Well they 100% would have to approve any sale, as its part of the loan conditions. They could simply repay the loan but the chances of Donald or Campbell having a spare £9m are low. If the loan wasn't being repaid, and Campbell was a dodge pot, you'd hope they'd refuse regardless of whether they want to own us, simply because any massive failure could see them lose out as well
Very interesting on BBC Total Sport this evening... Nick Barnes has said that ‘The Campbell’ deal fell through, as after Due diligence, if he purchased the club, they’d be bankrupt within a year.... He also said that a Saudi consortium were interested in April to buy the club, Neil fox (SAFC club director and SD’s mate from Eastleigh) said the club had a preferred consortium they wanted to sell too and rebuffed the bid/deal... He’ll prefer Campbell to come back in (rumours persist he will), as last year, when it fell through, Campbell said SD could stay on the board as a shareholder ♂️ What is going on at our club?!?!?!? ♂️
The worrying thing is that these are the same rumours he's been trying to leak for 6 months now. This Saudi bid... I mean let's assume it happened... but it's weird how many bids he's turned down recently. Surely if they were anywhere near asking price he would have got out.
Once the sale goes through SD will be able to repay the loan easy. He might not have even touched it yet and is only keeping it open to keep FFP on the hook.
From a financial point of view it initially sounds appealing having Saudi's on board. But as can see with NUFC situation, now is not a good time for a Saudi takeover.
Aye but they'd need to approve the sale before it can go through, the only way around that is if they could pay them off before the sale goes through, which might be harder
If anybody was in any doubt that this whole situation is all about SD then the information from Nick Barnes seals it. No concern for the club or fans just whether he can remain involved to make as much money as possout of us and our club!!
I suspect they would not get involved to that degree unless there was a very specific scenario of them aggressively trying to purchase majority ownership + their bid being close to the one Donald was proposing (and for some reason, Donald not wanting to do it). Even then, exercising a veto based on a charge is pointless because if the other bid was at that stage and Donald wanted to get around it, they could just give him the cash to pay FPP off and they lose the leverage. Assuming that they're not actively trying to buy us, I'd be staggered if FPP made a subjective judgement about the viability of someone else's bid on our behalf. From recent experience, we had a relatively similar issue whereby a VC firm invested in us at a low level (6%), who happened to have a mechanism to veto a sale, announced that they were slightly uncomfortable with us taking money (8 figures a year, so business-defining) from a certain sector because they'd changed their internal fund rules and it was a grey area. The worry was that if we sold in future, they could be difficult and exercise the veto, even if we had no alternative in play and everyone else was in favour of the sale. In the end through conversations with lawyers and the VC, it was clear that those type of mechanisms are there to protect against the business owner newco-ing the business and essentially ****ing the shareholders (or in FPP's case, a company with loan money outstanding) over through creative ownership changes and transferring assets. The lawyer who dealt with it was extremely blunt and said that for an investor to exercise a veto like that, someone would have to be suffering a massive financial loss and be desperate to do something else with the business. Just something to be aware of I guess. If FPP aren't actively trying to buy a majority stake, they will probably not get involved and stop someone else doing so.
From newspapers, radio and this thread it is my humble opinion, nobody knows what is going on. About the only thing, I reckon I know is that Donald cannot afford to bankroll us next season...if he tries to I assume all assets will be sold off eg AOL?
He can't sell any fixed assets like that until he either pays back FPP or he puts us into administration and FPP don't exercise their right to take the club on. I think the chances of us going into administration are slim to none still. He probably can afford to fund us, but the team on the pitch will likely suffer.
Was it fantasy that they opened up a Uk company with the stadium of light as their base?is it fantasy that they are probably the biggest investor in Sunderland (Maddox)at the moment ? Those I think are two pretty big facts that there was at least a plan to buy us at one point.
If they wanted us they’d have bought us simple as that. Who knows what their motives were but it certainly seems it wasn’t to buy us out.