Ren

Every year I say the same, why do we have to pay for our STs so far in advance? Oh yes, I remember McNally's answer "because it suits us" when I asked him at a forum once.

Re point 5. I am pretty sure that if you approached the club to purchase shares before MA appeared, the club were selling the unsold capital at £100 per share. This was naughty as the club had a list of buyers who were prepaid to sell at £25 but of course the club would not have benefitted from that. It does indeed ask questions as to how we have suddenly arrived back at the price of £25 a share.

You mention at the start a tickets collection. Well I have a collection going back to my first season 1985-86 of every away ticket, well nearly every one. I’m probably missing less than 100. There can’t be many sets like this in existence. Always looking for the missing ones if anyone can help. I am fully complete from 2002-2017 so it’s only before and the last couple of seasons I’m missing a few.. …

You are quite right we haven’t been in administration and without checking my original post I meant we could have ended up close to admin again, which surely you can’t deny we nearly were on at least one occasion under the current owners. I repeat again, we don’t know if she will or won’t make a fortune for herself as it’s not her shares that are changing hands, so we don’t know if she will take a loss on hers shares or make a handsome profit when the time is right.

Quite a sizeable amount to borrow though. Are we assuming this is covered by the last parachute payment coming in and the wait for player sales? Loans have to be paid back (or converted into equity). Its a big number that puts MA into a strong position.

Problem is Vince, is that if we don't trust MA we may not have a club left to support. I am not sure the current board are quite as slick as many seem to think they are and had MA not shown up when he did, who knows were we would be......

I'm not sure that Zoe is anyone's enemy but anyone taking that size salary from a business is going to have questions asked of them. re "D&M not making a fortune here", please be aware that they haven't sold their shareholding yet, so they still might, If MA has ended up putting in £70m to gain 40% my guess is he is going to have to put in even more to acquire the rest of the club.

As a betting man, I wouldn't mind a bet that one of the first questions at the next AGM will be regarding Zoe's salary.

Yes that is assuming that these loans haven't been used to cover wages and other "expenses" which I guess we won't know until the next set of accounts are out.

Shef, great post again for which I am very grateful. It does make me wonder where this club would be had MA not arrived when he did? I think it tells me that we probably need to get this vote through so that we don't all end up with no shares or worse no club. I know I will get called anti Delia for this statement, but I think it does prove that had we have stuck with this self (fan) funded model we could have quite simply found ourselves in Administration again and on the way to league one and beyond. Webber came in and gave it the big 'un about how mismanaged the club had been until he showed up, erm sorry Stuart but this looks worse, and its under your wife's very expensive watch.

This thread has made a refreshing change for me in that there has been some really interesting chat from all parties. I don't come on here as much as I used to as most threads used to turn into the same old regulars having silly **** for tat arguments that the rest of us don't need to read. Thanks to all that have posted in the last 5 or so pages its been really interesting. I think its a pity that some of you need to constantly swipe at Essex though. You might not agree with some of the things he/she has posted but do you really need to go on the attack so much? Again thanks to all who have posted, I'm not going to name you all in case I miss someone, but its been very inciteful, lets keep it that way.

This won't be the case here as Delia and MWJ wont be intitled to vote.

Indy Just to clarify I think the deal is the right one for the club going forward, although I don't necessarily agree with the "isn't Delia wonderful for selling at £25 a share" comment, she hasn't sold, she has placed the unissued capital into the hands of MA for that price, maybe she should have been looking to obtain more per share to maximise revenue. As I have said on may occasions I feel its tricky for us minority shareholders to vote for something that is not clear and to not offer a chance to ask questions is frankly unfair. I think as a shareholder we have a right to understand what D, M and MA are trying to achieve long term.

Purple - I think that would have been a fair way to have treated the fans who bought shares back in 2002 and at a slightly later date that I cant recall. The issue I think has griped with some share holders is that they bought the shares under the impression that there would always be a way of selling them and until the Trusts recent set up there really hasn't been an easy way of selling. The club could and probably should have offered to buy them back and cancel them when they were in the premier league or they should have at least offered to run a "market". I have often felt like its a "well we have your money, so we don't really care about you any more" attitude. That's not really how issuing shares works, but I guess football clubs don't run like normal organisations.

….they haven’t sold their shares yet. Let’s wait and see shall we?

Is it even generous, some might argue that they should have raised more from the dilution of equity that all shareholders have suffered?

I have worked at places where the "new" are taking over from the "old" over a period of time and it doesn't work that well as the new team want to start implementing their ideas and the old are a bit set in their ways and reluctant to change creating friction. Personally I think the time is right for a full takeover but of course many would disagree. Not sure there is an answer to suit everyone Nutty, so we will just have to trust the process, but of course people are right to be asking questions.

I find it a little naughty that the club are discouraging people from attending and asking questions, when the offer document clearly states:- 10. Any member attending the meeting has the right to ask questions. The Company must cause to be answered any such question relating to the business being dealt with at the meeting but no such answer need be given if (a) to do so would interfere unduly with the preparation for the meeting or involve the disclosure of confidential information, (b) the answer has already been given on a website in the form of an answer to a question, or (c) it is undesirable in the interests of the Company or good order of the meeting that the question be answered.

...or he took the money quickly as he needed it and couldn't see another way out coming any time soon. Probably somewhere between the two but we will never know.

GMF - I know what you are trying to say and I totally agree with you. If I can I am going to attend the meeting to make this point.

I agree it would appear that he has picked up 40% of the club at what looks like a "cheap" price, but if he wants 100% ownership I guess we will have to wait and see at what price D&M are prepared to sell, then and only then will we start to see what he truly thinks the value of the club is. As a shareholder I wouldn't sell at £25 per share as I like to be a part owner of my football club, but start talking North of a £100 and I might be tempted to take a profit. We are all different and some may sell for less, some more and some, like those few at Arsenal may never want to sell. I seem to recall the last few shares there traded at something like £85,000 each.

Whilst many of us did not buy shares to make money, we did buy shares to help bail out the club when it was in a financial mess. Sometimes I feel that this is very much overlooked. I hope that this is not one of those times and this vote is not going to leave us shareholders in yet an even weaker position, bearing in mind our percentage holding in the club will automatically be reduced.

There was an article in the EEN re this a few days ago.

Probably not because MA will be able to start buying up shares from the 6000 plus minority shareholders if he so wishes.

I think this is all fair but I have a feeling that MA may not ever fully own the whole club and I wouldn't be surprised to see D&M's holding held in a trust for a length of time to stop that from happening. Hopefully the board have taken the time to get to know MA well enough to know that he is in it for the longer game. Time will tell I guess but D&M are not getting any younger and at some stage they will have to call time on the ownership of our great club.