Posted on April 4, 2012 by williampoole
In the interests of balance in the current climate, I believe the trading arrangements of football clubs is topical.
With Best and Final bids due in to Rangers Administrators’ Duff & Phelps, there is a lot of scaremongering with regards to the possible liquidation of the club by prospective owners.
Like others I find the very prospect very scary indeed.
Indeed, when stories broke that the intention of Chicago’s Club 9 Sports were going to liquidate the club, I was the one of the first to contact Club 9 CEO Jon Pritchett to express my concern at the prospect.
Letting the RST know I’d done so may have been a mistake, as soon Mr Pritchett was avalanched by a number of similar queries, and some abuse from followers of the RST Twitter page.
When Club 9 released a statement last night that they were not bidding for the club, but were part of a consortium, I was again first to ask a question or Mr Pritchett, namely did it then mean that they alone were pulling out or were the rest of the consortium still in.
While the rest of Twitterland (including some “credible” journalists who will remain unnamed) was agreed in the opinion that their statement simply meant they were not bidding alone, and that’s all their statement meant, I believed otherwise.
When my tweet went out, it was picked up on by the Trust, and some time later they tweeted the same question, almost word for word. They also followed it up with an email.
Pritchett soon clarified the position via Twitter, and stated that the consortium as a whole would not be bidding, and effectively confirmed my suspicion. He also sent a reply email to the secretary of the Trust around the same time.
What is interesting though, is that Club 9’s original statement carried a plausible solution to the newco scenario which they stated would preserve the great history of the club
http://www.club9sports.com/uploads/Statement_from_CLUB_9_SPORTS.pdf
Now, I’m no liquidation expert, but there seems to be some merit in there, if the examples used were managed through this process in the same way.
Indeed, a post on Gersnet points to the trading arrangements of Celtic Football Club, and how the trading arrangements of the business and the football club have radically changed (and not just in 1994).
http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/vb/showthread.php?39968-So-which-Celtic-company-do-we-play-against
“Following last week’s posts about Pacific Shelf 595 Ltd, I have done a little more investigation and have come up with the following:
There are 3 main companies in this discussion:
1. Celtic plc – this company was formed in 1897 and was previously known as “The Celtic Football And Athletic Company Limited”. Its name changed in 1994 to Celtic plc. It was the football club until a restructuring on 15/2/02 when “aspects of (its) trade” were transferred to Celtic F.C Limited . It continues to own the players (ie pays the transfer fees), Celtic Park and the 1/12 share in the SPL.
However its accounts also states that “Celtic F.C. Limited has the main activity of which is the operation of a professional football club.” It admits that the football club IS Celtic F.C Limited.
2. Celtic F.C. Limited – this company was formed in 2001 and was previously HMS (402) Ltd. as mentioned above, it is a professional football club. It receives all the gate money, employs and pays all the wages of the players and other staff. It receives the TV income. It is the company that competes in Europe.
It is also insolvent to the tune of £23 million.
3. The Celtic Football And Athletic Company Limited – This was set up in 1994 and was previously Pacific Shelf 595 Ltd. It is not the football club despite its name. Not much goes through it. It had £80K of turnover in 2010. It was probably set up just to preserve and maintain the old name.
The conclusion is that the football club is Celtic F.C Ltd, a company that was formed in 2001. It won the league in 2002, 2004 and 2006-8, although it seems that the 2002 win was done by 2 separate companies. However the Celtic fans don’t have any problem in acknowledging that season’s league win.
I don’t understand how a company that is not the football club can own players but I don’t know the exact regulations and presumably they are not breaking any rules. Perhaps Whyte was looking at a similar arrangement for Rangers and having Rangers Group owning the players, but the club continues to pay their wages? That’s a scary thought.
The bottom line is that the company that plays Celtic’s games was formed in 2001 and has won the league 5 times. “If you know your history” and all that…. “
Thanks to Frankie at Gersnet for allowing me to quote “Bluedell”.
Now this was posted in February, but it’s very topical now given the multiple scenarios we believe are on the table for Rangers.
The simple question, given Celtic’s trading arrangements, and the fact they are allowed to keep their history, is why can’t Rangers change their trading arrangements in a similar fashion?
Now that’s not a question put like that because it’s my desire, it’s simply to ask the question, in the face of an avalanche of reports from allegedly credible media outlets that Rangers cannot go through the Newco route without losing our history.
It seems to me that it suits Rangers enemies to push this from two angles;
1) Should any buyer choose this route, then severe pressure will be put on the authorities for all of our history to be wiped in one fell swoop
2) The fear factor of this happening will allow the club’s history to remain, but leave Rangers as a shadow of it’s former self until a CVA is cleared, which may take the best part of a decade, by which time Celtic could have moved far closer to our 54 titles.
It really is an anxious time for all bears, but I can only hope and pray that any Newco route will cite the above example of trading arrangements of our closest neighbours for an example of how our club could be structured.
Bill
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