Ownership of Aston Villa changed hands in 2018, when NSWE Group bought a 55% stake in the club from Tony Xia’s Recon Group.
NSWE, then consisting only of billionaires Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, soon bought Recon out to take full ownership of Aston Villa.
Sawiris and Edens formed NSWE for the purpose of buying into Villa and further expanding a sports portfolio, work that’s now well underway.
Now trading as V Sports, the international holding company that controls 100% of Villa is part-owned by United States strategic investment firm Atairos, which bought into V Sports late in 2023 and has continued to increase its holding as far as 32% at the time of writing.
V Sports also owns 90% of Aston Villa Women after a sale to the holding company in the summer of 2025. It owns 29% of Vitória in Portugal and 25% of Basque club Real Unión, which is otherwise owned by Villa manager Unai Emery. His brother, Igor, is the club president.
Sawiris is an Egyptian billionaire with a reported net worth in the region of £6.35 billion according to Forbes. His father was the late Onsi Sawiris, the owner of Orascom Construction.
The current richest Egyptian, Sawiris has occupied several key positions in a number of international finance organisations. He was sat on the boards of BESIX Group (a Belgian construction company) and the international financial and stock exchanges in Cairo, Alexandria and Dubai.
Sawiris has a stake in adidas and has invested in sports beyond football. He holds a small stake in MSG Sports, the holding company that owns the New York Knicks NBA team and the New York Rangers of the NHL.
Edens is the billionaire American co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, having taken over the Wisconsin-based NBA franchise in 2014. He started his career in finance with Lehman Brothers, becoming a partner and managing director.
Edens continued to work in management within the world of finance and in other areas of business. He went on to make investments in a variety of global industries including automotive, energy, public transport, property food and beverage and e-sports, as well as in the Bucks and football.
Reportedly worth around £2.1 billion, Edens joined forces with Sawiris in 2018 to become co-founders of NSWE Group and pursue their takeover of Villa. NSWE became V Sports in 2021.
Former Villa owners include Xia and Recon, American credit card company heir Randy Lerner, and Doug Ellis, the club’s chairman between 1968 and 1975 and against from 1982 to 2006.
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