J
Jack Griffin
Guest
It was a tragedy that Sir Derek Higgs died in 2008, I feel sure he would have been able to steer the good ship CCFC through the storm more effectively than PKWH.
Did sisu save ACL? (50 Viewers)
- Thread starter Godiva
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It was a tragedy that Sir Derek Higgs died in 2008, I feel sure he would have been able to steer the good ship CCFC through the storm more effectively than PKWH.
J
Jack Griffin
Guest
When I get home I'll see if I can work it out.
Thought that was Holdings. May be wrong though of course
Mr Thompson questioning Mr Harris:
Q. ... Whereas in fact, it was bought for 14 million.
A. It was. The debt at the time was 19 million.
Q. I think people know about that, there was the hedging element, so there's a question about how much it was, and you there say I think it's 15 million.
oldskyblue58
CCFC Finance Director
its a verification process rather than an audit fp. The reports are different and the responsibilities different. Audits of companies are done under the Companies Act due diligence isn't. You have to be registered with the relevant bodies to do an audit you don't for due diligence. Not all chartered accountants are auditors but all statutory auditors are qualified with the relevant accountancy bodies. Audits deal with how the process works, has it worked, is it reliable in addition to its value amongst other things . Due diligence is more about in this case the worth. The appointment agreed would be on a specific basis and may be limited for due diligence an audit is usually wider ranging. An auditor reports to the members of the company and specifically excludes responsibility to third parties whereas for due diligence the report is specifically for third parties
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Always had the Impression It was around £14-£15M as It's often stated they were paying It down ,Double rate .
IE; £1M. per an ,could the other £4-£5M. be something to do with the IEC set up .
Hind sight is a wonderful thingso using that, in reasonable chronological order did the game changers start with the establishment of Otium? or the ARVO mortgage charge over CCFC assets? or the restructuring by error or other means of the playing side? by CCFC Ltd become something its accounts say it was not? the decision to stop paying rent? the West email of plan? the break down of Charity talks? the loan by CCC?
So CCFC Ltd changed probably in 2012 but only became known March 2013 ........ that would be when these talks were supposed to be going on in good faith ...........:thinking about:
Yes hindsight, we can't do without it, can we
And you forgot to mention Hoffman and Elliott. PWKH is quoted to say 'Hoffman is circulating just below the horizon'
oldskyblue58
CCFC Finance Director
Yes hindsight, we can't do without it, can we
And you forgot to mention Hoffman and Elliott. PWKH is quoted to say 'Hoffman is circulating just below the horizon'
with the greatest of respect to messrs Hoffman & Elliott I have never really seen them as a game changer ....... I know others have
lordsummerisle
Well-Known Member
Sadly think it's the fact that others did that contributed to the whole breakdown.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
You think Joe and Hoff conned CCC into thinking there were options? You think CCC wouldn't have looked to gazump Sisu if they didn't think other offers were available?
Could be, but remember ACL looked at buying the club in case of liquidation, plus others were involved. I think you're putting the horse before cart.
lordsummerisle
Well-Known Member
ACL's looking at buying the club after liquidation lasted about 2 minutes!
Really think that the influence behind the scenes of chancers such as Hoffman and Elliott, with their very attractive to a council desperate to get somebody to regenerate the area, American property developer, strongly influenced their direction.
Withdrawing any co-operation with Sisu in plans to buy out the Higgs share and share(or do themselves) buying out the YB mortgage they thought would force Sisu to just give up the club through sale or liquidation, with somebody ready to step in straight away.
Yes - and they may still be granted their wish.
Remember how OSB revealed that in the latest accounts all loans to sisu funds were set to expire December 2014?
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
What are you talking about? PWKH has nothing to do with CCFC. Neither would DH at that time.
fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
I know you're desperate to try and show Coventry City Council in a good light, but look at how many reasonable buildings they've demolished around Coventry after some nobody developer has submitted un-financed plans for something or other.
I think in particularly, where the old Smithfield Hotel was. It was demolished 12 years ago yet still nothing has materialised on the site.
They can hardly be called diligent when it comes to listening to empty promises (they more than welcomed SISU after all).
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I'm not trying to do anything mate. I was suggesting it's a possibility, but then why be scratching around so much that ACL looked at buying us.
My point was it looks more like CCC running about looking for a new owner after they decided to nix the deal, rather than CCC deciding to pull out of the deal because they had a preferred buyer lined up.
And I'm not sure the rest is relevant TBH. Of course the status of the football team will get more attention than any other random development.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I'd be interested to see the timescales.
It's a semantic argument, but an important one. Let's do a little thought experiment.
Let's say you're in charge of CCC and you've met with Joy and she's made it clear that no stadium=no funding. You then decide (for reasons totally unrelated to who owns the club) that this deal is not good for you, the club or the city you are in charge of.
Now you're in a position where Sisu are likely to pull funding.
What do you do?
The other point is: how can anyone force Sisu out of the club. It's their choice to stay on, to not pay rent, to put us into admin, etc. etc. etc. Literally none of this debacle couldn't have carried on without Sisu's implicit permission.
It just doesn't make sense as a plan to start with the preposition to remove Sisu.
lordsummerisle
Well-Known Member
They were hoping, and indeed, expected to force the issue.
Am sure that they wouldn't have done so if they didn't think that there was somebody waiting in the wings.
Rusty Trombone
Well-Known Member
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Again, I'm not sure which bit in there contradicts what I said.
That email is after the council have decided to not go ahead. The question is why did they not go ahead?
There are a million reasons to not go through with a deal that only Sisu had actually shown any appetite for from what I can see. You can't just pull out your favourite theory and say "that's it".
You say forcing the issue, I say taking Joy at her word.
As I've said before, if I put a gun to your head and say I'll kill you if you don't do X, and you don't. It's still murder, not suicide.
lordsummerisle
Well-Known Member
That was from the August report, they were still talking to Sisu right up until December about doing a deal on the YB loan.
Not really - that was the basis for the negotiations. The centrepiece in 'the package' they all agreed to and was written into both the ITS and the HoT.
Without sisu or sisu/ccc buying and discharging the loan everything else would make no sense to sisu.
Out of interest...
How much of the transcripts have you read?
J
Jack Griffin
Guest
All right all right, I got some details wrong, I've had a long tiring day.. but in essence my point is that if Derek Higgs had been around I'd expect thing would have turned out better.
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shmmeee
Well-Known Member
I'm sure, but that's not my point. I asked why did they decide to not do the deal. Was it because they wanted to force a new owner or because they didn't want to sell the Ricoh.
The fact that he talks about "maybe they can be persuaded to put the club on the market" to me suggests that they didn't have a buyer lined up. The fact that he talks about the new deal enabling ACL to offer better terms also suggests ousting Sisu wasn't the plan, more an unintended consequence.
I'll try again. I go in day 1 and say "if this deal doesn't work, I'm off". When you decide that it's not going to work, don't you plan for the eventuality that I'll be off?
Like I said, it's all about timescales and none of us have enough information (hence why absolutely no-one has changed sides in this, we're all just coming from our own prejudices) let's see what CCC say at the JR.
James Smith
Well-Known Member
Do you mean Administration rather than Liquidation? Because I thought that the consensus on here (rightly or wrongly) was that their 'bid' during the Administration process was so that they had all the information available to the bidders - and not a serious bid. We might all be wrong though.
Rusty Trombone
Well-Known Member
Every word, including Deering saying that ACL was worth nothing, but Joy being a charitable sort, would pay £2m. Also the bit where Deering said the decision to stop paying rent was purely down to Fisher, nothing to do with Joy (think this was after we were told she was 'hands on'). Also the bit where Higgs wrote to SISU but the letters were not replied to, and the bit where they asked, unsuccessfully, for proof of funds.
duffer
Well-Known Member
Personally I don't quite see it as 'just as bad as each other'.
SISU had a chance to do a deal with AEHC, CCC, and ACL - but they started off with threats, and never delivered anything that the other parties wanted in terms of security, proof of funding, or plans.
SISU going to the bank without getting authority first was also bound to cause issues, and again indicates to me that this wasn't a typical negotiation. It's clear that even at the time this made Higgs and CCC very unhappy - what a daft thing to do at the start such a critical process.
I also don't think that SISU's shifting of assets was to protect against a hostile takeover - it was much more about breaking the lease. Loading the debt protected against a takeover, but again there's no mechanism for anyone to takeover CCFC if SISU continue to pay the rent (or negotiate in a way that the 'road map' doesn't break down).
The one thing I can see as being unethical from CCC is going behind SISU's back to the bank. Although we've not heard from CCC yet, so this is still an assumption. Even so, from what I can see this wasn't done to force SISU out as much as to protect ACL, which the Council of course has a share in. Again, you can't force SISU out if they pay the rent - and even the CCC guy points out that if nothing else the deal allows a better rent to be offered to the club.
Whether SISU have taken bad decisions or good decisions will perhaps depend on where we end up - but if you look at where we are now, I'd currently rate their decision making (and negotiating skills) as somewhere below terrible and possibly verging on fatal.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
That's interesting, because in the JR application they state:
Leaving aside the question of whether West "understood" what was being agreed to, doesn't that suggest that Sisu were very clear about the "rent holiday" that they took? Wasn't Ms Deering at these meetings as Joy's representative?
Astute
Well-Known Member
If the JR goes against SISU they will have wasted millions from just this season alone. And by the look of it for less than the losses in the last 12 months they could have paid Higgs a fair price for the share they paid for and had a 50% stake in ACL. This would have put them in a strong position with CCC whatever the outcome with YB. And it seems that with the Higgs share all the plans that they had for the start of 2012 would have come to fruition. We wouldn't have been playing in Northampton so that would have been worth a lot of money also. We wouldn't have started the season on -10 points. With the extra cash flow SP could have afforded a couple of players that would have improved our defence. Maybe Clarke would have been happy to stay at a stable club. We would have been looking at a decent chance of promotion.
So yes not paying Higgs could have cost them a lot of money both now and in the future. Maybe they thought the threat of liquidating our club would have been enough to get what they wanted cheaply. We will find out more during the JR I hope.
Rusty Trombone
Well-Known Member
Which company is the claimant in the JR? Is it SISU, or another of their companies?
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
Whoops, you're right. It's CCFC, ARVO and SBS&L. My mistake. Still, wasn't Deering present? She seems to have been able to give testimony at every other point.
Well, it quite obivious that had the Golden Share and the players contract been in the same company - then sisu would have been open to a take over attempt as anyone (Haskell), had he secured the Higgs shares first, would be able to put in a considerable bid for Limited and the administrator would have to do the best for 'limited' in that situation => sell to the one with access to a stadium as well as money to secure the creditors.
shmmeee
Well-Known Member
woah woah woah. back up there.
Are you saying Sisu planned to go into admin back in 2011 or whenever they made the change? Doesn't that blow apart the idea that they were totally suprised when ACL applied for admin?
Rusty Trombone
Well-Known Member
I think we can definitely trust SISU, Joy and Deering when they say that Fisher was making the decisions for the club, and therefore they definitely wouldn't have known about this. Forget all that stuff about Joy being hands on, that was just a joke.
The threat of stop funding the club was what actually brought about the negotiations. Something nobody before that had achieved.
The 'shifting of assets' was to protect against a hostile take over - and to break the lease. I had said both over and over the past year or more. I even mentioned the part about the 'debt wall' in the FAQ's whenever that was written (in case anyone remembers).
We will probably never agree on much and this is how it always is with highly complicated cases and with multiple parties. In this case it is not less complicated as more involved holds positions in more than one organisation ... sisu/arvo/ccfc - higgs/acl ... acl/ccc.