I take it that you don't believe the people who are telling us this now? Or those who did before?
It’s not that I don’t trust the current board, I trusted the previous board, I struggle to trust anyone wanting to buy us. I just don’t see why they would want to so they should have to convince us the fans/their customer/their income stream.
@TheAndyGrahamFanClub okay we agree on that. Maybe I've made a rather naïve assumption that in order to progress further the trust members would get further details of the prospectus for the sale - minor share, major share, complete sale - before finally agreeing it or not?
It wouldn't be right to just agree a sale option and have it roll on without getting some detail of what that actually means; then deciding if you like what is actually proposed and voting on it.
@Tom said: @mooneyman it's that kind of pointing a gun at someones head that left us with Hayes in charge
No one person (or board) is bigger than the future of the club
I actually partly agree. The Board members could be easily replaced, but I am not convinced (unless we were extremely lucky) we could replace Gareth with an equivalent manager.
Fortunately, not all owners have ulterior motives as Hayes did. Some owners are either altrusic, (for instance Dave Whelan at Wigan) or football business orientated (like the Pozzo's at Watford).
The key is selling to the right owner, which is easier said than done.
@Shev, that is not correct. The Trust Board were basically recommending two options. A minority investment or a majority investment. Neither is a full sale. Both options would not include the ground and various guarantees would be legally binding including the fact that the club would remain in Wycombe.
I am personally encouraged by the presentation and the fact that the Trust Board have taken on Board the lessons learnt from the Hayes fiasco and this time it does feel a lot more positive and quite a bit of due diligence has already been done. A great job by the Trust Board to this point.
I have only praise for the board. Can’t wait to see what these investors are looking to offer. At some points truths and identities have to be revealed though and sooner the better.
Investors...the very meaning of the word means they would expect a return on their money surely. How they could do this now or in the foreseeable future is beyond me looking at our current and future finance projections. The key to all of this is WHO are these people and WHAT are their motives.
One thing we should all be pleased about is that we have turned our debt position around to the point where we are being courted by three potential investors. Three or four years back such potential investors wouldn’t have touched us with a barge pole.
Gareth has stayed with us as a fan owned club and signed a long contract with us as a fan owned club. It seems to me that he appreciates the close links we have between the club, the team and the fans.
i do hope we don't lose track of the importance of the game on Saturday. Lots of us there I hope. Whatever happens the best thing will be to make some noise in League One.
Yes we need to be careful, yes we need to carry out further due diligence, yes the Legacy members will need to give 75% backing but doesn’t it feel good to have such options?
@Blue_since_1990 said:
I am personally encouraged by the presentation and the fact that the Trust Board have taken on Board the lessons learnt from the Hayes fiasco and this time it does feel a lot more positive and quite a bit of due diligence has already been done. A great job by the Trust Board to this point.
I think they did the right thing in updating now and looking for an (informal) mandate to go forward in future talks. I do wonder about why we would be attractive to a minority or majority investor. The talk of ‘they want to have fun, are anti-establishment’ was disconcerting for me. I heard the ‘they have expertise and have done this for other clubs/sports/buisinesses’ but I will want to know where are said clubs/sports/businesses now to square the fun/expertise circle in order to get anywhere near my vote.
What possible motivation could there be for anyone to make a minority investment in the club? That's just throwing away money for none of the fun.
It looks to me (judging merely from the information provided on this thread) that the board are doing that classic manoeuvre of looking like they're providing lots of options when really it's only ever just one.
First option, status quo - they've just spent all night explaining why that won't work.
Fourth option, complete takeover - placed there to be rejected, allowing it to look like they're responding to opinion and moderating their proposal.
Second option, minority investment - why would investors want that and how would it deliver us the financial stability we need?
So that leaves the third option, majority investment - gives us the new ownership we need to open up new funding streams, provides a fig leaf of supporter involvement to make it palatable and, I would warrant, is the only option these three consortia are pursuing.
@MBS said:
Investors...the very meaning of the word means they would expect a return on their money surely. How they could do this now or in the foreseeable future is beyond me looking at our current and future finance projections. The key to all of this is WHO are these people and WHAT are their motives.
Although the return may not be purely financial. Fun? Being lauded by supporters? Praised in the press? Might be worth a poor return or even monetary losses to some. Although I worry that motivations such as those are likely to be transitory.
@aloysius said:
So that leaves the third option, majority investment - gives us the new ownership we need to open up new funding streams, provides a fig leaf of supporter involvement to make it palatable and, I would warrant, is the only option these three consortia are pursuing.
Seemingly not. Apparently one prefers the minority option and another is considering both. The third prefers the majority option but may consider a minority.
I was more of the view that minority investment would perhaps be more presentable than a majority investment, at least for now.
A minority investor would not need 75% legacy member approval. I really think getting 75% of legacy members to vote is a serious challenge let alone 75% voting yes to a majority sale. It's circa 400 out of 550 people? About half that vote at the AGM and I think it presents a big hurdle.
What I am interested in is getting the flesh on the bones:
who are the investors and what is their history
what are their motives
how much are they putting in, over what time period and for what % stake?
what do they want out of their investment in return
what happens after that period elapses, what security are we left with (Or otherwise).
All of these points need answering before anyone can make an informed decision so it is the Trust Board's job to get their preferred proposal together.
It is great to have options and others above are right to commend the tireless hard work done to get us here, but the devil is in the detail and I look forward to hearing it before nailing colours to meet 1, 2 or 3.
Too much hard work has gone in by too many people to not be very careful and considered and we need the detail in order to make a considered choice.
So it's a case of, wait and see what comes next for me.
The only long term solution for the Club and the rest of League 1 & 2 is that the EFL should reallocate the Premier League handout to ensure that League 1 and 2 receive funding more appropriate to their requirements, rather than giving the giant's share to the championship. Many of the Championship sides are also getting their "parachute funding " as well.
The trouble with asking for the motives of any potential investor is that if they're planning to exploit us financially then they aren't going to admit that upfront. It will always be presented as an altruistic or philanthropic endeavour.
I'm not saying it isn't possible to find a 'good' minority or majority shareholder. But the bad ones won't tell you they're bad.
Whatever any shareholder says and IF we accept inward investment, we must ensure that enshrined rights are put in place to prevent a disaster scenario (AP being sold etc).
Our FD stood and told us straight faced that the error on the summary of the BDO report was actually an error of the reports author in his summary in that it didn’t reflect what was in his actual report. He was right, however ...
Disconcertingly I saw the error and highlighted it here after a cursorary first reading and check of the trust websites post and the actual report.
But the men who stood tonight and asked us to rely on they’re attention to detail and due diligence on such important matters as our clubs future failed to pick up the rather pertinent error.
It’s not good enough,why should we trust them to properly perform checks or be across the numbers on potential investment bids when they havent done their homework on a simple audit reference?
Did they provide any sort of timeline for what happens next? Will members vote on what sort of deal is acceptable first or will the club ask for expressions of interest from consortia first then ask members to vote on that? And what timescales are we looking at?
I think we’ll probably end for now up going with the minority investment option, then in three years once the money has all been used and more cash is needed, they’ll come back to us asking to take a majority share for further investment.
Whether we go with majority investment now, or have to decide on it in a few years, I think 100% that’s the path we’re heading down.
Comments
It’s not that I don’t trust the current board, I trusted the previous board, I struggle to trust anyone wanting to buy us. I just don’t see why they would want to so they should have to convince us the fans/their customer/their income stream.
Facebook troll by the looks of it
Supporters Direct specialise in helping out with this sort of thing, it's vital the board speak to them. I know someone legal up London won't cut it.
@TheAndyGrahamFanClub okay we agree on that. Maybe I've made a rather naïve assumption that in order to progress further the trust members would get further details of the prospectus for the sale - minor share, major share, complete sale - before finally agreeing it or not?
It wouldn't be right to just agree a sale option and have it roll on without getting some detail of what that actually means; then deciding if you like what is actually proposed and voting on it.
I actually partly agree. The Board members could be easily replaced, but I am not convinced (unless we were extremely lucky) we could replace Gareth with an equivalent manager.
Fortunately, not all owners have ulterior motives as Hayes did. Some owners are either altrusic, (for instance Dave Whelan at Wigan) or football business orientated (like the Pozzo's at Watford).
The key is selling to the right owner, which is easier said than done.
@Shev, that is not correct. The Trust Board were basically recommending two options. A minority investment or a majority investment. Neither is a full sale. Both options would not include the ground and various guarantees would be legally binding including the fact that the club would remain in Wycombe.
I am personally encouraged by the presentation and the fact that the Trust Board have taken on Board the lessons learnt from the Hayes fiasco and this time it does feel a lot more positive and quite a bit of due diligence has already been done. A great job by the Trust Board to this point.
It would be a good question to ask - how many of the current trust board would stay if the fans decided that we want to remain a fan owned club.
Thanks to you all for the regular updates for those of us who were unable to be there or get on to Facebook.
I have only praise for the board. Can’t wait to see what these investors are looking to offer. At some points truths and identities have to be revealed though and sooner the better.
Investors...the very meaning of the word means they would expect a return on their money surely. How they could do this now or in the foreseeable future is beyond me looking at our current and future finance projections. The key to all of this is WHO are these people and WHAT are their motives.
One thing we should all be pleased about is that we have turned our debt position around to the point where we are being courted by three potential investors. Three or four years back such potential investors wouldn’t have touched us with a barge pole.
Gareth has stayed with us as a fan owned club and signed a long contract with us as a fan owned club. It seems to me that he appreciates the close links we have between the club, the team and the fans.
i do hope we don't lose track of the importance of the game on Saturday. Lots of us there I hope. Whatever happens the best thing will be to make some noise in League One.
Yes we need to be careful, yes we need to carry out further due diligence, yes the Legacy members will need to give 75% backing but doesn’t it feel good to have such options?
I think they did the right thing in updating now and looking for an (informal) mandate to go forward in future talks. I do wonder about why we would be attractive to a minority or majority investor. The talk of ‘they want to have fun, are anti-establishment’ was disconcerting for me. I heard the ‘they have expertise and have done this for other clubs/sports/buisinesses’ but I will want to know where are said clubs/sports/businesses now to square the fun/expertise circle in order to get anywhere near my vote.
What possible motivation could there be for anyone to make a minority investment in the club? That's just throwing away money for none of the fun.
It looks to me (judging merely from the information provided on this thread) that the board are doing that classic manoeuvre of looking like they're providing lots of options when really it's only ever just one.
First option, status quo - they've just spent all night explaining why that won't work.
Fourth option, complete takeover - placed there to be rejected, allowing it to look like they're responding to opinion and moderating their proposal.
Second option, minority investment - why would investors want that and how would it deliver us the financial stability we need?
So that leaves the third option, majority investment - gives us the new ownership we need to open up new funding streams, provides a fig leaf of supporter involvement to make it palatable and, I would warrant, is the only option these three consortia are pursuing.
Although the return may not be purely financial. Fun? Being lauded by supporters? Praised in the press? Might be worth a poor return or even monetary losses to some. Although I worry that motivations such as those are likely to be transitory.
Seemingly not. Apparently one prefers the minority option and another is considering both. The third prefers the majority option but may consider a minority.
I was more of the view that minority investment would perhaps be more presentable than a majority investment, at least for now.
A minority investor would not need 75% legacy member approval. I really think getting 75% of legacy members to vote is a serious challenge let alone 75% voting yes to a majority sale. It's circa 400 out of 550 people? About half that vote at the AGM and I think it presents a big hurdle.
What I am interested in is getting the flesh on the bones:
All of these points need answering before anyone can make an informed decision so it is the Trust Board's job to get their preferred proposal together.
It is great to have options and others above are right to commend the tireless hard work done to get us here, but the devil is in the detail and I look forward to hearing it before nailing colours to meet 1, 2 or 3.
Too much hard work has gone in by too many people to not be very careful and considered and we need the detail in order to make a considered choice.
So it's a case of, wait and see what comes next for me.
The only long term solution for the Club and the rest of League 1 & 2 is that the EFL should reallocate the Premier League handout to ensure that League 1 and 2 receive funding more appropriate to their requirements, rather than giving the giant's share to the championship. Many of the Championship sides are also getting their "parachute funding " as well.
The trouble with asking for the motives of any potential investor is that if they're planning to exploit us financially then they aren't going to admit that upfront. It will always be presented as an altruistic or philanthropic endeavour.
I'm not saying it isn't possible to find a 'good' minority or majority shareholder. But the bad ones won't tell you they're bad.
Whatever any shareholder says and IF we accept inward investment, we must ensure that enshrined rights are put in place to prevent a disaster scenario (AP being sold etc).
@DJWYC14, surely it would be 75% of those Legacy members who actually vote.
No, 75% of all legacy members
Well that in itself will be a big test then.
Our FD stood and told us straight faced that the error on the summary of the BDO report was actually an error of the reports author in his summary in that it didn’t reflect what was in his actual report. He was right, however ...
Disconcertingly I saw the error and highlighted it here after a cursorary first reading and check of the trust websites post and the actual report.
But the men who stood tonight and asked us to rely on they’re attention to detail and due diligence on such important matters as our clubs future failed to pick up the rather pertinent error.
It’s not good enough,why should we trust them to properly perform checks or be across the numbers on potential investment bids when they havent done their homework on a simple audit reference?
So what are you suggesting, @marlowchair?
We should all just put our hands in our ears?
Yes, anyone who has ever made a typo should be banned from all positions of responsibility
Taking online sniping to a new level. Shameful behaviour.
Did they provide any sort of timeline for what happens next? Will members vote on what sort of deal is acceptable first or will the club ask for expressions of interest from consortia first then ask members to vote on that? And what timescales are we looking at?
Very good presentation tonight.
I think we’ll probably end for now up going with the minority investment option, then in three years once the money has all been used and more cash is needed, they’ll come back to us asking to take a majority share for further investment.
Whether we go with majority investment now, or have to decide on it in a few years, I think 100% that’s the path we’re heading down.