What we know of new Villa owner Tony Xia

So Tony Xia is the new Aston Villa owner, having bought the club from Randy Lerner for £60million.

But what do we know of this Chinese businessman who now holds a 100 per cent stake in a club 142 years old?

He claims to be a Villa fan who fell in love with football at college, where he played as a striker.

After graduating in China as one of the top 1,000 highly-rated graduates, he was sent overseas to study.

He spent six years at two of America's best colleges, Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and even took part in a five-month exchange programme with Oxford University.

An academic high-flier, he then returned to China where he set up Recon Group, a private pharmaceutical holding company established in 1996.

His company's principal activities include manufacture, research, development and distribution of health products in China and Hong Kong.

He owns a controlling interest in five publicly-listed companies on the Hong Kong and Chinese stock exchanges as well as many other private companies.

It's estimated that he employs a total of 35,000 people in 75 countries. However, there is no indication of exactly how much Xia is worth.

He is not named by Forbes in the top 400 rich list for China or the top 50 in Hong Kong, although the majority of businessmen on those lists are billionaires.

As well as selling pharmaceutical products, Xia has interests in IT infrastructure and services for smart cities, including health and agriculture.

His company has grown thanks to the Chinese government's programme of relocating 500 million people from rural areas to cities.

One of his companies, Lotus Health Group, trades in glutamic acid, which is also known as MSG, a flavour enhancer used in food.

Xia decided to buy an iconic football club in England to be the cornerstone of his sports, leisure and tourism division.

According to the club, he became a Villa fan many years ago, and was delighted to be given the opportunity to become the new owner.

He has been meeting with chairman Steve Hollis over the past few weeks, but the now the deal has been finalised.

His immediate objective is to return Villa to the Premier League, after this season's disastrous campaign relegated the club to the second tier for the first time in 29 years.

But he is ambitious. After winning promotion, he wants to have the club finish in the top six, bringing European football back to Villa Park.

He also plans to make Villa the most famous football club in China and expand their fan-base in the Far East.

Whether he manages to do any of that, we'll just have to wait and see.