Who is new West Brom owner Shilen Patel?

Following a long process, the club confirmed the takeover by Florida businessman Patel, 43, and his father Dr Kiran Patel, in a statement on Thursday evening.

But who are the Patel family? Here is a look into their past and business achievements.

The Patel family are said to control two billion 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.

In interviews, Shilen has spoken about the businesses he and his family have invested in, and how he has always had a football goal.

He said: “This comes from our culture and family values – you can’t be afraid of messy things.

“You look at the businesses (Kiran was involved in) and it wasn’t a story of ‘let’s go put $50 million behind it and buy pristine assets’. Each time, it was taking something people were running away from and having a plan to turn it into something.

““I’m looking for individuals who have a strong relationship with an existing problem and feel a sense of ownership, or a sense of opportunity, to influence that problem.

“And then, obviously, I’m looking for credible plans around that. My goal is to own a soccer team. I’ve made a few attempts, but I’m not there yet.”