we're missing something (1 Viewer)

OSB58 I am interested in your comment "There is probably some angle to it whereby someone "benefits" but it is away from the SBS&L balance sheet."

potentially what could this benefit be ? Are CCFC just a sideshow for this benefit or are we again looking in the wrong direction.

I posted something along these lines a while back as I have to conclude that there has to be some sort of benefit in the way the company and debts have been constructed. Companies such as SISU are usually very ruthless abut wealth management an I would have thought that they would have got rid long ago.

NorthernWisdom said:

I'd suggest ML's main reason for existe4nce with us was contacts, more than anything else, and the hope he'd smooth a better relationship between various stakeholders.

If so, worked well eh...

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Out of interest NW, is that based on any evidence or is it supposition? What's interesting with stuff re ML and Blair is it does provide some factual basis.

MichaelCCFC said:

Out of interest NW, is that based on any evidence or is it supposition? What's interesting with stuff re ML and Blair is it does provide some factual basis.

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No real evidence as such.

More... his background is an association with politicians and working with politicians (useful), he appears to know a number of people involved in various places (again, background and education shows that) and for those of us who had the pleasure of secret meetings with him, he seemed someone willing and happy to talk and, maybe, less dogmatic in his represented positions than others within the club, and whatever message he was trying to convey, at least showing a certain empathy. He did let slip in those cosy tete-a-tetes he knew certain players from elsewhere too (can't remember who now I( think mind you! Might have been West but don't quote me on that!)

Those secret meetings in fact can only be an attempt to get fans onside to a degree. Going back to his intelligence (or lack thereof) you'd have to question whether his time was well spent doing quite so many of them! A personal approach can work... but not when you've got 100,000 potentially interested stakeholders! But in their own way they were PR exercises too - a variation on a theme common at CCFC over the years (McGinnity and his one-on-one chats 'between these four walls', Robinson and Richardson weren't averse to a snippet of information here, a story there in order to make certain fans feel privileged and in the know).

NorthernWisdom said:

No real evidence as such.

More... his background is an association with politicians and working with politicians (useful), he appears to know a number of people involved in various places (again, background and education shows that) and for those of us who had the pleasure of secret meetings with him, he seemed someone willing and happy to talk and, maybe, less dogmatic in his represented positions than others within the club, and whatever message he was trying to convey, at least showing a certain empathy. He did let slip in those cosy tete-a-tetes he knew certain players from elsewhere too (can't remember who now I( think mind you! Might have been West but don't quote me on that!)

Those secret meetings in fact can only be an attempt to get fans onside to a degree. Going back to his intelligence (or lack thereof) you'd have to question whether his time was well spent doing quite so many of them! A personal approach can work... but not when you've got 100,000 potentially interested stakeholders! But in their own way they were PR exercises too - a variation on a theme common at CCFC over the years (McGinnity and his one-on-one chats 'between these four walls', Robinson and Richardson weren't averse to a snippet of information here, a story there in order to make certain fans feel privileged and in the know).

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Good point. Seems to be a shared skill of buttering people up but when they decide you're not onside you see a very different side to them!

"Labovitch was at the centre of a complex web of companies that, due to the way they are structured, have to disclose only a minimal amount of information concerning Blair's business operations, the profits he makes or indeed how he makes his money"

So was he controlling it or was he just the administrator with a responsibility for making sure the right spin got to the press/public. His skills were in the latter. As for information in the accounts etc that would be controlled by the professional advisors. No one puts more than the statutory minimum in accounts without a good reason or motive for doing so. Think you are reading too much in to that quote Michael.

The angle albatross is probably the movement of funds around including the investment in CCFC and the creation of legal but paper debt/assets - which means that a hedge fund can earn and charge a slice of the value to be paid by the investors. That's where the monies have been earnt and taken if any in my opinion. There does not seem to be any available evidence to support these assertions of fact that SISU have asset stripped CCFC or taken out funds directly in preference to investing it in CCFC. The only "income" visible in the accounts to any of the owners is the high APR% interest charged on the loans by ARVO - even that has been settled by creation of shares or rolled up and carried forward not actually paid out in cash

NorthernWisdom said:

I'd suggest ML's main reason for existe4nce with us was contacts, more than anything else, and the hope he'd smooth a better relationship between various stakeholders.

If so, worked well eh...

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About as well as a vasectomy with a chain saw. Nett result. No more children = success

Personally I always thought ML was a WMD, weapon of mass distraction.

oldskyblue58 said:

...... I really do not see why any fan thinks that the owners care or have an affinity for the club say like Whelan at Wigan, there is just no evidence of it from where I am sitting

All just my opinion of course

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Whelan has just started his walk away from the club. He divested his interests in the RL side some years ago and now he has passed the football club into the hands of his 23 year old grandson - a man with 2 or 3 business failures already (or so I'm told).

Now they are about to drop into division 3 (for that is what L1 really is) it will be interesting to see if "Mr Wigan" will indeed show his affinity to the town.

On a more selfish note - not so far for me to travel to see the City next season :claping hands:

WiganSkyBlue said:

Whelan has just started his walk away from the club. He divested his interests in the RL side some years ago and now he has passed the football club into the hands of his 23 year old grandson - a man with 2 or 3 business failures already (or so I'm told).

Now they are about to drop into division 3 (for that is what L1 really is) it will be interesting to see if "Mr Wigan" will indeed show his affinity to the town.

On a more selfish note - not so far for me to travel to see the City next season :claping hands:

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Whelan's an interesting case full-stop.

tbf he's singlehandedly built Wigan to success they could have never dreamed of. In the process he also wiped out Orrell RFC mind you...

Just as an aside - when Wigan won the FA Cup the town went wild on a par with us in 1987. To see the whole town come together in the same way as happened in Coventry all those years ago did bring back happy memories for me.

Whatever happens, we'll always have 1987

I honestly dont think we are missing anything, I reall do think in terms of running a football club, PR and getting fans onside, Fisher and Waggott are absoloute fekking idiots, and really are that thick on the subject of our club.

Lots of animosity towards TM ML and SW . All they are guilty of is being on duty when JS has steered the ship on to the rocks. She got cold feet early and sold the two Walsall lads ,that was when RR made for the lifeboat. With Plan a brought by her to a premature end, ( plan A being ,trying to climb the slippery football pole) Plan B came in ,to aquire the Ricoh for peanuts. Now that that is passed the only way out is to run the club like a business with minimal funds and hope in the next 5 to 10 yrs we fluke promotion and perhaps then she will have enough of a product with ccfc to command a few million to get some investors money back . She will play the long game TM ML andSW will do as they are told. Not their fault . Its just the business they are in

oldskyblue58 said:

"

The angle albatross is probably the movement of funds around including the investment in CCFC and the creation of legal but paper debt/assets - which means that a hedge fund can earn and charge a slice of the value to be paid by the investors. That's where the monies have been earnt and taken if any in my opinion. There does not seem to be any available evidence to support these assertions of fact that SISU have asset stripped CCFC or taken out funds directly in preference to investing it in CCFC. The only "income" visible in the accounts to any of the owners is the high APR% interest charged on the loans by ARVO - even that has been settled by creation of shares or rolled up and carried forward not actually paid out in cash

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OK I agree that they do not appear to be asset stripping but one way or another have ended up with an heavily indebted balance sheet. Are the Investors (who ever they are ultimately) able to use this debt to ease / offset any other Tax costs for other profitable parts of their investment portfolio? The whole question of ownership is so opaque that we know the companies with shareholdings but what about the level above that?

Moff said:

I honestly dont think we are missing anything, I reall do think in terms of running a football club, PR and getting fans onside, Fisher and Waggott are absoloute fekking idiots, and really are that thick on the subject of our club.

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I really do struggle to figure out how supposedly seasoned investors could get it so wrong

albatross said:

I really do struggle to figure out how supposedly seasoned investors could get it so wrong

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Others on here may know if this is true or not, but another strand of how hedge funds operate apparently is that the complexity and opaqueness of the arrangements they make (which is the point I've been making in this thread) means that even investors don't understand the details and are left relying on reports from the hedge fund saying what's happening - neat system!

MichaelCCFC said:

Others on here may know if this is true or not, but another strand of how hedge funds operate apparently is that the complexity and opaqueness of the arrangements they make (which is the point I've been making in this thread) means that even investors don't understand the details and are left relying on reports from the hedge fund saying what's happening - neat system!

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It's not that simple. A lot probably don't know they investing. A lot will be in pensions and bond portfolios but they will be a tiny fraction of each portfolios total. Its high risk yield

Grendel said:

Its high risk yield

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Indeed, it's playing the odds.

Slightly different areas, but LTCM played some rather long odds, beat the market well for a while... ran up some moderately large debts

Ultimately such is the risk. CCFC were never likely to be a nice safe option after all, and I'd be pretty sure they were prepared at the beginning for the possibility of it going horribly wrong.

The problem is without the emotional investment in the club, when it goes horribly wrong there's no real incentive to walk away in the way we'd all like them to as fans.

Yeah, all points to opaqueness and even (institutional) investors not really knowing what's going on. We never had any success in getting national financial journalists interested in the ccfc story and I remember one saying some journos had spent a lot of time on the Blair financial empire story, which was obviously a lot more interesting than ccfc, but they gave up because people like Labovitch are very skilled at what they do and it's like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The other comment I remember being made was that these people don't do things out of the goodness of their heart and one thing you can be sure of is they will be remunerating themselves very handsomely indeed, however well hidden it is.

MichaelCCFC said:

Yeah, all points to opaqueness and even (institutional) investors not really knowing what's going on. We never had any success in getting national financial journalists interested in the ccfc story and I remember one saying some journos had spent a lot of time on the Blair financial empire story, which was obviously a lot more interesting than ccfc, but they gave up because people like Labovitch are very skilled at what they do and it's like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The other comment I remember being made was that these people don't do things out of the goodness of their heart and one thing you can be sure of is they will be remunerating themselves very handsomely indeed, however well hidden it is.

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You give Labovitch far too much credit.

Grendel said:

You give Labovitch far too much credit.

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As per previous post/s, information about ML and the Blair finances is in the public domain so does provide some factual base as opposed to our personal views of him which are less flattering than the esteem in which he is held by others.