Typical Stewart, tried to be crafty and in doing so undermined himself. Up to Madrox he worked closely with his dad, it’s not hard to see who the brains were behind Bridal Insurance.
Yep. If he genuinely believes that 3 billionaires want to put money into Sunderland purely because they're so impressed with how he's come in and stopped paying for a few plant pots and how he's cut wage bills by paying people to leave, we can add deluded to his list of qualities
Bit of a brain bump @Guinness Guzzler but just something to think about at your end if it ever comes up again: I think your biggest problem, as above, is Donald not accepting your cash. he doesn't need £750k as much as he needs the freedom to make decisions. I don't know if that can be overcome in all honesty and may make the whole thing a non-starter unless you find out whether he'd be amenable to it. Personally, I wouldn't accept anyone buying a market value % of my company if they were only in it to oversee what I did and likely make my life difficult... you won't be able to approach it without the elephant in the room, which is that you don't trust him, so you need to find a way of selling it to him as a PR win. This is more technical and where I can help a little bit, but in brief, I doubt you'd get voting rights. I think he'd create a new class of shares and you'd get them as a collective (with the ability to appoint someone as a rep), with no say on what happens in the club. If new owners came in, you might retain some kind of ceremonial role at best, but if it were me, I'd build in the mechanism to make sure a new owner wasn't saddled with you. (I've also seen and almost used a way to circumvent obstruction by a minority shareholder, which would have been quite a nuclear option, but basically there are so many mechanisms that can be used to sideline you or even dilute you to a negligible shareholding, particularly if you can't afford to 'keep up' with new or existing investors...) My guess is that the only way he'd be open to any of this is if he gets all the benefits of your cash, and as little oversight as possible. The key bit would be negotiating the right to view information. I have an obligation to provide my board members with information regarding anything they or I put on the agenda, so the aim may really be for you lads to get a seat on the board without a shareholding (or for a nominal fee) so you can have more in-depth conversations. You'd need a trusted, experienced head though, not someone who will be confrontational and who doesn't know their onions.
That's my idea out the window then. I was going to suggest that we all phone up his leasing company and do pointless enquiries.
Having read the wisemensay article, I think this is yet another red herring. The situation with the parachute payments is as we all know, basically irrelevant. SAFC used to have a debt of £25m to Ellis Short and had £25m of parachute payments coming in, i.e. nothing. Now it doesn’t have the debt to Ellis Short but it doesn’t have the parachute payments either. So no change. The situation was confused by SD claiming they paid Ellis Short £40m for the club. They didn’t in any practical sense. They just agreed to pass on the £25m he was owed anyway. The equivalent of trying to show off to a bird in a pub about your income and including your credit card limits. Twattish but nothing criminal. The loan from SD to Madrox also means nothing. Nothing as it relates to SAFC anyway. Madrox is simply the vehicle that the three shareholders have used to buy SAFC and the ownership proportion is fixed by the shareholdings. So if extra money had to put into SAFC, then logically each shareholder should put in the proportion that matches their shareholding. But what if Juan and Charlie say they won’t or can’t put any money in? Well SD would even quite rightly say that he should be getting extra shares as he is putting up the money. But then you have the issue of having to define what value the shares are and the other shareholders have to agree to that valuation. So what would normally happen in that scenario is that SD would say that as he is putting the extra money in, then that extra money should be paid back first before any gains from a sale of the club are shared out. Which is totally fair enough. The fact that the loan from SD to Madrox is interest-bearing has zero effect on SAFC because SAFC is not paying the interest. All the interest is doing is increasing the economic interest of SD at the expense of CM and JS. Nothing more and nothing less. It’s like buying a house with your mate 50:50 and then when you need to get a new boiler done, he says he doesn’t have the cash to split the cost. Well if you pay for the boiler, should he still get 50%? No - it should be 50% after the cost of the boiler (plus interest) is taken into account. That is all that is happening here. Once again, the SD communication is diabolical but equally it seems that there is some sort of agenda to smear him as well. His biggest mistake was pretending to pay £40m for the club when that is only true in the most tenuous of legal senses. In any practical sense, he paid £15m (later reduced to £12m). But now, even when he puts another £6m of his own cash into the club (don’t see Juan & Charlie risking anything), he is being attacked for it even though any interest costs are being taken out of Juan & Charlie, not the club. As for the sale price, we have to remember that whatever is paid to Madrox for SAFC (now that the debt is written off) must first be used to repay FPP (£10m or so) and then SD (£6m or so). So a sale price of £35m is actually £19m for Madrox to be set against the £12m they originally paid. So the break even point for Madrox is basically a sale price of £28m. After paying off debts, the equity is Madrox is the same as the money put in to buy the club. Except SD and JS would lose money as CM apparently didn’t put a penny in.
Yup. SD might have put more in but we don't know. I'm not worried about the perceived financial shenanigans apart from the dodgy communication has eroded trust with the fans. I showed all the stuff from the echo and WMS to a mate of mine who is from a chartered accounting background, very successful businessman and has had involvement with motor racing and top flight football. He did not bat an eyelid at the supposed financial outrages. Simply said it was a good thing to have cleared most of the debt and got wages down as many clubs outside the Premier, especially in the championship, are in trouble. He basically said we need to get promoted. I think we know that. He also thinks Leeds are a much better investment . Rubbish.
Thanks for that, it's good to have a precise summary. My problem is that there's been a half hearted attempt at promotion and a total lack of clarity ... ... at the moment I have no idea if Donald has any intention of selling the club.
He will try everything to stay. If that is possible in the present climate remains to be seen. Personally i think he will be papping it now
Best explanation I have seen ... They are guilty of very poor PR /fan management(ironic seeing as one of them is a PR professional ).Far too open and naive. Finance man cutting costs but no vision or flair in getting the playing squad to be championship ready . If you keep buying cheap parts you end up with cheap product. We have lge 1 squad He'll be lucky to get his money back.
I'd say that if he sells in League One he'll lose money. So he has the option to attempt promotion and fail which may mean he'll lose more money. If he stays he's basically backing himself to accomplish what he's failed to do twice. I wouldn't be putting any money on him succeeding.
I agree with that.My hope is they at least start to rebuild the structure around the academy and first team so whoever comes in has at least something to build with..I don't agree with the character assassinations over the road as its not dishonesty thats got us here, its lack of football nouse and vision.
Sadly, as the Grigg episode showed, I think he's a gambler. A **** one, the type that will chase losses. He'll think he can get this right, he'll want to hang on knowing that if he does get it right he'll get a profit. He's proven himself so inept thus far that I'm convinced he'll keep getting it wrong and getting further in the hole. I don't think there's a quick resolution to this unfortunately. It's likely to end either when he finally decides to cut his losses and sell for a fair price (which could take ages) or when he finally gets it right enough to get us promoted, which could take longer
Great summing up My issue is the down right lies they told about the initial purchase Letting people believe they paid £40m and that did not include parachute payments Then once it was realised they were using the parachute payments they Led people on that they were going to pay them back when they had no intention Id like to know how much SD has actually put in including the the initial purchase
Imo his erse will be nipping now, no income from attendance for the foreseeable, which is probably the largest income force for safc now. If people decide they have had enough and don’t renew them it will become pretty desperate pretty quickly income wise for him. I mean, if I was in contact with FPP I would be asking them if a united fans revoke of renewal would escalate their cause. Thats just me thinking out loud before I get accused of season ticket revolution
That's given me a vision in my head of him ringing the finance team every Monday SD - hi there, how the incoming money looking after the weekend? Finance - £3.50 and a bag of haribos in Mr Donald and £75,000 out again I'm afraid Sound of a man crying while trying to clean his now **** stained underwear Finance - Mr Donald, Mr Donald are you OK?