N&Q: Billionaire family sells football club, Aussie dynasties combine to delist…

Louis-Dreyfus calls it a day with iconic football club

Swiss-Russian commodities billionaire Margarita Louis-Dreyfus is selling the family’s majority stake in the French football club Olympique de Marseille. She inherited the stake in la Ligue 1 club with the death of her former husband in 2009. Reports say that Margarita invested heavily in the club, but with little avail in terms of results and the 2015-16 season saw Marseille finish 13 in France’s top football league. The buyer is the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who paid €40 million for the stake, say reports. But Louis-Dreyfus family isn’t completely ending their association with the famed football club, they will retain a 5% stake in Marseille. Here’s a list of some other football clubs closely linked to family business dynasties.

Aussie property dynasties hookup to delist

Reports in the Australian press suggest two property dynasties are helping each other out during a tough time for one of them. The Roche family, owners of Roche Holdings, which is mainly linked to property development in Australia, has teamed up with the Simonds home building family to take over their troubled listed Simonds Group. The deal will probably lead to the delisting of Simonds, which has struggled since it went public in 2014. Its market capitalisation has recently shrunk to just AUD$42 million, compared with AUS$270 million when it floated.

Insight into a newly minted techie’s desire for a family office

Indians are among the most open about setting up family offices and their investment plans. That’s good for the wider family office world, which often tends to be overly secretive, although sometimes the reasons for that are legitimate. The latest Indian to talk about his family office efforts is the tech serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia. He and his brother recently sold their Media.net business for $900 million.

In an interview with an Indian publication called Techcircle, Turakhia said he plans to set up a family office. He and his brother have more than enough investments to manage and a family office makes sense. What sectors interest Turakhia? – biotech and artificial intelligence. And Turakhia reckons India’s dynamic tech startup sector is due for consolidation. Let’s hope that doesn’t stop the enthusiasm for startup investing among India’s burgeoning family office sector.