Thread by @SSTInvesting

20 year-old Sarbjot Johal, his mysterious businesses, his alleged source(s) of wealth, and his ongoing attempted takeover of @MorecambeFC

Morecambe (and English football) fans, buckle up 🦐

A DETAILED INVESTIGATION 🧵👇

Note: I was involved in football M&A from 2017-20, so have a watertight understanding about the takeover process and related due diligence aspects

Given my knowledge and the embarrassing lack of oversight provided of late in the media, I feel compelled to provide some insight

*For legal reasons the contents of this thread should not be considered the legal truth, they are merely my personal findings from which you should draw your own conclusions

**ALL information compiled in this thread is (at the time of writing) available in the public domain

So, who is Sarbjot Johal, where has his supposed ‘tycoon’ status and wealth come from, and what business does a 20 year-old have trying to buy an @EFL outfit in Morecambe FC?

There’s a significant amount to unpack here, so let’s start by answering the first of these questions 👇

PART 1️⃣ - Sarbjot Johal

Sarbjot Johal is a 20 year-old Sikh ‘entrepreneur’ born in Gravesend Kent, known for his purported success in the soft drink industry

Johal owns two drinks brands: Vitanic (founded aged 17 in 2019), and Lovely Drinks (acquired in 2022)

Both brands have limited online presence, with Vitanic not known to have ever publicly retailed a single unit; in a UK outlet or online

Lovely Drinks seems to be a more credible brand, retailing in select UK outlets

It appears Johal directly owns both brands’ holding companies

It turns out that Vitanic is so large that its trust even shares a hotline with, er… Sarb Contractors

(credit @garethduncan for the find)

Just as amusing is Vitanic’s careers page - have a read (image 2)

As for the typos, we’ll let those slide…

Part 2️⃣ - Tycoon Status?

Johal’s ownership of both companies has attracted claims of ‘tycoon’ status (@SamiMokbel81_DM via Daily Mail) with his Vitanic brand reportedly on track for a HIGHLY questionable £1B valuation by 2025 (t.ly/B43sa)

Let’s dig deeper 👇

Upon inspecting his companies’ most recent publicly-available accounts, neither demonstrate any relative financial prowess, employing just THREE people across both companies

Fixed asset levels across both companies total less than £250k, hardly corroborating with ‘tycoon’ status

FMCG companies require high cash flow to sustain even low-level operation, let alone scale to a level where they can turn over millions

It is therefore unheard of to withdraw millions from a small drinks company, EVEN IF it turns over millions (which Johal’s brands likely don’t)

In short, there is almost no conceivable way that millions of pounds of personal liquid wealth has been derived from his drinks companies in such a short space of time

Which is strange, given Johal’s visibly concerted efforts to position his wealth as being sourced that way…

Despite his companies’ paltry figures, what is abundantly clear is that Johal has, or at least has access to a significant amount of wealth (see images)

This has led to the big question: If his wealth isn’t actually sourced from his drinks brands, where HAS it come from?

The plot continues to thicken: Enter the semi-eponymous Sarb Capital

Sarb Capital is Johal’s personal investment company, incorporated in Jan 2022. It labels itself as a VC/PE firm, yet somehow has no functioning website or verifiable full-time employees (as of 3rd Feb 2023)

Despite only officially incorporating in 2022, @sarbcapital claims on Linkedin to have been founded in 2019, and to have between 51 and 200 employees

It also lists its principal business activity as the “development of building projects”

Building a throne of lies, perhaps?

Sarb Capital is reportedly the investment vehicle from which Johal is launching his attempted takeover of Morecambe FC, and according to current club Co-Chairman Graham Howse, Sarb Capital has already purchased a (minority) equity stake in the club

morecambefc.com/news/2023/febr…

Upon further digging, it appears Sarb Capital has two supposed (part-time?) employees - Saidi Banks (@SaidiBanks) and Niyah Smith (@Niyahsmith_ ), neither of whom appear to have any history of undertaking significant work at the company, let alone a trace of history in VC/PE

Banks labels himself as a ‘talent care specialist’ and the ‘Sport Director’ of SC, yet has close to no public footprint (not even a Linkedin profile), which seems a little strange for someone representing a company battling to gain the necessary credibility to fuel the takeover

Smith is SC’s ‘Global Head of Digital’, and from his online posts comes across as a vain upstart with an obsession for rented cars, designer clothing and telling curious enquirers to ‘be quiet’ (since-deleted)

Thankfully for him, Employee of the Month won’t be very competitive… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Further research shows that Smith spent several years in prison for joint firearm possession

Whilst unfair to slight someone for historic wrongdoings, the detail is noteworthy when considering the profile of the (few) people representing Sarb Capital…

suffolklive.com/news/suffolk-n…

What remains most intriguing though is that SC appears to have no verifiable stake in Johal’s drinks brands (the alleged source of his wealth)

So how on Earth does a 20 year-old put £5M+ of liquid cash on SC’s balance sheet within a year of incorporation, to finance a takeover?

Part 3️⃣ - Morecambe FC 🦐

A L1 club punching well above its relative weight, Morecambe is admittedly a club with few growth prospects, averaging 4k attendance in a 6500 capacity stadium (both well below L1 average), making it a very unlikely target for even a familiar investor

Johal’s takeover bid is currently pending regulatory approval, & as mentioned he has reportedly already purchased a minority stake in the club through Sarb Capital

The big question remains what are the motives driving Johal’s attempted purchase, and where is the £ coming from?

To date, Johal has made no public attempt to reach out to the club’s supporters, or to publicly disclose his ambitions for the club

To the average Joe, it may appear it all amounts to nothing more than a vanity project and an attempt to burnish his image as a legitimate investor

There is obviously a chance that Johal’s intentions are pure, and that his wealth claims are substantiated, and he does possess the necessary means to buy and finance a football club

But when inspecting the (publicly-available) evidence provided, who would really believe that?

So, formidable tycoon or plucky wannabe?

I’ll leave everyone to draw their own conclusions. Let’s hope the EFL have turned a corner in their historically porous vetting process - we’ve seen far too many takeovers lead to the demise of historic community assets before

🧵🔚🏁

Scrutiny clearly not something too familiar to Sarb Capital…