Bolton get winding up petition from HMRC!

Bolton Wanderers can confirm that the club has now received a winding up petition from HMRC in respect of unpaid PAYE and VAT for the month of November.

Despite requests from the club to HMRC to give it further time to either conclude a sale or raise additional funds, HMRC has proceeded with due process and duly served a petition.

Trevor Birch, advisor to the board and owner at Bolton Wanderers, said: “Quite clearly the club remains in a critical financial position. We will continue to try and finalise a sale or alternatively raise some short term funds needed to give the club a breathing space and time in which to consider its options.”

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Ffs

FUCK!

Sounds worse than it is.

Boggersbelief wrote:Sounds worse than it is.

Remove those rose tinted glasses, either that or stop sniffing that glue.

It's a small debt that will be settled by next week.

Norpig, your "NutsNet" wish is coming true.

Boggersbelief wrote:It's a small debt that will be settled by next week.

Cheers Phil.

You feeling any better?

can things get any worse? what does it actually mean though in real terms? Can some bright spark explain please?

just found this online

What is the effect of a winding up petition on a football club?

If a company or football club has been served a winding up petition then it usually means that all previous attempts at settling the debt have been unsuccessful. As such the creditor uses the "nuclear option" whereby they say that the club has to be wound up as it simply cannot pay its debts. An application, or petition, is made to the High Court (this is the winding up petition ) to ask the court to wind the company up.

A hearing is arranged in the High Court or Court of Session in Scotland, sometime in the future for the Court to consider whether it should put the company into compulsory liquidation. The time between the petition being sent to the company (served) and the hearing can vary from 20- 75 days.
In the football world it is usually HMRC who serve the petitions as it is the main creditor. What is more with the level of players wages the total PAYE liability of the club is usually very high. Any delay in the payments of these amounts over the HMRC does give the club a cashflow boost.

An application is made to the high court (PETITION) to ask the court to wind the company up. The important point about a winding up petition is that it has to be advertised more than 7 days before the winding up hearing. This means the process is now in the public eye and a very public indication that the club has not paid some of its debts. This of course makes everyone worry about the future of the club. Will the players be paid?, will the club continue to play?, will it be deducted points?

For most businesses once a winding up petition has been advertised the business is in effect paralysed as the bank will freeze the account in order to avoid any "disposition of assets". Football clubs are not run purely for profit but also for pleasure by their usually wealthy owners. As such, the freezing of the bank account of the club does not usually mean that the club has to shut immediately. Money is often forthcoming from other sources connected to the owners. Of course it is also not unusual for the monies outstanding to be paid personally by the owners to avoid administration. The personal circumstances of the owners are often complex and there are other companies that are involved in the actual running of the club. As such the effect of a winding up petition does not necessarily mean the end of the football club.

But the petition pressure and director being worried about wrongful trading can lead to a situation whereby insolvency proceedings are taken by the directors. This usually involved placing the company into administration. The company must then enter a CVA to exit administration usually with a new owner or new funders so it can regain its licence to play in the Football League, Premier League or the Scottish equivalents. The club will be deducted at least 10 points.

If the CVA is rejected as happened to Leeds United and then the administrator sells to a new buyer, then a further points deduction is made an emergency application often 15 points. This led to two relegations for Leeds.

Interestingly the CVA must pay the football creditors (players and leagues) 100p in £1 BEFORE any creditors like HMRC! Otherwise the CVA is not valid and further points can be deducted or the licence to play in the relevant league withdrawn the ultimate sanction.

This so called football creditors rule is being challenged by HMRC in the Courts at the time of writing.

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You don't make it easy do you!

This was supposed to be announced yesterday.

karlypants wrote:You don't make it easy do you!

 how do i do it myself KP? 

The takeover will finally be announced early next week.

come on Boggers ITK who is it then? Also why would HMRC do this if a takeover was that close?

Norpig wrote:come on Boggers ITK who is it then? Also why would HMRC do this if a takeover was that close?

Because until deals are announced there is always a small chance they can fall through don't you know.

i don't know, thats why i'm asking 

Bit naughty of HMRC to prod the club into action like this (obviously not Wanderers fans!) but I can understand why they did it. My worry is that it has a negative effect on the takeover discussions because it will give potential buyers leverage - we're obviously desperate for operating capital - so they might try to drive an even harder bargain and that could stall things further.
It's getting to be a game of brinksmanship i.e. how long can they push the negotiations before we fall over the edge into administration.

Hopefully the deal will be concluded shortly and this will be settled before it gets to court.

Nothing's really changed though, has it?

The hearing's scheduled for the 18th of Jan, so nowt's going to happen before then.

Other than the bank possibly freezing the club's account and there's cock all in there anyway.

This was always going to happen in my honest opinion because I've suspected ED was playing the aforementioned game of brinksmanship all along and everybody involved in the takeover talks would have been expecting this.

Hence why the talks have been dragging on - why would a potential new owner stump up this £10 million that ED's been demanding if they knew this was coming?

I wouldn't. I'd just sit on my hands and say "There's the bid - take it or leave it."

ED's fucked up a bit here because as Lusty says, by inviting HMRC to take this action through not paying the tax bill, he's played right into the potential new owners' hands.

Just my initial thoughts and I may well be wrong, as usual.

Well I might end up with egg on my face here but I can't believe anyone really does believe there is a deal to be reached in selling the club!

I would think for a start that HMRC just didn't serve a Winding Up petition just because the club missed paying the players wages last month - I would strongly suspect they've been in talks with the club for sometime prior to that regarding paying the taxman his dues - it wouldn't surprise me if they had previously missed payment deadlines to them and this latest default was one too much.

I also can't believe anybody would take on the club as it is - it is just not financially viable to pay its way.  Anybody remotely interesting in buying it now is only there for one reason - to asset strip.  It makes far, far more sense for anyone seriously wanting to buy the club as a going concern to buy it out of Administration.

Any deal to be done will be via Administration and a CVA.

It's not rocket science.