How Football Players Invest Their Millions

One of the best football players of the Russian championship, the captain of Kazan Rubin and the national team Sergey Semak purchased 6.9 percent of shares of a small bank in the city of Rostov-on-Don.

Photo: How Football Players Invest Their Millions

On the one hand, the deal looks suspicious. The Bank’s President and the Chairman of Board of Directors have been held in a detention facility on a charge of cashing out the bank’s funds for the past four months. Prosecution office believes that they cashed out and took out of the country over 21 billion rubles and made a profit of 210 million. This resulted in the outflow of funds and the bank nearly collapsed.

On the other hand, experts believe that under the circumstances Semak’s investment decision was very timely. The bank’s license was not revoked, but the owners had to take some corrective measures. As a result, there is an obvious tendency for growth despite the record drop of the assets price – to 147 million rubles. Semak took advantage of the situation and bought the bank shares at a minimum price.

The intentions of the new banker are yet unknown. He may want to buy more shares or sell the ones he has. One thing is obvious – in this deal Semak has scored the same way he scores on a football field.

Ordinary people are probably not too concerned with the financial matters of football players. However, these financial matters can be quite complicated. The problem of Russian football players lies in the fact that within the last decade the majority of high-level players started making very good money. A salary of one million Euros in the Russian Premier League won’t surprise anybody. Football stars make two to three million per season, including bonuses. This kind of money requires investing, and it’s a big problem.

Even the most naive football players at some point realize that they can’t buy ten Mercedes cars and Vertu phones with this money. This is when they start thinking about investment.

The easiest option is making a real estate investment. If we rule out a possibility of real estate fraud, the profit can be pretty good. Not the highest, but guaranteed. Many players choose to go this route. Upon his return to Moscow from Austria, ex-coach of Spartak Stanislav Cheresov successfully invested his money in the construction of an elite skyscraper near Sokol metro station. Ex-captain of Moscow Dinamo Alexander Tochilin also chose to invest in real estate albeit out of the country. He purchased the entire floors of the houses under construction in the United Arab Emirates, and was also successful.

Football people like to say that any player at least once in a lifetime falls victim to swindlers. Not that long ago the entire Zenit team (St. Petersburg) got burned on a deal with elite real estate. Swindlers talked Vyacheslav Malofeev, Pavel Pogrebnyak and others into investing money in construction. The court proceedings continue, but the football players lost millions of rubles.

People with better imagination invent their own ways to invest. Ex-captain of Moscow Spartak Egor Titov opened a beauty salon in a Moscow suburb. Ex-captain of Zenit Vladislav Radimov bought several wineries and exports wine. Dinamo leader Dmitry Khokhlov owns a provider company. Team Russia’s leader Andrey Arshavin opened a car dealership in Saint Petersburg, albeit in a bad time since car sales dropped to a minimum due to the crisis.

Andrey Schevchenko, team Ukraine’s forward, who played for Milan and Chelsea, made so much money that he had to create a special asset management company, Sheva S. R. L. Stock investment, a favorite type of investment of the Western sports stars, has always been a source of trouble. Even the all-mighty coach of Manchester United got burned on stock. Sir Alex Ferguson lost his savings after the collapse of his investment fund. Of course we can’t say that it made him poor since he still makes €5 million a year, but even millionaires don’t like to lose their money.

Express Gazeta