OSBs email: my response (1 Viewer)

WillieStanley · Oct 11, 2011

So here is the response I recieved from the football league regarding OSBs excellent template

I think we should all send one in order to open their eyes and ears!

Kirk,

Thank you for your email.

To confirm Coventry City comply with the Owners’ and Directors’ test based on the information that we have been provided by the Club at this stage. Should you require further information please contact the Club.

Thank you for contacting The Football League

Kind Regards

Amanda

Amanda Craig | Customer Services Administrator
The Football League Limited
Edward VII Quay | Navigation Way | Preston | PR2 2YF.
T 0844 335 0183 | | F 0844 826 5188
acraig@football-league.co.uk | www.football-league.co.uk

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The Football League Ltd. Registered Office - Edward VII Quay, Navigation Way, Preston PR2 2YF. Registered No: 80612. Tel: 0844 463 1888. Fax: 0844 826 5188.
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From: Kirk Savage
Sent: 06 October 2011 12:59
To: FL
Subject: Ownership Query ref Coventry City Football Club Limited

Dear Sirs

Coventry City Football Club Limited

As a concerned supporter of Coventry City Football Club I am writing to you requesting that the Football League clarify the ultimate ownership of the Club. Clause 94 of section 9 of the Football League regulations state this should be made clear on the Club website at least and I do not feel this is the case.

I understand that Coventry City Football Club is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sky Blue Sports & Leisure Limited. That parent company is owned by four private equity funds managed by SISU Capital and by at least one other shareholder. However I feel it important for the clarity of ownership that it is made clear who actually owns or invested in the four private equity funds.

At the very least I would request that the Football League investigate this form of investment in our club to satisfy itself that the ultimate owners (the investors in the private equity funds) are fit and proper persons. In addition that the Football League satisfy themselves that no one party has more than an equivalent 10% interest in the club or an interest in any other club. The purpose of the private equity funds is to obscure the ownership, SISU act as managing agents and the purpose of agents is to act on the instructions of their clients (the investors in Coventry City FC). The management agents cannot, under clause 88.3 section 9, claim confidentiality for those clients.

I look forward to receiving your detailed response

Yours sincerely

Kirk Savage

The Football League Ltd. Registered Office - Unit 5B. Edward VII Quay, Navigation Way, Preston PR2 2YF. Registered in England & Wales. Reg No: 80612.

Sub · Oct 11, 2011

Thank you for your email.

To confirm Coventry City comply with the Owners’ and Directors’ test based on
the information that we have been provided by the Club at this stage. Should
you require further information please contact the Club.

Thank you for contacting The Football League

Kind Regards

Amanda

Amanda Craig
Customer Services Administrator
The Football League Limited
Email - enquiries@football-league.co.uk
www.football-league.co.uk

same response here !!!! same crap

WillieStanley · Oct 11, 2011

:facepalm::facepalm'oh!

oldskyblue58 · Oct 11, 2011

I got exactly the same response this morning too.

So basically the league do not check to see who the members/owners are they take their word for it !

They have not answered the concerns at all. It would seem the Football League is a toothless organisation

Sub · Oct 11, 2011

should forward it on to the telegraph or the MP looking into it

WillieStanley · Oct 11, 2011

Excellent idea, Sub. What was his name again? I'll see if I can get some contacts for him

Sub · Oct 11, 2011

can not remeber had to many beers and slept since then lol

WillieStanley · Oct 11, 2011

You can also contact me in writing at the House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

By telephone at the House of Commons on 020 7219 7072 or in Folkestone on 01303 253524

You can email me at: damian.collins.mp@parliament.uk

His name is Damian Collins. I'm not exactly sure what we can achieve other than give him further evidence that TFL seem to be turning a blind eye despite the concerns of supporters. Worth a go. Any advice OSB?

oldskyblue58 · Oct 11, 2011

Has got be worth sending him the details WillieStanley..... might give him more leverage to get the Football League to do something

blueflint · Oct 11, 2011

great post willie got my support

wingy · Oct 11, 2011

Think we will hear more of us in the future in relation to this,Conn is suggesting the FA get involved over the leagues head.
Just who owns Leeds United?

Page last updated at 11:58 GMT, Monday, 10 October 2011 12:58 UK

By David Conn
Guardian football journalist and Inside Out presenter Who Owns Leeds United: An Inside Out Special

Transmission details: BBC One (Yorkshire) - Monday, 10 October 2011 at 1930 BST. Also available on the BBC iPlayer for seven days after transmission

Elland Road as the sun sets, but who is in charge of this famous football club? When the House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport began its inquiry into the running of football in December - its brief to encourage supporter ownership of clubs - the MPs did not envisage the spotlight they would ultimately shine on Leeds United.
On 29 July, when the committee finally reported, its members had, according to one of the committee's key MPs, Damian Collins, been "appalled" by what they had discovered.
For six years, between 2005 and 2011, with Ken Bates the chairman throughout, nobody in football knew who owned Leeds United, one of football's biggest and most famed clubs.
Bates had arrived as the chairman when the club was suffering the latest in a series of dire financial crises.
After the 2005 takeover for which he was the most visible figure, he said he did not own any shares in Leeds, was not connected to the ownership, and that he was only the UK representative of the company that had bought Leeds.
That company was Forward Sports Fund, registered in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven.
The public cannot see who owns companies in tax havens; secrecy is one of the key services offered by such countries, many of them former British colonies or protectorates.
The Forward Sports Fund's investment in Leeds was administered by a financial firm based on the fifth floor of an elegant building in well-appointed Geneva, where we filmed for the BBC's Inside Out documentary.
Switzerland's law also preserves the anonymity of investors, according to the firm administering Forward Sport's Fund's investment, Chateau Fiduciaire.
Ken Bates has banned the BBC from covering Leeds United at Elland Road In the summer of 2010, when the Football League introduced new rules requiring its clubs to publish who owned substantial stakes in them - 10% or more - to improve transparency in football, Leeds stated that no individual owned 10% or more of the club, so no names needed to be disclosed.
Shaun Harvey, the club's chief executive, told the select committee at a session in Burnley that he did not know who the owners were, and - "to my knowledge," he said - neither did his chairman, Ken Bates.
The Premier League chief executive, Richard Scudamore, gave evidence to the committee shortly afterwards, saying that if Leeds were promoted, the Premier League would interpret the rules more strictly and require Leeds to say who the owners were.
Just days later, Leeds announced Bates had bought the club.
The unnamed investors who had apparently owned Leeds for six years, and certainly since the club came out of administration in 2007, had decided to sell it to him.
Bates, a UK tax exile resident in Monaco, had bought the club from the anonymous investors, via a company registered in Nevis, the West Indies, another tax haven.
Neither Bates, the club nor Chateau Fiduciaire said how much Bates paid to buy Leeds, why the unnamed investors had decided to sell when the club could achieve promotion and be worth a great deal more or, when they decided to sell, what efforts they had made to find a buyer, perhaps internationally, before concluding Bates was the buyer for them.
Preparing for the programme, we asked Leeds United and Bates to appear for an interview to discuss these issues, but he declined.
He has banned The Guardian from Elland Road after articles I wrote covering Forward Sports Fund's ownership, and he has now banned the BBC from non-contracted coverage of the club.
Relations between Leeds United's fans and the club's ownership are strained He uses his own page in the Leeds United matchday programme, which costs supporters £4, and Yorkshire Radio, a station Leeds United actually owns, to deliver his world view, although he has never disclosed who owned Leeds between 2005 and 2011.
We asked the Football League's chairman, Greg Clarke, on to the programme, to explain why the League approved the declaration Leeds made that nobody owned 10% or more of the club, without the League actually ever being shown who the shareholders were, so they could see the evidence for themselves. Clarke too declined to be interviewed.
In a debate in parliament, Collins said of Leeds United: "There can be few people in football who do not privately believe that Ken Bates has effectively been in control of the club for most of the past six years. The answers given by the club to questions about its ownership over that period stretch credibility, to say the least."
In its report, delivered in July, the select committee called for more transparency in football, so that supporters, who pledge their loyalty to their clubs for life, at the very least know who owns their clubs, and to whom they are giving their money.
Of Leeds' ownership during six years, via a company registered in a tax haven administered in Switzerland, the committee said: "There is no more blatant an example of lack of transparency."
The committee called for the Football Association, the national game's governing body, to investigate who owned Leeds between 2005 to 2011, with the assistance of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs if necessary.
Three months on, the FA has not responded to the report. It is waiting for the government to issue its response, due this month.

BurbageSkyBlues · Oct 12, 2011

They have no desire to expose their complicity with condoning the anonymity of club ownership. It would appear that the football league are not interested in exposing the potential cross fertilisation of ownership that would blow a hole in their rules!

wingy · Oct 12, 2011

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0161mrg/Who_Owns_Leeds_United_An_Inside_Out_Special/ Heres the link to watch the inside out special related to the article above

OSBs email: my response (1 Viewer)

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