With the charge, you’d imagine there’s a ‘deferred consideration’ (i.e. buy now, pay later) element to the transaction as it’s common practice for the seller to retain a charge to mitigate the risk of non-payment. Someone else (may well have been in the quoted post) suggested Doug’s taken a loan from Frasers; it’s effectively a payment plan. For example, if the Arena makes a profit of more than £1m, it may mean future payments increase.
Yeah, you may well be correct in that there is a deferred element of the consideration due from the acquirer (I.e the club) which has then been secured against the acquired asset (the arena) by the seller.
It’s worth adding that this deferred consideration maybe contingent in nature (I.e it depends on certain agreed upon conditions being achieved, such as profitability levels of the arena) meaning that it the amount is not yet exactly known, or it may simply be a fixed amount that has been deferred and due to be paid at a future date.
It all depends on how the deal was structured. We do not have any information on this.
I’ve not seen anything which suggests that the £40m figure doing the rounds is anything other than guess work based on a few known elements.