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A 22-year-old billionaire puts a special gift under the Christmas tree. Buy the traditional English club Sunderland.
Sunderland AFC confirms the acquisition by Kyril Louis-Dreyfus. The new owner grew up in Zurich and is only 22 years old. The Louis-Dreyfus family has several billion dollars in assets.
Kyril is the son of the double French-Swiss citizen Robert (who died in 2009) and the Russian Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who has lived in Switzerland for more than 30 years. His mother is considered one of the most powerful women in the world and runs the Louis Dreyfus company, which made a profit of $ 230 million in 2019 alone. The company is successful in several industries: agriculture, metals and energy, shipbuilding, finance. and real estate. She is also in a relationship with the former director of the National Bank, Philipp Hildebrand.
Now some of Louis Dreyfus’ money is supposed to flow to England. Sunderland’s former owner, Stewart Donald, had been trying to sell the club all year long. The Englishman only wanted to keep part of his shares. The “Black Cats” have won six championship titles in their long history and still participated in the Premier League in 2017. Sunderland AFC currently only play in the third highest English league. In recent years, the club caused quite a stir on the pitch with the Netflix documentary “Sunderland ‘Til I Die,” which spans two seasons.
The Louis-Dreyfus family is no stranger to the soccer business. Father Robert was for a long time CEO of Adidas and since 1996 the largest shareholder of Olympique de Marseille. The French reached the final of the UEFA Cup twice. In 2010, a year after her death, Marseille celebrated the championship title, but in 2016 Margarita sold the shares. Father Robert was also a shareholder of the Belgian club Standard Liège; the club’s training center is named after him.
