James Smith
Well-Known Member
Yes, what was Igwe doing all the time he was with us.
SISU didn't deliberately set out to crush our club, they have just done a spectacularly shit job of trying to get a return on their investment (unless of course Joy is secretly a Sunderland fan and she's still pissed about 1977)
Whilst some people are no doubt eulogizing about the fantastic deal that Wasps got... it was the one deal that had SISU managed to get (and not fuck up) which would have probably seen a far hastier exit from them than we will see now.
The position to negotiate might be moot. It appears that ACL/Wasps could cut us loose at the end of the season and we will have no control of it.
Wasps don't fall under the jurisdiction of the FL or the FA, and no-one at CCC cares nor can do anything anyway.
What then........?
The option is the club then takes out an add in the Wasps evening telegraph and puts the contract in there for the fans to see.
Not too far off the ill fated operation premiership scheme , and we all know how that ended up.
one bad season and relegation and they could be in trouble.
As if the CET would publish it... conflict of interests and all..
Fingers crossed!
Wouldn't rely on that,another Wasps would take it over after all as a franchise you dont just have one franchise do you you have a number,I would have thought
Aw, come on. Don't take away my hope. It's all I have left.
Nah Wasps are into their confidentiality contracts apparently.
That's fair enough for the man on the street but journalists should be digging deeper and not just printing what they are told to print by Wasps. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt, this news raises a lot of questions to be asked of CCC, Higgs and Wasps, lets see if over the coming days those questions do get asked.
From The Times, 28 April:
One of the best ways of losing money over the past few years has been investing in football clubs. Fans buy the shares not on the basis that they might or might not be a good investment but through tribal, not to say blind, loyalty.
Owning a rugby club has not been an easy way to riches, either.Wasps, one of the better-known names in the game and owner of one of the biggest grounds in the sport — and one of the country’s biggest convention centres, to boot — is raising between £25 million and £35 million through the issue of retail bonds offering a coupon of 6.5 per cent, among the highest returns available on the London Stock Exchange’s quoted Orb market.
Wasps bought the Ricoh Arena in Coventry in the autumn. It needs to repay the £13.4 million loan it took out as part of the £20 million purchase. The bonds issue will do this, without requiring Derek Richardson, the Irish businessman and owner of Wasps, to sell any of his equity.
This should raise question marks. The most obvious course would be for Wasps, along with its new acquisition, to float on the Alternative Investment Market and seek fresh funds that way. The trading record of the companies involved may well have precluded this. The prospectus shows that Wasps lost £392,000 at the attributable level in the last financial year. The Ricoh Arena lost more than £2 million. There were good reasons for this, not least the fact that Coventry City Football Club decamped from the stadium for a while. At its new home, Wasps will be better placed, but no one is suggesting much better than break-even this year.
Anyone buying into a seven-year retail bond wants, at a minimum, certainty that the company issuing it will be in existence in seven years’ time. Wasps almost certaintly will be — those non-rugby conference and hotel facilities provide two thirds of the revenues — yet that yield, though attractive, is not the only such available on the stock market. Phoenix Group, the insurance consolidator, is up there; various infrastructure funds offer a similar return. The usual high yielders, Vodafone and the pharma and tobacco stocks, are not far behind and offer much less risk.
My advice Avoid
Why Though the coupon is attractive, the company is not yet in profit and there are far safer sources of income on the stock market
Minimum investment £2,000
Acl lost £2 million?
Think they have mixed up acl and wasps.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - so please excuse any spelling or grammar errors
Avoid? What, the Wasps Evening Telegraph told me it was an attractive investment. How do I get my money back? I just put in £100k
I'm surprised you guys are pleased with the Times comments though, you seem happy because they sum up with avoid yet they are basically saying that it it's a good return and it will almost certainly work out it's just that you can get even more certainty elsewhere.
Don't know. Someone on their forum said the prospectus for this bond said ACL was a financial basket case near to bankruptcy - wasps did lose only £400,000
This is the second reassuring aspect of the Wasps bonds - the security offered. If the club is unable to pay bondholders what they are due, the stadium will be sold to raise the money to pay them back. This is a solid asset, although of course one cannot say for sure how much it might fetch in the future if it had to be sold. It has been valued by Strutt & Parker, the estate agent, at £48.5m, more than the maximum of £35m that the bond issue will raise.
What the prospectus actually says is that part of the security given is ACL's interest in the stadium. That interest is of course the long leasehold interest - something also made very clear in the prospectus and the valuation disclosed.
Clearly some of these financial experts do not read properly..... mind you the prospectus is 276 pages so its perhaps understandable given print deadlines etc
so no business would ever secure finance against a long lease then? No finance would ever be provided without a cast iron guarantee of not going bust?
It is easy to pick on a few words in isolation. The prospectus , which is the legal offer document, makes clear what is on offer, what the risks are, what the security is and its current value, and what happens in the event of failure etc.
The press announcement might not be to your liking but it isn't incorrect. The Ricoh will be subject to a mortgage secured on the Wasps/ACL title to it, that title remains for the next 250 years. For the next 250 years the Ricoh effectively belongs to Wasps
so no business would ever secure finance against a long lease then? No finance would ever be provided without a cast iron guarantee of not going bust?
It is easy to pick on a few words in isolation. The prospectus , which is the legal offer document, makes clear what is on offer, what the risks are, what the security is and its current value, and what happens in the event of failure etc.
The press announcement might not be to your liking but it isn't incorrect. The Ricoh will be subject to a mortgage secured on the Wasps/ACL title to it, that title remains for the next 250 years. For the next 250 years the Ricoh effectively belongs to Wasps
Not often that I'd disagree with you OSB, but the Ricoh leasehold belongs to ACL, and if ACL go bust the lease reverts to the council, doesn't it?
In other words, if you bought a bond and and ACL failed for any reason (most likely Wasps going under), the Ricoh Arena itself could not be sold to realise funds and repay bondholders.
The leasehold would then revert to CCC, to sell to another third-party at that point, presumably - so the leasehold itself would no longer belong to ACL.
In essence, in my simple world, you can't offer security against going bust against the very thing you'd lose if you went bust. If I've misunderstood please feel free to clarify...
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