New Fulham owner Shahid Khan promises fans same engagement shown to Jaguars

New Fulham chief Shahid Khan, the Premier League's latest foreign owner, is likely to break the mould and be one of the most open and public of billionaires to take control of one of England's top-flight clubs.

Other international owners such as Russian Roman Abramovich (Chelsea) and American Malcolm Glazer (Manchester United) rarely talk to the media or fans but Khan, who bought the club on Friday for a sum believed to be in the region of £220 million (HK$2.6 billion), has shown that he enjoys attention.

When Khan bought the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011, he brought his yacht into port in the northern Florida city and set about a series of community meetings with local politicians and fans.

"He is kind of a rock star with the fans," said Alfie Crow, editor of the Jaguars' fan blog Big Cat Country. "He comes out to practice, interacts with the fans and talks to them. He is very much out there and engaged. He has really energised people."

Any trepidation Jaguars fans initially had about the team's new owner quickly dissipated as he won them over with his charm, not to mention a thick handlebar mustache and flowing hair that is a marked change from the staid image of the traditional NFL owner.

Khan, after all, is far from a typical owner of an American sports franchise. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, where he not surprisingly fell in love with cricket, Khan moved to the US as a 16-year-old, sleeping in a YMCA and washing dishes on his way to earning an engineering degree at the University of Illinois.

He ended up buying the first company to give him a job, transforming Flex-N-Gate into a lucrative car-parts business. In 2010 he was making his first move into the sports world with an attempt to buy the NFL's St Louis Rams.