manoeuvring, but show no appetite to carry on investigating the goings-on at one of the greatest and most-loved institutions of French-speaking Belgium. Yet fans who breathed a sigh of relief hoping for an end to the troubles of the 777 Partners era may have been misled, because the truth is that Standard’s debt burden has merely been multiplied, and the club’s current owners do not have the resources to repay it all. Nor is there any reasonable hope that the club’s on-field performances could generate the kind of money needed to meet the club’s obligations through sporting revenue.
This is why Angelini and his associates keep saying they are still looking for and talking to investors. But it will take investors of some substance to finally render Standard debt-free.
Project Red Card
Josimar sent Standard’s CEO a list of detailed questions relative to the origin of the funds SDL Holding had used to purchase the club, referring specifically to loans made by A-CAP for that purpose. Mr Angelini replied by directing us to an article published in Belgian newspaper Sud Info on 18 July. “All the information included [in that article} remains applicable”, he wrote, “and we will not be providing further comment on this matter”.
“With regard to your questions on investors”, he continued, “please note that I am bound by NDA and am therefore not able to discuss or comment further beyond this point”.
Josimar read Sud Info’s article with the attention it deserved but could not see any reference to the points we had expressly raised in our own correspondence. A-CAP’s name only features once in the piece, to remind readers that the purchase of the club was completed by SDL Holding on 6 June.
This article, however, mentions Mr Angelini’s dealings with three potential unnamed investors, one of which is said to be in pole position to acquire Standard. Talks with this “investor” are said to have entered an “in-depth verification phase of the necessary information”.
This “investor” is represented by a British solicitor whose name will be familiar to Josimar readers: Chris Farnell, senior partner of Manchester-based IPS Law, who lists Swansea City, heavyweight world boxing champion Tyson Fury, current Portugal manager Robert Martinez and Cristiano Ronaldo among former clients of his on his company’s website.
Chris Farnell, Senior Partner of IPS Law
Sud Info does not mention that Mr Farnell is the man who registered the trademarks of illegal Asian-facing betting operators DEBET and NET88 in the United Kingdom prior to those brands signing ongoing front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Crystal Palace in 2024, as revealed by Josimar last February. Mr Farnell threatened us with legal action at the High Court on behalf of his client NET88 after we exposed how the Vietnamese online bookmaker appeared to offer gambling on blood sports and stream live sex on its social platforms. None has been forthcoming.
Mr Farnell and IPS Law were also involved in Project Red Card, an attempt by the co-founders of Global Sports Data and Technology Limited, Jason Dunlop and former Cardiff City manager Russell Slade, to sue data-using companies on behalf of 1,800 athletes whose performance data had allegedly been exploited without consent. A company called Safe Harbour Group lent IPS Law half-a-million pounds sterling to fund the joint litigation, which collapsed soon afterwards. IPS first denied they were responsible for this debt, which led to a winding-down order in the High Court. The case was eventually settled by IPS Law for an undisclosed amount.
IPS Law then turned on their former associate Global Sports and invoiced them 370 000 pounds for their services in Project Red Card. IPS Law’s claim was dismissed in brutal terms by Judge Rowley on 28 July.
Former Cardiff City manager and Global Sports co-founder Russell Slade
Through a quite extraordinary coincidence, Russell Slade, described as “owning shares in a Premier League football club” (Josimar could find no trace of any such significant shareholding), was named as another former potential buyer of Standard in the Sud Info article, but whose bid was pushed aside by Angelini.
As to Standard itself, information received by Josimar suggests that extra rolling funds will be needed to keep Les Rouches going through the current season, which started well – two wins and a draw in the first three rounds of the Jupiler League – then showed how far Standard remains from the top sides in the Belgian championship. Union St Gilloise beat them 3-0 before Dimitry Rybolovlev-owned Cercle Brugge trounced them on the same score in Liège. OH Leuven beat them 1-0 last Sunday. All that Standard can hope for is mid-table survival, not Europe; and the emergence of these “investors” who, so far, have not put any firm bid on the table.
Did A-CAP have the right to do it?
As for Angelini’s takeover, and the nature of its funding, it is also worth noting that until A-CAP somehow reached a settlement with the Utah Insurance Department, it was under strict orders not to put any more money at all into any assets related to 777 Partners. In March of this year, in a bombshell petition, Utah described A-CAP’s insurers in the state – which include Haymarket – as “insolvent”, and insisted that a judge grant the Department permission to seize control of them for “rehabilitation”, accusing King of “a years-long history of self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and obfuscation.” However, the two parties then agreed to mediation, with an A-CAP press release stating that: “In May 2025, A-CAP and insurance regulators in Utah agreed to the dismissal of a rehabilitation petition.” The Utah Insurance Department did not respond to queries in relation to this article, and the terms of the settlement remain unknown. But one of the first things A-CAP did after coming to terms with Utah was to fund Angelini’s takeover of Standard, and credit bid for the other 777 Partners clubs at auction.
A-CAP has since published another press release, trumpeting the fact that one of its “wholly-owned subsidiaries” has completed a “strategic capital transaction” with affiliates of BDT & MSD Partners, the investment vehicle of tech billionaire Michael Dell, who has lent money to a variety of football clubs including Southampton and West Ham. It is interesting to note that in its press release in June, A-CAP described itself as “a New York-based insurance and financial services company with over 12 billion dollars in assets.” Yet in its press release of 1 August that figure is given as 16 billion dollars. No explanation for this discrepancy has been forthcoming.
14 law firms
And what of 777 Partners? The company continues to exist, though it has been evicted from most of its offices and almost all of its assets have been stripped by creditors like A-CAP. To the surprise of many, however, it has yet to file for bankruptcy.
This is despite its own lawyers admitting that 777 Partners “is in extreme financial distress” and as of July this year had outstanding debts to various law firms of 5 million dollars. So many parties have come forward to sue 777 that it was at one point employing at least 14 different law firms to defend it from various actions.
The latest of those lawsuits, brought by former 777 Partners CFO Damien Alfalla – who quit shortly before the firm failed with its attempted takeover of Everton – has resulted in the company being put into limited receivership until it pays his legal fees. Alfalla incurred those fees as a result of a US Department of Justice investigation into both 777 Partners and A-CAP concerning possible money laundering violations. Remarkably, the law firm defending 777 Partners in the Alfalla case claimed that it too, had not been paid.
The biggest lawsuit of all remains the one brought by Leadenhall Capital Partners, who claim 777 owe them over 650 million dollars and that A-CAP’s King is the secret mastermind behind both companies. In a letter to the court dated August 5, Leadenhall complains that neither 777 Partners nor A-CAP has properly responded to its discovery requests. As a result, Leadenhall requested that the court require 777 to apply its search terms so that it can begin producing the relevant documents. Leadenhall then published those search terms, which included “sham”, “fake”, “sneak”, “conceal”, “abscond”, “fuck”, “dumb”, “stupid”, “nuts”, “dipshit”, “asshole”, “prick”, “sucker”, “loser”, “bankrupt” and “broke”, along with the names of several 777 and A-CAP employees, plus all of the football clubs 777 once owned, and one that it never did -– Everton.
A-CAP were contacted by Josimar but had not responded to our questions by the time of publication. This article will be updated if and when they do.
