From Mr. Geoffrey D. Borg
The FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Mr Bessel Kok are happy to announce that following a meeting in Prague on the 21st of December 2006, a Memorandum Of Understanding has been signed. The parties agreed on the formal launch of a company called Global Chess BV to be located in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. A five year business plan, a financial budget and the draft statutes of the new company was approved.
With the exception of those competitions which have already been contracted by Fide to organisers, Global Chess will become responsible for the marketing, development and promotion of all FIDE tournaments and matches related to the World championship cycles for Men, Women, Youths and Juniors.
It will also act as an investment vehicle for chess related projects that will be selected by the Board following detailed feasibilitystudies for further investment. Areas that will be considered are training academies, software, media programmes amongst a number ofprojects that will be studied an which will help in making chess more popular across the world.
Global Chess will work under a licence agreement to be granted by FIDE. This follows the last Presidential Board meeting in Elista whereby it was agreed by the FIDE Board to pursue discussions with Global Chess on a licence agreement to achieve the above objectives.
The initial start up capital of Global Chess will be 4.5 million Euro to be supplemented by an additional 5.5 million Euro to support future ventures in chess related projects.
The initial Board of Directors will consist of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Bessel Kok and Alexey Orlov. The Board asked Mr. Bessel Kok to act asits Chairman, which he accepted. The Board also commissioned the management team required for Global Chess BV.
so no one will play in Mexico
Wrong. Mexico is still being organized by the Mexicans. New championships, and ones that have not already been given to other companies to organize will be organized by Kok.
I think this is great news and I look forward to seeing the results.
I wonder what Nigel Short thinks, now that Bessel Kok is sleeping with the enemy!
Good news out of FIDE at last?
hmm another Prague agreement. I still remember all the smiles and great photo ops from the last Prague agreement.
The only person who cares what Nigel Short thinks is…
Nigel Short…
And his mom…maybe.
Will Mr. Cock do a good job there?!?
Just wondering…
Does anyone know who the owners/stockholders are of this new company? I don’t mean to be negative, goodness! but this was the most important fact.
If the company actually does a good job of promoting chess, this is good, but if this is just a scheme to milk money than it is a concern. More info would be helpful.
Let’s give these people the benefit of the doubt.
FELICITATIONS! This is great news! Now we need Susan to help out US chess.
I think people are saying “this is good news” simply because the headline has two exclamation points in it. So they think Susan Polgar likes it, so they like it.
At first glance, this looks uncannily like the “FIDE Commerce” disaster of several years back. Read the FIDE memo from then, doesn’t it sound very similar? (This is from Sam Sloan’s website; I know he may have more detractors than supporters, but I’m solely pointing to this FIDE memo.)
http://www.samsloan.com/fidememo.htm
FIDE will profit easily, by putting FIDE INSIDE! in every chess product. Beside that, will be illegal.
But what’s the problem with that? As long as it produce good products, benefits chess, with no corruption, go on! We have tried without bussiness and the result is without success. Try this one! FIDE ENTERPRISE.
ggrayggray is quite correct regarding the previous Prague agreement. So do I.
At least Kramnik, who never intended to keep his word from the moment he signed, is not party to this one.