Dejphon Chansiri company meets inevitable end - with £6.5m Sheffield Wednesday stadium payment made
A Dejphon Chansiri company heavily linked with the administration of Sheffield Wednesday has met its fate.
A company formerly owned by Dejphon Chansiri that played a formative role in the modern history of Sheffield Wednesday has been moved to be dissolved after it rolled over interest to accrue a £7.2m debt, documents show.
‘Sheffield 3 Ltd’ was set up by the former Sheffield Wednesday owner in June 2019 to effectively facilitate the sale of Hillsborough Stadium to Chansiri amid efforts to fall within the confides of financial rules after years of flagrant spending. At a ‘sale price’ of around £60m, a figure that claimed to generate roughly £38 million in profit, the stadium was transferred to the company which then leased it back to the club.
The manoeuvre failed when an independent disciplinary commission found that the club had wrongly submitted the sale in their 2017/18 accounts, which if accurate would have served to satisfy Profit & Sustainability rules. It later transpired that no binding sale agreement existed by the July 2018 year-end and that the sale was found to have completed later, somewhere around June 2019. In mid-August 2018 the club produced Heads of Terms documents that were backdated to appear signed in July 2018. The club was also found to have failed to supply certain supporting documentation requested by the EFL.
A 12-point deduction was enacted by the EFL ahead of the 2020/21 season, later reduced to six points in arbitration. Wednesday were relegated from the Championship that season by three points.
In October 2020 a legal charge - effectively a mortgage - was registered against Sheffield 3 Limited in favour of New Avenue Projects Ltd (NAP), securing a loan of approximately £6.4m against Hillsborough Stadium. This charge was rolled over with interest on five occasions before amid Chansiri’s spiralling financial issues, it was effectively called-in last year at a cost of £7.2m.
With Chansiri himself understood to have effectively acted as a guarantor against that loan, the debt is believed to have been used as leverage to bring both the administrations of both Sheffield 3 Ltd and Sheffield Wednesday into the same action by administrators Begbies Traynor LLP (BTG). Separate administration proceedings would have stood to make the rescuing of Sheffield Wednesday a far more difficult proposition. A whirlwind administration period followed before the club was bought by US Consortium Arise on May 1 2026.
Documents published to Companies House on Wednesday show that Sheffield 3 has been moved to dissolution as was inevitable. The company is still technically in insolvency proceedings but will be dissolved within 30 days. It should be stressed that the move has no impact or material link to current proceedings at Sheffield Wednesday.
The documents also show that NAP took a haircut of around £700k to secure a payment of £6.5m, which was reflected to have been made in full by May 6. Fees paid to Begbies Traynor totalled nearly £300k and were taken out of that £700k headroom, with BTG expenses totalling £313,238. Other firms have been paid for their services, including nearly £170k to Wiggin LLP and nearly £85k to Freeths LLP. Valuations of the stadium during the process cost £12.5k and nearly £10k respectively.
The document reads in part: “During negotiations relating to the sale of the stadium, it was agreed that the Joint Administrators' remuneration and other associated costs relating to the administration could be deducted from the fixed charge proceeds, which would otherwise have gone to NAP in their capacity as fixed charge holder. As result, post-appointment administrators' fees of £289,802 have been drawn. All additional costs incurred over and above what has been approved are to be written off.”
Having rebuffed credible interest in the purchase of the club during his time as owner, it is understood that Dejphon Chansiri stands to take nothing from the completion of administration proceedings at either Sheffield Wednesday or Sheffield 3 Ltd.