The helicopter crash that killed Thai billionaire and Leicester City soccer club Chairman Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha puts a spotlight on the clan that helps run a duty-free business empire built over almost three decades.
While the Srivaddhanaprabhas are famous for their turnaround of Leicester City, culminating in one of the greatest sports upsets when the club became English champions, the family’s fortune is derived mostly from its duty-free giant back home, King Power Group.
Vichai, King Power’s chairman, amassed a net worth of $3.3 billion at the helm of the firm, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The country’s record tourism boom drew huge numbers of passengers to the key Thai airports where King Power is the monopoly provider of duty-free stores under concessions from Airports of Thailand Pcl.
The crash happened about 45 minutes after Vichai had been watching his team play West Ham in the English Premier League on Saturday. The chopper faltered shortly after takeoff and slammed into a parking lot, bursting into flames. Vichai was one of five people killed in the crash, Leicester City said in a statement. Separately, the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch said in a statement Monday that inspectors have recovered the chopper’s flight data recorder and are working on the device.
"Leicester City was a family under his leadership," the club said as it postponed soccer matches scheduled this week.
His sudden death comes as state-run Airports of Thailand prepares a tender to award the next concession for the sprawling duty-free stores at Suvarnabhumi, Thailand’s main international airport in the capital Bangkok. The current concession is due to expire in 2020, and foreign companies such as South Korea’s Lotte Corp. have shown interest in the business. Reports indicate domestic firms the Mall Group, Central Group and Bangkok Airways Pcl are among those that may also compete.
Royal Warrant
King Power is the largest duty-free retailer in Thailand. The family also has a minority stake in Thai AirAsia, a unit of Asia’s biggest discount carrier, AirAsia Group Bhd., according to a company statement released in December 2017.
The family name Srivaddhanaprabha was bestowed upon them by Thailand’s late King Bhumibol Adulyadej and loosely translates as light of progressive glory. That came after the monarch gave the rare honor of a royal warrant to Vichai, according to the ceremony in which Vichai received an honorary degree from the University of Leicester.
Vichai’s Son Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha is chief executive officer of King Power and vice chairman of Leicester City. Filings show that Aiyawatt is the biggest individual shareholder after Vichai in the AirAsia unit.
Most of the family’s King Power shares are held through Thailand-based V&A Holdings, according to a filing retrieved in June 2016 from Orbis, a database of company information published by Bureau van Dijk.