The Club still has the right to gain access to the revenues at the Ricoh. This comes with ownership of shares in ACL. This was agreed from the start. When they sold their shares to the Higgs Charity they got the money they needed to avoid administration and start the next season along with the right to buy back their shares. Nobody has told them they couldn’t buy back those shares: they have chosen not to.
Back in 2008 and 2009 I had two meetings with Onye Igwe when he told me that the Charity had to sell their shares to the Club and he would tell me how much they would pay. He also told me of the Club’s exciting plans to expand the supporter base in Nigeria and China. It was an odd way to approach the matter but I said nothing but waited for him to come back with a price. He was, I suspect, ignoring the option which gave the Club the right to buy for a fixed sum. I heard nothing more and then he was removed. Ken Dulieu then appeared and I met him in London for him also to say that the Club was going to buy the shares. Nothing happened and he disappeared.
Tim Fisher talks about the need to increase the revenues of the Club. He suggests that the Club has a right to them. He is correct. They have a right to buy them back. Only the Club has an Option to buy them.
The Charity paid the Club for those shares. The Charity must hope to make a return, either through an increase in value or through an income, from those shares. There has, of course, been no income at all from those shares yet. Tim Fisher now wants some of that income simply to be given to the Club because it needs it. It is clear that the Club needs more income and ACL had offered to give up some income: the food and beverage revenues everyone refers to.
I fear that just as that offer is now withdrawn the possibility of the Club now buying back into ACL has receded.
To make the businesses at the Ricoh work efficiently they have to work together in harmony and with trust. That began to happen under Ray Ranson and the Club was able to make savings and increase its income. Perhaps if his influence had been strong enough to stop the Club being distracted by ideas of business expansion in Nigeria and China and he had kept the owners g back into ACL we wong back into ACL we would not all be locked into this destructive spiral.
