"The Reuben brothers will experience a level of scrutiny they have never been exposed to before," said Kieran Maguire, a lecturer on football finance at the University of Liverpool."The fans, who are a passionate bunch, will be monitoring companies they are involved in and they will be kept up-to-date with Google alerts."
The merits and objectives behind the 300 million pound deal being proposed by the Saudi consortium, which also includes the British businesswoman Amanda Staveley, are already stirring debate in the sports press and on social media, including on YouTube channel Newcastle Fans TV. "The owners will be influencing the hearts and minds of 50,000 Geordies and they expect something of you," Mr Maguire said at the University of Liverpool, referring to the colloquial term for people from Tyneside in the northeast."Football is 24/7 for these fans."
Representatives for the Reuben family and Saudi Arabia's PIF declined to comment. A representative for Staveley didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.The deal would also dovetail with other Reuben business interests in Newcastle, once one of Britain's industrial powerhouses. The family owns a racecourse and is developing a 600,000-square-foot retail and leisure space in the city.
In 1991, the brothers opened an office in Russia and began buying controlling stakes in aluminum plants there and in neighboring Ukraine. Five years later, they were the world's third-largest producer of the metal. They sold their interest in Trans-World to Russia's Oleg Deripaska in 2000 for US$250 million, investing the proceeds in real estate, leisure interests and technology companies.