Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s rise to become one of the wealthiest men in Thailand was eclipsed, in Britain at least, by his part in arguably the most remarkable story in the history of English football.
Born Vichai Raksriaksorn in April 1958 in Bangkok, to a Thai-Chinese family, Vichai has expanded his empire while managing to straddle Thailand’s toxic political divide. Vichai’s own upward trajectory in business started relatively late. He opened his first duty free shop in downtown Bangkok in 1989, but it wasn’t until 2006 that King Power secured the exclusive rights to duty free stores in the Thai capital’s Suvarnabhumi airport, now the 12th busiest in the world.
The then prime minister and former Manchester City owner, Thakskin Shinawatra, granted his duty-free business an airport monopoly, giving him a huge commercial advantage that continued even after Thaksin was ousted in a coup later that year and replaced by a military junta. According to Forbes magazine his fortune grew to an estimated $4.9bn.
Six years after he bought Leicester City for £39m, the club secured their place in English football history by winning the Premier League title, having started the season as 5,000-1 outsiders. In 2014, few were convinced when Vichai pledged an £180m investment he said would take newly promoted Leicester into the Premier League top five – and into Europe – within three years. His prediction turned out to be overly cautious: the club won the domestic title within two years and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League the following season.
Vichai bankrolled them to their first title in top-flight football and gave hope to supporters of unfancied teams that the premier league stranglehold established by a handful of clubs could be broken after all.
While the controversial decision to sack title-winning manager Claudio Ranieri less than a year after their greatest triumph prompted criticism, the supporters’ faith in Vichai and his son Aiyawatt, who is the club’s vice-chairman, was never in serious doubt.
