Bolton get winding up petition from HMRC!

It seems odd to me too RT???????

Won't make a bit of difference IMO.

its obvious to me that PG was moved to one side for the transactions to take place. Whether it was to protect him from some personal criticism or possible financial responsibility/penalty, I don't know.
However, I believe, if anything is going to happen, the discussions will start in earnest, as the winding up order has given the bidders the upper hand, and they can push as hard as they like, until they get the club for little more than the running costs, (which points the way to asset stripping, rather than to heavy financial support.) We all know that in the world of business £k600 isn't much for an operation as big as BWFC, and this current situation has a feel of vultures circling.
God, I hope I'm wrong.

I think you are right Glos the vultures are coming.

HMRC will only serve a petition when they believe there is no realistic chance they will be paid by the club. Sometimes it serves to crystallise people interested in taking over into concrete action but more often it simply kills a chance of a deal before administration stone dead because the rest of the club's creditors also pull the plug and withdraw services etc. 

I fully expect Birch to announce we are going into voluntary administration no later than Monday unless someone does a Santa act before then and pays the HMRC off out of the goodness of their hearts. As sluffy points out this club currently loses almost 3/4 of a million pounds every month which is utterly and totally insane. No businessman in his right mind is going to buy something like that as a going concern. He will wait for the club to go into admin and then buy the assets on the dirt cheap. 

Frankly I can't believe the people on here who seem to think this is no big deal. Manda, sluffy, myself and some others have been warning about this all week. It's not just a big deal, it's almost doomsday for the club and we are pretty much out of time. 

HMRC are the biggest barking dog in the yard but now they've sounded off you'd better believe the rest of the creditors pack are right behind them and they're all about to bite down hard once and for all. This is the worst possible news the club could get short of complete liquidation and total closure.

Sluffy wrote:

wanderlust wrote:

Sluffy wrote: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.

TBF you've said this all along Sluffy and I can see where you are coming from but you are predicating it on the principle that there is little or no residual value in BWFC and therefore there's nothing to attract potential buyers. Is that right?

If so I'd argue that although a lot of the assets and futures are mortgaged we don't know the extent to which they are mortgaged and with ED claiming he doesn't want to be paid as a creditor that nominal value would increase. Only a revised balance sheet would give some indication of the net worth of the business.

If we assume there is some value and potential buyers are just hanging around to cash in on it i.e. asset-strip you'd think a deal would have been concluded weeks ago unless for example, ED is insisting on guarantees to protect the club (which I personally think is a likely scenario given the time and money he has invested over the years)

So I think that the club are trying to find a buyer who sees the value in the club and accepts the terms that will prevent blatant asset stripping and I think that's been the case all along.

It's a lot to hope for, and hopefully the pressure exerted on the club by HMRC won't force the club to reduce their demands for guarantees.

We could still come out of this smelling of roses but today's events haven't helped our chances.

You still miss my main point which is the club is trading at a loss of about £750,000 per month and anyone who buys the club now will have to fund that until at least the end of July 2016 when some big player contracts expire.

Whatever the assets of the club are its fairly obvious that any group taking over have no cash to invest and so these assets will have to be mortgaged or sold just in order to keep the club going.

What then is the point of throwing good money after bad keeping the club afloat until July 2016?

It makes more business sense buying the club out of Admin once the millstone of the players wage bill as been lifted by means of letting them go under the period of Administration.

The 12 point penalty is really neither here or there as with the players and management we have now we wont survive so again we may as take the hit now and regroup under new ownership the best we can.

I simply don't get why anybody would take us on now with the contractual expenditure we have - it doesn't make any sense to me to do so.

I haven't missed the point Sluffy as I also struggle to see how a sustainable business model can be achieved - but neither you or I have the relevant information to analyse that.

Players can be dumped over time but we'll still have the cost of an expensive stadium etc so the only way to offset that would be income gained through sponsorship, advertising, merchandising, ticket sales, TV money and similar stuff that we aren't likely to get a sufficient quantity of.

However, despite all that and despite ED specifying bidding criteria that preclude asset stripping (according to my mole ) consortia are still involved in protracted negotiations to buy the club which to me indicates that there is in fact a sustainable model to be arrived at. 

These guys wouldn't be wasting weeks of their time if they didn't think there was a way forward.

We are not privy to the requisite financial information or knowledge about the bidders, their background or objectives to make any kind of judgment at this stage so let's just see what happens.

Although I have to say again that I think HMRC have tipped the scales in favour of the dreaded administration by their actions. They don't like football clubs and I think they want to make an example of us. Bastards!

lusty, the only way HMRC will pull the trigger the way they have is if they are certain they're not going to be paid otherwise. While the amount owing to them is relatively small in terms of the total debt they are the big dog in the yard when it comes to creditor reaction. With HMRC saying they want us wound up the rest could easily panic and start serving their own petitions in a bid to get their money or at least some of it back too. Add in that the players are now less than a fortnight away from becoming free agents due to non payment of two months wages and you can see just how deep in the mire we really are. I seriously cannot see a way for us to avoid administration barring a miracle and a part of me wishes the club would hurry up and accept the inevitable if only so we know where we stand and can start to implement some sort of rebuilding plan.

How about knock the stadium down...call it a day....build an ASDA and put us all out of our misery. I have been watching BWFC since being a wee lad but I'd get over it eventually.
In other posts I have said that in 20, 30 years there won't be any small clubs like ours....cost of rents, taxes, staff etc keep going up. We will all be watching the super clubs on the tele .....that's that IMO.