Ft article20 Aug 2024 22:13
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https://www.ft.com/content/9482c792-619a-4fb2-a757-d38f332736e9
In 2021, an ambitious technology entrepreneur made plans to host a football competition featuring global superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
Robert Bonnier planned to spend an estimated €80mn-€110mn to recruit the world’s top players, according to documents seen by the Financial Times. “The Fans Cup”, to be held either in London or Cardiff, would focus attention on Bonnier’s company Aaqua, a social media start-up.
Bonnier says The Fans Cup was an earlier project not connected to Aaqua. But in one version of the plans, fans would be able to vote on which players would feature. In another, Aaqua would charter an Airbus A380 at $35,000 an hour to take guests from Sydney to the match in Cardiff, with lavish stopovers en route. People representing both Messi and Ronaldo had “expressed interest” in the competition, the plans stated.
The Dutchman, a serial entrepreneur and financier who first rose to prominence in the 1990s dotcom frenzy, appeared to have good reason to be so bullish. Aaqua — a platform on which users with similar interests could connect with each other in “passion communities” — was, he claimed, attracting potential interest from Apple and luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.
Aaqua seemed to be a project perfectly tailored for the moment. Entrepreneurs like Bonnier were riding the coat-tails of the boom in US tech stocks, while European investors were keen to unearth potential homegrown tech champions that might one day challenge Wall Street’s giants.
One of those investors was property magnate Nick Candy, whose Candy Ventures vehicle put money into Aaqua. Another was All Active Asset (AAA), a London-listed investment firm specialising in technology.
The football match never took place. In 2022, Aaqua made most of its staff redundant and its Singapore-based holding company sought protection from creditors while it restructured its debts, leaving investors like Candy and AAA facing heavy losses.
The 54-year-old financier is now mired in a bitter court battle with Candy, who says Bonnier misled him about Apple and LVMH’s interest in order to convince him to invest.
“He has played me completely,” says Candy, who briefly obtained orders from a London court to freeze Aaqua’s assets worldwide.
AAA has also taken legal action against Bonnier, claiming he still owes around £1.2mn after taking a short-term loan from the firm. It won a UK High Court judgment against Bonnier and his wife, Nashida, in December and has begun bankruptcy proceed
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