Confirmed: Shilen Patel completes West Brom takeover from Guochaun Lai

Florida businessman Patel, 43, and his father Dr Kiran Patel have acquired Lai's 87.8 per cent majority shareholding in West Bromwich Albion Group Limited, the club's parent company.

Patel's consortium is named Bilkul Football WBA. Bilkul means 'absolutely' in Hindi. Shilen will be Albion's new chairman and much more involved than his father with club matters.

The club's new ownership-in-waiting are huge supporters and admirers of head coach Carlos Corberan, who has worked wonders in 16 months at the helm with zero investment. The Spaniard remains the club's greatest football asset and there was no substance in overseas reports this week of prospective owners potentially looking to make a change.

The takeover has received approval from the EFL. Exchange and completion will take place next week.

As reported by the Express & Star, medical entrepreneur Patel will be in attendance for tomorrow night's Championship fixture against Southampton.

Patel said of taking over the club from Lai's testing eight years in charge at The Hawthorns: "I am thrilled and grateful to have reached an agreement to become the custodian of West Bromwich Albion Football Club.

"The club's exceptional history, support and potential set it apart even here in the cradle of football.

"My goal is to help the club achieve a future worthy of its history as a pioneering top-flight club that marshals the pride and passion that have defined the Albion for generations.

"I am excited to get started at The Hawthorns and look forward to the deal completing next week."

The takeover deal is understood to be worth around £60m. The family's Bilkul Football WBA will absolve the £28m debt owed to MSD Holdings, Albion's creditor who have issued two loans to the club in the last year or so, as well as other debts.

The deal also covers running costs for the remainder of the current campaign.

The Patel family are said to control two million dollars of assets. Tampa-based Shilen now runs family matters.

His father, Zambia-born Dr Kiran, was a practicing cardiologist. He bought medical insurance firm Well Care HMO for around five million dollars in 1992 before a 200 million dollars sale 10 years later.

Dr Kiran has since built and operated several other medical insurance firms and generated more than one billion dollars in revenue before a 2019 sale.

In 2017, Kiran and his wife, Dr Pallavi, committed 200 million dollars for the building and development of a new university medical school at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale. It was praised as "key training ground for the medical community."

Kiran said: "Imagine the numbers of lives you're going to touch."

Shilen, meanwhile, is an investor in the technology, healthcare, sport, real estate, finance and food and beverage industries, among others. He has previously been involved in football as a minority stakeholder in Italian club Bologna.

Albion's new chairman is the founder and chief executive of HealthAxis, a health insurance-focused company based out of Tampa Bay. The company had a revenue of 45 billion dollars in 2021.

Shilen is married to Parita and has three children aged under 11. The couple were chairs of the Glazer Children’s Museum’s gala in 2019, where they helped raise more than 600,000 dollars in a year.