Indications are that the club owns the ground.
Without detailed knowldge of the true extent of their predicament I really do suspect they are doomed. Doomed Mr Mainwaring.
Very sad but this is probably what we have been waiting for. More clubs will follow.
Generic clubs in financial crisis Thread
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Royal Rother
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Wimb
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Royal Rother Indications are that the club owns the ground.
Without detailed knowldge of the true extent of their predicament I really do suspect they are doomed. Doomed Mr Mainwaring.
Very sad but this is probably what we have been waiting for. More clubs will follow.
Again not to trivialise the clubs plight but are they 'big enough' to make an impact if they go under?
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Svlad Cjelli
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Royal Rother Indications are that the club owns the ground.
You won't be surprised to hear that there's a whole world of murkiness about the ground ownership.
It used to be owned by the Council.
It was sold by Plymouth City Council to the football club in December 2006 for £2.7m.
Then it was separated from the football club in the last year, to Home Park Properties Limited (HPPL) "a wholly owned subsidiary of Plymouth Argyle Football Company (Holdings) Limited."
This was for £7.5million, a figure "an independent firm of property valuers" put on the stadium. Nice money if you can make it!
Of course, the separation of ground and club was justified in the usual way, and that's worth quoting directly for the irony value :
Mr Todd said: "A consequence of the sale will be reduced debt levels. The club will be more viable with a stronger balance sheet."
Sir Roy said: "Its operating costs will be lower, spread over more days, and (the team) will get better facilities."
He said the 'lower cost base' would be seen 'in an improved playing squad'.
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Controversial-sale-Home-Park-agreed-Argyle/article-1960254-detail/article.html
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Svlad Cjelli
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And that's 100 pages - what a sad indictment on the state of today's game.
Svlad Cjelli And that's 100 pages .
and no FL team has gone bust yet!
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Barry the bird boggler
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and never will.
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Ian Royal
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PieEaterSvlad Cjelli And that's 100 pages .
and no FL team has gone bust yet!
Damn Pompey, Cardiff et al
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Rev Algenon Stickleback H
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A lot more would have done over the years were it not for the questionable legality of clubs going bust, then just reforming as a brand new club and taking over where the previous one left off.
I'm not sure a normal business would get away with just "selling" its assets to a holding company and then declaring itself bankrupt, and then setting up a new company using the holding company's assets.
I'm not sure a normal business would get away with just "selling" its assets to a holding company and then declaring itself bankrupt, and then setting up a new company using the holding company's assets.
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Barry the bird boggler
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From the BBC OS
Safe hands Hudson, the Crazy Gang liquidator
Post categories: Football
Matt Slater | 16:43 UK time, Friday, 18 March 2011
Fifteen years ago, on one of my first forays as a journalistic hunter-gatherer, I arrived at Wimbledon's scruffy training ground in south-west London to see a pair of smouldering jeans being bundled out of a changing-room window. Hang on a minute, I thought, if they are setting fire to trousers we should have sent Kate Adie.
I need not have worried, my strides were safe. What I had witnessed was an almost everyday occurrence, Vinnie Jones exacting revenge for a prank he probably had coming.
A few years before, David Hudson had been part of this madness as the club's second reserve goalkeeper, the craziest position at England's craziest club. One of the highlights of his three years with the Dons was a pre-season tour of Sierra Leone. The recently-crowned FA Cup champions stayed in army camps and played in front of 60,000 fans. After one game their bus was stoned by angry locals.
I would argue these formative experiences make Hudson, now an insolvency expert, the ideal candidate for his new job, joint liquidator at football's new Crazy Gang, Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd.
For Pompey fans panicking about the word "liquidator", fear not: Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd may well be pushing daisies now but Portsmouth Football Club (2010) Ltd is alive and well(ish).
Pompey's lurch into administration appalled fans and embarrassed the football authorities
In keeping with their attempt to chart areas of insolvency law that other football clubs fear to tread, Portsmouth's return from the abyss of being £119m in debt is far from typical.
Old Pompey was officially killed off last month, almost exactly a year after it went into administration.
But this was all part of the hard-fought deal struck between the club's de facto owners, the administrator and the long list of creditors headed up by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC): old co gets it in the neck, key assets are transferred to new co, old co's creditors write off 80% of their money, new co carries on unencumbered by the sins of its father.
So why bother liquidating the old company at all? Why go to the expense of appointing Hudson's Baker Tilly firm if everybody has agreed to move on? What good can come from unpicking the giant ball of confusion that was Pompey's 2010-11 campaign?
The answers to these questions are encased in insolvency law but, for once, are actually quite simple: administration is about saving a stricken but salvageable vessel, liquidation is about raising the wreck from the bottom to find out whose fault it was.
Therefore, the powers and responsibilities of an administrator and a liquidator are very different. The former's job is to plug holes, get the best possible deal for the creditors and sell what's left on so it can live another day. Speed is of the essence, compromise is vital and in most cases everybody is so relieved to get to through it the whole thing is put down to experience and/or forgotten about.
A liquidator's job is to work back through the company's books and corporate history, looking for what experts call antecedent transactions, preferential payments and misfeasance but what I would call general skulduggery. This is complicated, almost forensic, work and it takes a long time. But it has started.
When the last rites were said over Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd on 24 February, the work of Pompey's high-profile administrator Andrew Andronikou was done. He had seen off nearly every challenge from a seriously miffed HMRC and steered the club back into the hands of Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir, football's most reluctant owners.
Andronikou's time in charge at Fratton Park was eventful (an unlikely run to the FA Cup Final, relegation and numerous scraps with the taxman) but it was also successful. He found a buyer, Pompey did not go bust and they have not gone into freefall.
Andrew Andronikou's job was to keep Pompey afloat, not explore what went wrong Photo: Getty
But that was never going to be enough to satisfy the taxman and, having been on the losing side on almost every argument during the Pompey saga, HMRC finally won one when it was agreed there would be a period of administration to save the club AND a liquidation to work out what happened. The taxman got to pick his liquidator too.
So what happens next? Hudson happens.
"The first thing we do is get hold of all the records, going back years if need be. Then we would want to interview all the key personnel. We need to get a feel for what went wrong," he told me.
"The questions we will be asking is were assets undersold and were there any transactions that took place whilst the company was insolvent that we could recover through the courts.
"We will also investigate what the company's directors did and liaise with the Official Receiver to see if charges are appropriate."
Given that Chainrai was Portsmouth's fourth owner in the six months prior to the club becoming the first from the Premier League to enter administration, Hudson will not be short of personnel to interview. This will take time and could easily result in no improvement whatsoever to the 20p-in-the-pound deal offered to the club's unsecured creditors.
One thing is for certain, though, the taxman, owed £17m-plus, has not given up. An HMRC lawyer at Plymouth Argyle's recent hearing told me his office was now on to its 29th folder in the Pompey case. And the arguments in the Argyle case suggested HMRC's generals were still fighting the last war. Who can blame them? It is our money too.
But I think they have found a good foot-soldier in Hudson. As a former player (he spent almost two decades in non-league football after leaving Wimbledon), Hudson knows the territory and speaks HMRC's language.
"At the moment, we are seeing wages in football which cannot be sustained and the wealthy individuals that once took over clubs are now cautious of providing finance. By allowing clubs to be driven by success at all costs, the football market is in danger, particularly for those clubs at the lower end of the market."
There is one other interesting detail on Hudson's CV: he was joint administrator at Southampton. Insolvency, like football, is a small world.
Safe hands Hudson, the Crazy Gang liquidator
Post categories: Football
Matt Slater | 16:43 UK time, Friday, 18 March 2011
Fifteen years ago, on one of my first forays as a journalistic hunter-gatherer, I arrived at Wimbledon's scruffy training ground in south-west London to see a pair of smouldering jeans being bundled out of a changing-room window. Hang on a minute, I thought, if they are setting fire to trousers we should have sent Kate Adie.
I need not have worried, my strides were safe. What I had witnessed was an almost everyday occurrence, Vinnie Jones exacting revenge for a prank he probably had coming.
A few years before, David Hudson had been part of this madness as the club's second reserve goalkeeper, the craziest position at England's craziest club. One of the highlights of his three years with the Dons was a pre-season tour of Sierra Leone. The recently-crowned FA Cup champions stayed in army camps and played in front of 60,000 fans. After one game their bus was stoned by angry locals.
I would argue these formative experiences make Hudson, now an insolvency expert, the ideal candidate for his new job, joint liquidator at football's new Crazy Gang, Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd.
For Pompey fans panicking about the word "liquidator", fear not: Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd may well be pushing daisies now but Portsmouth Football Club (2010) Ltd is alive and well(ish).
Pompey's lurch into administration appalled fans and embarrassed the football authorities
In keeping with their attempt to chart areas of insolvency law that other football clubs fear to tread, Portsmouth's return from the abyss of being £119m in debt is far from typical.
Old Pompey was officially killed off last month, almost exactly a year after it went into administration.
But this was all part of the hard-fought deal struck between the club's de facto owners, the administrator and the long list of creditors headed up by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC): old co gets it in the neck, key assets are transferred to new co, old co's creditors write off 80% of their money, new co carries on unencumbered by the sins of its father.
So why bother liquidating the old company at all? Why go to the expense of appointing Hudson's Baker Tilly firm if everybody has agreed to move on? What good can come from unpicking the giant ball of confusion that was Pompey's 2010-11 campaign?
The answers to these questions are encased in insolvency law but, for once, are actually quite simple: administration is about saving a stricken but salvageable vessel, liquidation is about raising the wreck from the bottom to find out whose fault it was.
Therefore, the powers and responsibilities of an administrator and a liquidator are very different. The former's job is to plug holes, get the best possible deal for the creditors and sell what's left on so it can live another day. Speed is of the essence, compromise is vital and in most cases everybody is so relieved to get to through it the whole thing is put down to experience and/or forgotten about.
A liquidator's job is to work back through the company's books and corporate history, looking for what experts call antecedent transactions, preferential payments and misfeasance but what I would call general skulduggery. This is complicated, almost forensic, work and it takes a long time. But it has started.
When the last rites were said over Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd on 24 February, the work of Pompey's high-profile administrator Andrew Andronikou was done. He had seen off nearly every challenge from a seriously miffed HMRC and steered the club back into the hands of Balram Chainrai and Levi Kushnir, football's most reluctant owners.
Andronikou's time in charge at Fratton Park was eventful (an unlikely run to the FA Cup Final, relegation and numerous scraps with the taxman) but it was also successful. He found a buyer, Pompey did not go bust and they have not gone into freefall.
Andrew Andronikou's job was to keep Pompey afloat, not explore what went wrong Photo: Getty
But that was never going to be enough to satisfy the taxman and, having been on the losing side on almost every argument during the Pompey saga, HMRC finally won one when it was agreed there would be a period of administration to save the club AND a liquidation to work out what happened. The taxman got to pick his liquidator too.
So what happens next? Hudson happens.
"The first thing we do is get hold of all the records, going back years if need be. Then we would want to interview all the key personnel. We need to get a feel for what went wrong," he told me.
"The questions we will be asking is were assets undersold and were there any transactions that took place whilst the company was insolvent that we could recover through the courts.
"We will also investigate what the company's directors did and liaise with the Official Receiver to see if charges are appropriate."
Given that Chainrai was Portsmouth's fourth owner in the six months prior to the club becoming the first from the Premier League to enter administration, Hudson will not be short of personnel to interview. This will take time and could easily result in no improvement whatsoever to the 20p-in-the-pound deal offered to the club's unsecured creditors.
One thing is for certain, though, the taxman, owed £17m-plus, has not given up. An HMRC lawyer at Plymouth Argyle's recent hearing told me his office was now on to its 29th folder in the Pompey case. And the arguments in the Argyle case suggested HMRC's generals were still fighting the last war. Who can blame them? It is our money too.
But I think they have found a good foot-soldier in Hudson. As a former player (he spent almost two decades in non-league football after leaving Wimbledon), Hudson knows the territory and speaks HMRC's language.
"At the moment, we are seeing wages in football which cannot be sustained and the wealthy individuals that once took over clubs are now cautious of providing finance. By allowing clubs to be driven by success at all costs, the football market is in danger, particularly for those clubs at the lower end of the market."
There is one other interesting detail on Hudson's CV: he was joint administrator at Southampton. Insolvency, like football, is a small world.
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roadrunner
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Man td report losses of £100m.
Were they not pushing the £1b mark a year ago?
Were they not pushing the £1b mark a year ago?
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ZacNaloen
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losses != total debt
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Svlad Cjelli
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Steve Coppell & Martin O'Neill have said some wonderful things today to the DMCS enquiry.
cba to re-write it all myself as it'll be in the papers tomorrow, but it's searchable here via a Twitter hashtag :
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23footiereview
cba to re-write it all myself as it'll be in the papers tomorrow, but it's searchable here via a Twitter hashtag :
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23footiereview
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roadrunner
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ZacNaloen losses != total debt
Ah, so they've cleared an awful lot of debt in 12 months then?
As of Jan 2010 their debt was £716.5m.
Or is the 'parent company' seperate to Manchester United FC?
roadrunnerZacNaloen losses != total debt
Ah, so they've cleared an awful lot of debt in 12 months then?
As of Jan 2010 their debt was £716.5m.
Or is the 'parent company' seperate to Manchester United FC?
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papereyes
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Svlad Cjelli Steve Coppell & Martin O'Neill have said some wonderful things today to the DMCS enquiry.
cba to re-write it all myself as it'll be in the papers tomorrow, but it's searchable here via a Twitter hashtag :
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23footiereview
Is it on Hansard.
Hansard > twitter
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papereyes
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That twitter feed is approaching unreadable.
Beh.
Beh.
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ZacNaloen
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I can't work out what anyone said from the twitter feed.
I need a transcript.
I need a transcript.
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Svlad Cjelli
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papereyesSvlad Cjelli Steve Coppell & Martin O'Neill have said some wonderful things today to the DMCS enquiry.
cba to re-write it all myself as it'll be in the papers tomorrow, but it's searchable here via a Twitter hashtag :
http://twitter.com/search?q=%23footiereview
Is it on Hansard.
Hansard > twitter
It will be soon.
This is from memory, there is a lot more :
- A club can have 1 or 2 season of PL success but needs a benefactor to stay there
- No small club will ever get into the CL without a benefactor
- The only way to compete against money is to have an atmosphere where players can develop and progress
- If you have a good youth setup you lose your best players
- Supporters are the number 1 boss, they pay the wages
- Good governance is all about protecting people – in this case the supporters. They’re the only constant loyalty in football, an allegiance that can’t be bought for money.
Also supports a quota for young players to increase the choice available for Capello.
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TheMaraudingDog
Did the room burst into laughter when Coppell mentioned loyalty in football?
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