Who Owns Celtic?

Celtic is a listed company whose largest shareholder is Dermot Desmond. Companies House records Mr Dermot Fachtna Desmond — Irish nationality, resident in Switzerland — holding more than 25% but not more than 50% of Celtic plc, notified 26 June 2017. Celtic plc is SC003487, incorporated 12 April 1897, and unlike most listed companies on this site it does file a PSC register. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Celtic?

Celtic is owned by its shareholders — thousands of them, including a large number of supporters. It is one of very few British football clubs that anyone can buy a piece of.

The company is CELTIC PLC (SC003487), incorporated 12 April 1897 and registered at Celtic Park, Glasgow. Its previous name is The Celtic Football and Athletic Company Limited.

The SC prefix marks a Scottish registration, and the number is among the lowest this site has encountered. Celtic’s company is older than almost every business covered here, and — unlike Leeds United’s or Crystal Palace’s — it has never been replaced.

Its sole person with significant control is Dermot Fachtna Desmond, at more than 25% but not more than 50% of shares and voting rights.

Current owners and shareholding structure

Celtic is listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange’s junior market, and its ownership is unusually dispersed for a football club:

• Dermot Desmond — the largest holder, in the 25–50% band
• The Celtic Trust and individual supporter shareholders — a substantial collective holding
• Institutions and private investors — the remainder

There is a point of real substance here about the PSC regime. Companies listed on a regulated market — the main London market — are exempt from filing PSC registers, which is why Tesco, BP, BT, Barclays and Frasers Group disclose nothing at Companies House. AIM is not a regulated market for this purpose, so AIM companies must file.

The result is that Celtic — a listed company — names its largest shareholder on the public register, while Frasers Group, whose founder holds around 73%, names nobody. The disclosure depends on which market a company chose, not on how concentrated its ownership is.

Key controlling people and entities

Dermot Desmond is an Irish financier who invested in Celtic in 1994, when the club was close to insolvency, and has been its dominant shareholder since. He does not hold a majority and never has.

His band — 25% to 50% — is wide, and the register narrows it no further. That range spans the difference between a large minority holder and a shareholder able to block special resolutions, which is a meaningful distinction the PSC bands are too coarse to capture.

His country of residence is recorded as Switzerland. That is a register fact and this page draws no inference from it beyond noting that residence and nationality are recorded separately, and frequently differ.

No fund, sovereign investor or consortium holds a stake. Celtic has not been taken over, and the dispersal of its shares among supporters makes a takeover harder than at a privately held club.

Ownership history

Celtic was founded in 1887 by Brother Walfrid, a Marist brother, to raise money to feed poor Irish immigrant children in Glasgow’s East End.

• 12 April 1897 — incorporated as The Celtic Football and Athletic Company Limited.
• 1994 — the club is near collapse under the old board; Fergus McCann takes control, refinances it and launches a share issue.
• 1995 — the share issue raises capital from supporters, creating the dispersed base that still exists.
• 1999 — McCann sells his stake and leaves, as he had said he would after five years.
• 2017 — Desmond’s PSC entry is notified.

The 1994–95 rescue is the decisive event. McCann’s insistence on a public share issue rather than a single buyer is why Celtic is not owned by one person today, and it is the reason the club’s ownership looks so different from those of most of its peers.

Related clubs or investment group

Desmond holds business interests across aviation, property and finance, and no controlling interest in another football club — so Celtic falls outside the multi-club ownership rules that forced a sale at Crystal Palace, covered elsewhere on this site.

Rangers, Celtic’s city rival, is separately owned and has its own complicated corporate history following the 2012 liquidation of its original company — the sharpest available contrast with Celtic’s unbroken 1897 registration.

Celtic owns no other clubs and is not part of any group.

Sources and verification

The company number, the 12 April 1897 incorporation, the previous name and Desmond’s PSC entry with its band, nationality, residence and 26 June 2017 date are all Companies House records for SC003487 and can be checked directly.

Two limits. The register gives a band, not a percentage — Desmond’s holding is somewhere between a quarter and a half. And every shareholder below 25% is invisible on it, so the size of the supporter holding comes from the club’s own reporting and its AIM disclosures rather than from Companies House.

As an AIM company Celtic also publishes annual reports and significant shareholder notifications, which are more precise than the PSC bands and are the better source for exact figures. Companies House does not verify most filed information.