When John Henry bought Liverpool Football Club in 2010, China’s currency was trading at Rmb6.7 to the dollar and heading higher. It would eventually peak in early 2014 at Rmb6 to the greenback.
It is doubtful that Mr Henry, who made his fortune as a commodities trader and is best known for purchasing the Boston Red Sox baseball team in 2002, gave much thought to how many redbacks it took to buy a greenback. But if he does end up selling Liverpool FC for a pretty penny to a consortium led by a Chinese investment group, it will be in part because of what has happened to the renminbi over the past two years.
On Monday, China’s central bank set the renminbi’s dollar “reference rate”, around which it is allowed to move plus or minus 2 per cent in daily trading, at 6.6652 — almost 11 per cent below its 2014 peak and back where it was when Mr Henry diversified from baseball into English football.