Ras al Khaimah, one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, has no interest in investing in the Liverpool Football Club or other soccer clubs as it can’t fund such deals, said the head of the RAK Investment Authority.
“We are not in football clubs,” Khater Massaad, also an adviser to Ras al Khaimah’s Crown Prince Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qassimi, said in an interview yesterday in the emirate. “We don’t have enough money and we are not really in this business.”
The Investment Authority is focusing on industrial investments, he said.
Ras al Khaimah, a rocky outcrop along the Persian Gulf, has attracted as much as $3 billion in industrial investments in four years as it seeks to boost economic expansion, Massaad said. The emirate’s economy is expected to grow 10 percent this year from 8 percent in 2009, Massaad said June 9.
The Abu Dhabi United Group for Development and Investment, controlled by Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, bought English soccer club Manchester City from former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2008.
Dubai-based businessman Sulaiman Al-Fahim sold 90 percent of Portsmouth in October to Saudi Arabia’s Ali Al-Faraj six weeks after completing his own buyout of the English Premier League soccer club.
