Something from the COV MAD SITE, a bit of a read, but it throws more light on the background of the people now running our club. The article obviously relates to Southampton and dates from October 2009. The expensive flights from Portugal continue.
More DYOR on my part required, but anybody else looked at this one? Or have any thoughts?
I'll warn you upfront that I know nothing about their finances, but I do know a bit about some of their current and former Directors as they were heavily involved in the takeover shenanigans at Southampton FC back in 2006. That is enough to make me shudder on your behalf!
In a nutshell, a local businessman called Michael Wilde bought a large shareholding in Southampton FC's parent company, primarily to oust the then chairman. At the time, Southampton had just been relegated from the Premier League and were facing financial issues as a result - spending needed to be severely reigned in to account for the drop in revenues... basically a 50% drop in turnover (with 1 year parachute payment of 15% remaining). For those who don't follow football, Southampton went into administration last season and these Vantis people played a large part in screwing the club financially:
Wilde brought in a chap called Ken Anderson as his financial advisor. This is Vantis connection number 1:
http://www.vantisplc.com/Vantis/About/People/KenAnderson.htm...
He formulated Wilde's plan and solicited the sale of shares to Wilde. When Wilde could not afford a controlling stake, they negotiated options and vote proxies over other Directors' holdings instead. His Vantis business card during these negotiations referred to him as "Group Director" which was strange as only a few months earlier he was banned from holding directorship of a company until 2013:
http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/ddir/dqdet.cgi?P=0784186401...
Indeed Anderson has been involved in several liquidations and his record at the Insolvency Service reveals that he has been found guilty of diverting funds receivable by a company into personal accounts, VAT discrepancies, and failure to cooperate with Receivers. Sounds like a great bloke to have on board.
Vantis billed £90,000 for 4 weeks work for Wilde. This was retrospectively billed back to the club after Wilde took control.
Having sorted out the controlling stake for Wilde, Anderson helped Wilde assemble a boardroom team for the takeover. Here comes Vantis connection #2, Ken Dulieu:
http://www.vantisplc.com/Vantis/InvestorRelations/Directors....
You'll notice he doesn't have a personal page like Anderson, and that his details incorrectly state he is a non-executive chairman of Southampton Leisure Holdings (the parent company of Southampton FC). The club went into administration at the beginning of the year and is now under new ownership so this is completely incorrect. More important is the claim of being "non-exec". In fact, despite this claim and Wilde claiming that all non-execs would be unpaid, Dulieu in fact was paid as an exec and got paid an incredible £100,000 pa for a maximum 8 days per month with first class flights to and from his home in Portugal. He even got to have his own secretary out there. Remember, this was a club in financial trouble for whom the full-time CEO they'd just ousted was only being paid £120k pa.
Dulieu, like other Vantis Directors was also on the board at AIM listed CapCon - at this time CapCon had declined from a £6m company to having a market cap of just £300k. It had just lost £2.3m and warned the next year would be even worse. Dulieu and the board tried to issue themselves convertible notes at a 50-65% discount which would have passed control to a concert party including their own board Directors. Their peers, Christie Group, held 15% of CapCon and resorted to publicly shaming them with a statement to the stockmarket which included:
"Christie Group has made repeated requests to Capcon's Board for up-to-date financial information... No such information has been provided and no reason for this has been given."
Dulieu then changed tack and changed from suggesting these massively discounted convertible loan notes to a straight 2-year guaranteed secured loan to the company with interest at 10% pa payable daily. The alternative board proposal in the EGM of a management buyout of part of the business for £700k was then dismissed as being "only ever meant as a fallback" when Christies countered with a
43% higher offer! No wonder the CapCon shareprice performed 50 times worse than Christies that year.
In his own words, Dulieu "had been brought in to look after the plc part of the Club" when he arrived at Southampton - at a time when spending needed to be cut, in less than 2 years he helped take the club from 2 execs to 5 execs on higher salaries, with turnover halved the wage bill was increased, and with parachute payments ending a £5m overdraft was taken out... all of which led to administration.
I suppose you could look at this in one of two ways. On the one hand these people have shown themselves to be unscrupulous, untrustworthy money-grabbers you'd not want within 100 miles of your company. Then again, they are no doubt very adept at charging and billing. But overall, if these people are supposed to be business recovery specialists, I think they have a rather poor track record. FWIW, I wouldn't touch them with someone else's bargepole.
Cheers
-luckyjonah.
