Ryan Reynolds’ football club Wrexham tied up in collapse of British broker Argentex

London – Wrexham AFC, the Welsh football club controlled by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney and backed by Apollo Global Management, has been caught up in the collapse of British currency brokerage Argentex Group.

The club had placed £4.6 million (S$8 million) with Argentex, which collapsed into a form of insolvency in July as a result of soured foreign-exchange trades, according to documents filed in Britain.

The sum exceeded the amount of cash on hand reported at the end of 2024 by Wrexham’s operating company, Wrexham AFC, filings show. British football clubs are cash-intensive projects, often losing money in their bid to defeat rivals. 

The involvement of the club adds to the far-reaching nature of Argentex’s collapse. The firm’s unravelling, caused by a portfolio of high-risk US dollar trades imploding in April, tied up thousands of derivatives transactions along with £34 million of loans owed to a company owned by British mogul and Reform UK donor Christopher Harborne. While administrators overseeing the wind-down are confident that customers in Wrexham’s category will be repaid, others may not be so fortunate, filings show.

A spokesperson for Wrexham declined to comment. A spokesperson for FRP Advisory, the firm overseeing the insolvency, said that no money has been paid back to creditors yet and that any repayments will need to be signed off by a court. 

Mr Reynolds and Mr McElhenney bought Wrexham for about £2 million in 2021 when it was playing in the lower tiers of English football. The club’s profile has risen significantly since then, after a documentary chronicling the actors’ ownership and three consecutive league promotions. They announced a deal to sell a minority stake to New York-based Apollo in December, and are now challenging for promotion to the Premier League. 

Wrexham used Argentex for basic FX services and did not have any derivatives with the firm, people familiar with the matter said. The club has struck a number of lucrative international sponsorship deals bringing money in from overseas, including with US corporations United Airlines Holdings, Meta Platforms and HP.

Argentex collapsed during the summer, tying up its customers’ cash during a period when football clubs expect to generate funds from new sponsorship arrangements and sale of players.

The £4.6 million Wrexham held with Argentex compared with £1.1 million of cash “at bank and in hand” that the club listed for the year through June 2024, according to its most recently filed accounts. 

While Argentex was best-known for offering FX services to corporate clients, it also ran what administrators described as “alternative banking services” that included multi-currency electronic-money accounts and “certain connected payment services”, filings show. Wrexham was by far the largest out of more than 600 e-money customers, accounting for almost one-third of their combined funds, the filings show. 

That left Wrexham exposed to Argentex’s high-risk approach to FX trading. The firm entered derivatives trades with Wall Street banks, including Barclays and Citigroup, agreeing to post collateral, or margin, as a buffer against losses if the transactions began to sour. Yet it did not request collateral from its own corporate clients, Bloomberg has reported. 

When the dollar slumped in April as a result of US President Donald Trump’s tariff plans, Argentex faced requests for repayment from Barclays and Citigroup that it was unable to meet. The firm had also struggled with other problems, including a lack of experience in FX and treasury, along with confusion at the highest levels about how reliant it had become on “zero zero” trades, Bloomberg has reported. BLOOMBERG