Bale to his first professional contract, who quickly became a first team regular. Bale was eventually sold to Tottenham Hotspur in a package potentially worth £10m to the club. Bale has since (2013) been transferred to Real Madrid for a world record fee of 100 million EUROS. Following a long period of boardroom upheaval in the club after Wilde's initial departure, and after narrowly avoiding relegation to League One, Wilde and his earlier rival, Rupert Lowe, finally demanded an EGM to remove chairman Leon Crouch and on 15 May 2008, Crouch and three other directors resigned from the board. Wilde resumed his position as chairman of the football club whilst Lowe became chairman of the holding company, Southampton Leisure Holdings Plc. Upon becoming chairman again, Jan Poortvliet, who represented the Netherlands in the Final of the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, was appointed Head Coach to work with what was a very young squad for the 2008/9 season. Whilst showing promise the team struggled to remain consistent in the Championship, and when the club were deducted 10 points as a result of its holding company going into administration, relegation to League One became inevitable. Wilde has been based in Jersey since February 2006 and in March 2007 he became the main sponsor of the Jersey Football Association (JFA) and played a significant part in bringing the Jersey F.A. International Small Nations Tournament to the island in November 2008. Other business career Whilst in Singapore, Wilde founded Contact Communication Services in 1983, a telecommunications company specialising in high-speed data communications and offering low-cost telex relay services throughout South-East Asia. The company quickly expanded through the establishment of operational offices in Hong Kong, East and West Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia. Wilde eventually exited the company through a sale to European Telecommunication giants, the Great Northern Telegraph Company of Copenhagen in 1988. Upon returning to the UK, Wilde founded Merlion Housing Association in 1990, a specialist provider of privately funded affordable housing. He created and developed a shared equity model for the provision of Housing Association Grant free affordable housing and has been instrumental in this form of tenure becoming a key tool of affordable housing policy in the United Kingdom. The Association has provided homes to nearly 2,000 individuals and families in housing need since its incorporation and was the only privately funded Housing Association to receive funds under the