It’s already been mentioned earlier in this thread, but further to the Trust’s email it’s worth saying that the “investment” the Trust alludes to is, at this stage, actually a loan (i.e. a debt) from Lomtadze to Feliciana. (In turn, you’d assume that Feliciana will use the money to provide further funding to WWFC, likely to be by way of loans as well).
Having said that, I don’t think anyone lending money to a loss-making lower league football club (or its parent company) does so with confidence that it’ll ever be repaid, fully or at all - even more so when the football club itself doesn’t own the stadium to put up as collateral. So on that basis it does feel like this is the prelude to a potential ownership change further down the line.
Indeed. As I understand it, and business really isn’t my thing, we don’t know how much the loan is or terms of repayment but we can assume it must benefit Lomtadze in some way so either he thinks he’ll get it back with interest at some point or he will gain something else. We can also assume he’s a smart man so he knows the odds making a profit on the loan are very very long. Although I suppose he may think we’ll be selling Joe Low for many millions or that Rob and Matt just need ‘the player’ and new loos to have us in the premier league in two seasons’ time. But as I said, he’s a smart man..
Ergo the loan is not about profit on a lend but in the interests of something else.
I think it’s also reasonable to assume that Rob C hasn’t borrowed the cash to buy a Lear Jet or second home in Marlow, although am I right that he could have? The money is to do with the club in some way.
If my assumptions are right then the Trust calling it investment, whilst technically incorrect as it is a loan, is arguably what it is in all but name. Lomadtze is in this to be an active part in a football club.
One of the questions it raises, in my mind, is that if this is a loan that Rob Couhig thinks he will default on - ie not pay back and lose ownership of the club to this guy - are there any checks and balances on him not to go crazy with the club's assets in the meantime?
I'll give you a hypothetical. If Mr Couhig expects to default on the loan at the end of the season and pass the club on to Mr Lomtadze, is there anything to stop him selling all players under contract with any monetary value in January (Chris Forino, Joe Low, Luke Leahy, Max Stryjek etc), pocket all the proceeds however meagre, not sanction any investment in new playing staff, then disappear off the scene as we plummet in the league?
A big leap indeed but the trust are minority shareholders, so if the business is being run in the interests of the owners not the overall business, or the majority owners were pocketing all the money without giving them their share they could take action through the courts, think this covers your question too @Manboobs , Blackpool was a case where this happened, and I think Liverpool under Hicks and Gillette.
The trust obviously have a bit more information and seem happy with it. Not sure we'll get much more until Rob has something to announce, be that either some of the activities he has promised or a sale.
The worrying thing for me would be if this is borrowing just to support overspending and doesn't deliver anything substantial that changes the overall financial position. If you remember the previous prospective owners lent us money to be returned if the takeover fell through and that then gave the Couhigs a clear run as money was needed desperately.
The financial machinations under discussion on this thread are well above my pay grade but reference to the possibility of our signing Boyes, Potts and Taylor certainly piqued (is that the word?) my interest.
Having all three on a permanent basis would substantially increase the prospect of a return to the Championship as well, of course, as giving a massive boost to the potential for subsequent multi million pound transfer fees plus sell-ons.
That I suspect is the stuff of dreams but, in the case of Boyes and Taylor, possibly not totally unrealistic. In the case of Potts, we can see already his huge potential and it was generally expected when he came here on loan (certainly by many/most West Ham fans) that he would be replacing Declan Rice. So I don’t think there’s much, if any, chance that we will be signing him on a permanent basis.
I understand that view but why would any sensible businessman lend money to a loss making organisation who own a league one outfit. I firmly believe that this is a first step to full ownership.
I am not sure whether a link to WW exists but hopefully he loves football and wants to indulge himself with a new toy and is setting his sights on taking a league one club up to the premiership and into Europe and then sell off to some Saudi prince. Well I can dream 😁.
An I right that although a club can spend what it likes in transfers, the amount it can spend on players’ wages is linked to the club turnover. Whilst Lomtadze can find £50m for Freddie P down the back of his sofa, how would we pay him? I know the pull of Revs is strong but…
Acknowledging that none of us actually has visibility beyond the security document lodged with Companies House, the distinction is that Lomtadze has lent money personally in his own name, seemingly without any history of sports investments.
That’s compared to Dell, who has a well-established investment business. By way of example, the ~£24m MSD UK Holdings Limited lent to our friends at Derby was secured against the stadium, which is why that was paid off in full whilst unsecured creditors took a massive hit. Lomtadze doesn’t have similar protection, which suggests he’s more likely to be looking at ownership options.
I think it's based on losses in consecutive years now but FFP, smcp or whatever they call it now really protects historically large clubs and limits what investors are allowed to spend even if they did want to go silly. I believe we have been at or pretty close to our limit of what is allowed already.
The guy has enough money to buy a giant club, if he really does want to buy us it would probably be more likely to be on the same basis as the Couhigs that he thinks there's some potential and he's prepared to lose/invest a relatively small amount each year finding out.
He may have local interest or other links to the Couhigs but there's very little publicly available info and even search results seem to have been cleaned.
Perhaps Mikheil just saw that we qualified for the knockouts of the EFL Trophy and realized what a great return he will make if we go deep?
Not much more unrealistic than the idea that West Ham would sell us the crown jewel of their youth system, or that Potts would actually come to us permanently when he is earmarked as a future England player.
At least if Rob, Pete or Missy made some, at first glance, seemingly crass comment I could hazard a guess at the meaning and explain it away as lost in translation between American and English.
I'll have no idea what the new guy is talking about - We'll need to get Borat in to translate.
I mean, whats even the point of making this hypothetical question? I’m sure everyone would pick the second option but as it’s not on the cards you may as well a have said “club funded by a magical and mythical pot of money found at the end of a rainbow sprouting out of the home terrrace”.
I wonder who would play for us if money were no object. Who would be the greatest player willing to drop into league one for a decent payday? I suppose the KSA answers that question.
All of this conspiracy conjecture based on about as much information as you can fit on a postage stamp is highly amusing, especially as those of you playing that game seem to get wilder with your possible outcomes with each post.
I wouldn't waste your time reading the debenture document as it is a bog standard loan/mortgage document & for obvious commercial reasons the bits we all want to know have been legitimately redacted; namely the amount of the loan, the term of the loan, the repayment schedule & perhaps most importantly the exact assets held by Feliciana EFL Ltd that have been offered as security & over which the charge is raised.
A quick perusal of the 2022 accounts (filed in April 23) show that Feliciana has fixed assets of c£2.2m (as these are filed using the exemptions for so called micro companies, there is no disclosure as to what these assets might possibly be - but I would hazard a guess they are mostly shares in WWFC) but have liabilities of c£2.2m leaving a net worth of minus £3,320.
From all of this I would make the following assumptions:
The arrangement with Lomtadze is a commercial loan
The security for the loan is most likely the shares in the football club
Feliciana - the parent company of WWFC - is reliant on regular investment from its directors to cover its liabilities
I suspect that RC & Feliciana will use the loan to
a) push to get WWFC into the Championship, where the hope would be that the TV deal money can be used to repay the loan - I suspect Feliciana are screwed if we are not promoted at which point Lomtadze exercises his rights over the assets & we suddenly have a Georgian sugar daddy.
b) fund the necessary (repair) works on the stadium etc.
Alternatively the security could be all those O'Niells replica kits the Couhigs seem to be unable to shift...
Is that not just restating what the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are saying in slightly different words?
The concerning things about all this are that the debenture is secured against the shares in the football club, and that the viability of Feliciana repaying any loans might be contingent on an unlikely promotion.
This could all just be a loan to prove available cash is in place for the commencement and completion of a certain road they have want to build.
I mean, it doesn’t strike me as being completely out there that those that would need to provide planning permission would like proof of funding to have it completed and to ensure the football clubs cash flow isn’t affected, a new and separate line of credit is put in place to prove said funding.
Just going to float this idea but could this money be used to start looking for a new location for the stadium that has more going for it like better access?
Tbf, the access road thing is firmly in my “I’ll believe it when I see construction vehicles on site” categories but ultimately it is one of (the many) grand ideas/projects talked about/discussed/planned that all would need a bunch of investment cash to get off the drawing board and into reality.
Without knowing the size of said loan, it could be funding raised for literally anything maintenance/improvement wise and none of it could be for bad/notorious reason - which I was trying to point out in the original post. Like people do when they want major work doing at their home, they release cash from what they own (remortgaging for example)
anyone have any idea how much it would cost to fix the Frank Adams roof/extend the terrace/provide better disabled accesses and view or any of the other things they’ve mentioned they want to improve.
@TheDancingYak However, in order for them to extend the terrace, they need another access route into the stadium. Thats the main sticking point as to why it hasn't been done or any designs haven't been created yet
So you’re saying it’s a key project that if completed opens up many new options that investors/new owners would see as adding value to an investment proposition?
Almost worth getting outside investment for. But as I said, I’ll believe that project when I see shovels in the ground.
Tbh, I am finding the disconnect between people asking: “where is Rob getting the money from to do the projects he’s talking about?”and ”whats this loan for?” Astonishing.
This. This is where he was always going to get money from. None of this should be much of a surprise or shock.
We were either going to be in debt to him personally (and people have questioned the levels of his personal wealth since he came on board), or as it is with many businesses, they get investment money in from elsewhere.
some of us where asking what his exit strategy was before the first ever deal was made to take over. Why? Because this was a fairly obvious route to take.
Provide club with leadership to improve off field stuff. Get a few projects completed, business cases and planning permissions talked about and hopefully in place (new training ground, bigger stands, new access road, increase off field revenue, big up the increase in merchandise profit, prove a genuine world wide market for the club “The Wycombe wanderers phenomenon” - all sound familiar?) and suddenly the asset you own has a much bigger price tag for new investors.
You peace out with more money in your pocket than you started with.
Why extend a terrace and provide a road, when on average we can only fill half the current capacity.
The current annual expenditure on players and ground improvements is unsustainable, so how can we contemplate spending additional money on these projects?
I don’t disagree with you on that, but it’s all about potential value on a spreadsheet.
You remove the thing that limits the capacity (both stand size and access) and with your best salesman hat on you point of that the population in a 30 mile radius of the stadium is x million people (as it dips into London) and you have - on paper at least - a pretty convincing tail of how “YOU Mr/Mrs New investor, with all your capabilities could fill the stadium and be quids in”.
And suddenly your £500k loan (as example) has added £1m to your value.
Edit: and you don’t even need to build all of these projects. Just have planning permission for them.
Comments
2nd option for me please Dev
I think I agree with you @eric_plant
It’s already been mentioned earlier in this thread, but further to the Trust’s email it’s worth saying that the “investment” the Trust alludes to is, at this stage, actually a loan (i.e. a debt) from Lomtadze to Feliciana. (In turn, you’d assume that Feliciana will use the money to provide further funding to WWFC, likely to be by way of loans as well).
Having said that, I don’t think anyone lending money to a loss-making lower league football club (or its parent company) does so with confidence that it’ll ever be repaid, fully or at all - even more so when the football club itself doesn’t own the stadium to put up as collateral. So on that basis it does feel like this is the prelude to a potential ownership change further down the line.
Indeed. As I understand it, and business really isn’t my thing, we don’t know how much the loan is or terms of repayment but we can assume it must benefit Lomtadze in some way so either he thinks he’ll get it back with interest at some point or he will gain something else. We can also assume he’s a smart man so he knows the odds making a profit on the loan are very very long. Although I suppose he may think we’ll be selling Joe Low for many millions or that Rob and Matt just need ‘the player’ and new loos to have us in the premier league in two seasons’ time. But as I said, he’s a smart man..
Ergo the loan is not about profit on a lend but in the interests of something else.
I think it’s also reasonable to assume that Rob C hasn’t borrowed the cash to buy a Lear Jet or second home in Marlow, although am I right that he could have? The money is to do with the club in some way.
If my assumptions are right then the Trust calling it investment, whilst technically incorrect as it is a loan, is arguably what it is in all but name. Lomadtze is in this to be an active part in a football club.
We live in interesting times.
One of the questions it raises, in my mind, is that if this is a loan that Rob Couhig thinks he will default on - ie not pay back and lose ownership of the club to this guy - are there any checks and balances on him not to go crazy with the club's assets in the meantime?
I'll give you a hypothetical. If Mr Couhig expects to default on the loan at the end of the season and pass the club on to Mr Lomtadze, is there anything to stop him selling all players under contract with any monetary value in January (Chris Forino, Joe Low, Luke Leahy, Max Stryjek etc), pocket all the proceeds however meagre, not sanction any investment in new playing staff, then disappear off the scene as we plummet in the league?
Wow @aloysius that's one hell of a leap, seems you need a new tin foil hat
Unless I’m told otherwise I’m gonna treat this source of cash as no different to a high street bank.
No one would claim that NatWest is taking over the club should we take out a mortgage with them.
Every chance Mr Lomtadze has no idea who the great Wycombe Wanderers are.
Michael Dell (via his many pots) is a huge football funder for example.
A big leap indeed but the trust are minority shareholders, so if the business is being run in the interests of the owners not the overall business, or the majority owners were pocketing all the money without giving them their share they could take action through the courts, think this covers your question too @Manboobs , Blackpool was a case where this happened, and I think Liverpool under Hicks and Gillette.
The trust obviously have a bit more information and seem happy with it. Not sure we'll get much more until Rob has something to announce, be that either some of the activities he has promised or a sale.
The worrying thing for me would be if this is borrowing just to support overspending and doesn't deliver anything substantial that changes the overall financial position. If you remember the previous prospective owners lent us money to be returned if the takeover fell through and that then gave the Couhigs a clear run as money was needed desperately.
The financial machinations under discussion on this thread are well above my pay grade but reference to the possibility of our signing Boyes, Potts and Taylor certainly piqued (is that the word?) my interest.
Having all three on a permanent basis would substantially increase the prospect of a return to the Championship as well, of course, as giving a massive boost to the potential for subsequent multi million pound transfer fees plus sell-ons.
That I suspect is the stuff of dreams but, in the case of Boyes and Taylor, possibly not totally unrealistic. In the case of Potts, we can see already his huge potential and it was generally expected when he came here on loan (certainly by many/most West Ham fans) that he would be replacing Declan Rice. So I don’t think there’s much, if any, chance that we will be signing him on a permanent basis.
Interesting times indeed.
I understand that view but why would any sensible businessman lend money to a loss making organisation who own a league one outfit. I firmly believe that this is a first step to full ownership.
I am not sure whether a link to WW exists but hopefully he loves football and wants to indulge himself with a new toy and is setting his sights on taking a league one club up to the premiership and into Europe and then sell off to some Saudi prince. Well I can dream 😁.
An I right that although a club can spend what it likes in transfers, the amount it can spend on players’ wages is linked to the club turnover. Whilst Lomtadze can find £50m for Freddie P down the back of his sofa, how would we pay him? I know the pull of Revs is strong but…
Acknowledging that none of us actually has visibility beyond the security document lodged with Companies House, the distinction is that Lomtadze has lent money personally in his own name, seemingly without any history of sports investments.
That’s compared to Dell, who has a well-established investment business. By way of example, the ~£24m MSD UK Holdings Limited lent to our friends at Derby was secured against the stadium, which is why that was paid off in full whilst unsecured creditors took a massive hit. Lomtadze doesn’t have similar protection, which suggests he’s more likely to be looking at ownership options.
I think it's based on losses in consecutive years now but FFP, smcp or whatever they call it now really protects historically large clubs and limits what investors are allowed to spend even if they did want to go silly. I believe we have been at or pretty close to our limit of what is allowed already.
The guy has enough money to buy a giant club, if he really does want to buy us it would probably be more likely to be on the same basis as the Couhigs that he thinks there's some potential and he's prepared to lose/invest a relatively small amount each year finding out.
He may have local interest or other links to the Couhigs but there's very little publicly available info and even search results seem to have been cleaned.
Perhaps Mikheil just saw that we qualified for the knockouts of the EFL Trophy and realized what a great return he will make if we go deep?
Not much more unrealistic than the idea that West Ham would sell us the crown jewel of their youth system, or that Potts would actually come to us permanently when he is earmarked as a future England player.
At least if Rob, Pete or Missy made some, at first glance, seemingly crass comment I could hazard a guess at the meaning and explain it away as lost in translation between American and English.
I'll have no idea what the new guy is talking about - We'll need to get Borat in to translate.
And before he goes sets fire to the club shop and takes a dump on the centre spot.
I mean, whats even the point of making this hypothetical question? I’m sure everyone would pick the second option but as it’s not on the cards you may as well a have said “club funded by a magical and mythical pot of money found at the end of a rainbow sprouting out of the home terrrace”.
I wonder who would play for us if money were no object. Who would be the greatest player willing to drop into league one for a decent payday? I suppose the KSA answers that question.
All of this conspiracy conjecture based on about as much information as you can fit on a postage stamp is highly amusing, especially as those of you playing that game seem to get wilder with your possible outcomes with each post.
To save you time here is the link to Companies House - https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11808771
I wouldn't waste your time reading the debenture document as it is a bog standard loan/mortgage document & for obvious commercial reasons the bits we all want to know have been legitimately redacted; namely the amount of the loan, the term of the loan, the repayment schedule & perhaps most importantly the exact assets held by Feliciana EFL Ltd that have been offered as security & over which the charge is raised.
A quick perusal of the 2022 accounts (filed in April 23) show that Feliciana has fixed assets of c£2.2m (as these are filed using the exemptions for so called micro companies, there is no disclosure as to what these assets might possibly be - but I would hazard a guess they are mostly shares in WWFC) but have liabilities of c£2.2m leaving a net worth of minus £3,320.
From all of this I would make the following assumptions:
The arrangement with Lomtadze is a commercial loan
The security for the loan is most likely the shares in the football club
Feliciana - the parent company of WWFC - is reliant on regular investment from its directors to cover its liabilities
I suspect that RC & Feliciana will use the loan to
a) push to get WWFC into the Championship, where the hope would be that the TV deal money can be used to repay the loan - I suspect Feliciana are screwed if we are not promoted at which point Lomtadze exercises his rights over the assets & we suddenly have a Georgian sugar daddy.
b) fund the necessary (repair) works on the stadium etc.
Alternatively the security could be all those O'Niells replica kits the Couhigs seem to be unable to shift...
Is that not just restating what the ‘conspiracy theorists’ are saying in slightly different words?
The concerning things about all this are that the debenture is secured against the shares in the football club, and that the viability of Feliciana repaying any loans might be contingent on an unlikely promotion.
This could all just be a loan to prove available cash is in place for the commencement and completion of a certain road they have want to build.
I mean, it doesn’t strike me as being completely out there that those that would need to provide planning permission would like proof of funding to have it completed and to ensure the football clubs cash flow isn’t affected, a new and separate line of credit is put in place to prove said funding.
We may have to have a poll soon as to which is more unlikely to happen:
a) @TheDancingYak's brilliant "magical and mythical pot of money found at the end of a rainbow sprouting out of the home terrace.”
b) The access road.
Just going to float this idea but could this money be used to start looking for a new location for the stadium that has more going for it like better access?
Tbf, the access road thing is firmly in my “I’ll believe it when I see construction vehicles on site” categories but ultimately it is one of (the many) grand ideas/projects talked about/discussed/planned that all would need a bunch of investment cash to get off the drawing board and into reality.
Without knowing the size of said loan, it could be funding raised for literally anything maintenance/improvement wise and none of it could be for bad/notorious reason - which I was trying to point out in the original post. Like people do when they want major work doing at their home, they release cash from what they own (remortgaging for example)
anyone have any idea how much it would cost to fix the Frank Adams roof/extend the terrace/provide better disabled accesses and view or any of the other things they’ve mentioned they want to improve.
All and any would need cash to get started.
@TheDancingYak However, in order for them to extend the terrace, they need another access route into the stadium. Thats the main sticking point as to why it hasn't been done or any designs haven't been created yet
So you’re saying it’s a key project that if completed opens up many new options that investors/new owners would see as adding value to an investment proposition?
Almost worth getting outside investment for. But as I said, I’ll believe that project when I see shovels in the ground.
Tbh, I am finding the disconnect between people asking: “where is Rob getting the money from to do the projects he’s talking about?”and ”whats this loan for?” Astonishing.
This. This is where he was always going to get money from. None of this should be much of a surprise or shock.
We were either going to be in debt to him personally (and people have questioned the levels of his personal wealth since he came on board), or as it is with many businesses, they get investment money in from elsewhere.
some of us where asking what his exit strategy was before the first ever deal was made to take over. Why? Because this was a fairly obvious route to take.
Provide club with leadership to improve off field stuff. Get a few projects completed, business cases and planning permissions talked about and hopefully in place (new training ground, bigger stands, new access road, increase off field revenue, big up the increase in merchandise profit, prove a genuine world wide market for the club “The Wycombe wanderers phenomenon” - all sound familiar?) and suddenly the asset you own has a much bigger price tag for new investors.
You peace out with more money in your pocket than you started with.
Why extend a terrace and provide a road, when on average we can only fill half the current capacity.
The current annual expenditure on players and ground improvements is unsustainable, so how can we contemplate spending additional money on these projects?
I don’t disagree with you on that, but it’s all about potential value on a spreadsheet.
You remove the thing that limits the capacity (both stand size and access) and with your best salesman hat on you point of that the population in a 30 mile radius of the stadium is x million people (as it dips into London) and you have - on paper at least - a pretty convincing tail of how “YOU Mr/Mrs New investor, with all your capabilities could fill the stadium and be quids in”.
And suddenly your £500k loan (as example) has added £1m to your value.
Edit: and you don’t even need to build all of these projects. Just have planning permission for them.
I’m also very aware that “this isn’t how football should be”.
I agree it’s not.
This is the business side of football, however, and absolutely how business is.