Ken Anderson - update.

BoltonTillIDie wrote:I’m sure Bolton fans really don’t want them proved that their worries were justified.  Merely people are raising their concerns and opinions.  Whether they are pro Anderson or anti Anderson

I'm not really sure if this statement is addressed to me or if it is what you are trying to say?

For clarity my post above is a highly positive one, it states that rather than Anderson has seemingly pocketed £15 million last season as per Martin's post, that in fact only £5 million would have been received and have been used to pay last seasons players wages and we still have a further £8 million to use to finance this season, whether it be in running costs, used to buy a striker or pay off some of the loans (or any combination of the three). (Note we only will receive £6 million from the Madine transfer and not the misquoted £8 million as stated in Martin's post).

The final part of my post goes on to say that their is still a misguided belief from hard line anti-Andersons that the club will fall into financial melt down on the 1st September and the facts (already in the public domain) shows it won't.

So I'm simply tried to reassure people that Mr Anderson has not 'taken' £15 million for himself and the club will survive long after the 1st September and their worries that may have been stoked by those who want Mr Anderson to fail are well wide of the mark.

I just don’t believe people want to see Anderson fail which untimately mean Bolton fail. I’m sure we’d all like to see them succeed.

BoltonTillIDie wrote:I just don’t believe people want to see Anderson fail which untimately mean Bolton fail.  I’m sure we’d all like to see them succeed.  

Me included, although despite having expressed that on numerous occasions it seems to have escaped Mr Myopic who seems to think that not trusting Anderson equates to wanting him to fail. 
Au contraire - I'd like him to lead us back to the Premiership and then on to European glory.

We are still haemorrhaging around .6 million a month

That may be less now due to the lack of players etc but i imagine alot of the funds will be there to cover that unless we want to spend it and end up in another embargo?

y2johnny wrote:We are still haemorrhaging around .6 million a month

That may be less now due to the lack of players etc but i imagine alot of the funds will be there to cover that unless we want to spend it and end up in another embargo?

I missed the decimal point in your post.

DEANO82 wrote:

y2johnny wrote:We are still haemorrhaging around .6 million a month

That may be less now due to the lack of players etc but i imagine alot of the funds will be there to cover that unless we want to spend it and end up in another embargo?

I missed the decimal point in your post.

Sorry.  0.6 million.  Im being lazy.

y2johnny wrote:We are still haemorrhaging around .6 million a month

That may be less now due to the lack of players etc but i imagine alot of the funds will be there to cover that unless we want to spend it and end up in another embargo?

I think this is the issue I have with Anderson's mismanagement of the finances. Whilst he seems to be doing a decent job of austerity i.e. cost cutting, there seems to be no thought going into how and when we will be a viable business again. 

Last year we didn't have a trading loss "on paper" because we got the Madine windfall and the remaining club assets were used as collateral against loans, notably the hotel being hawked to get money from Prescot Business Park. However I believe the overall value of the club has decreased under Anderson's tenure with the use and sale of assets and that makes it increasingly tricky to attract investment.

Anderson's approach appears unsustainable because sooner or later there will be nothing left to pawn and no players of any significant value to sell.

We need a business plan that will bring in sufficient income to cover our costs and apart from winning the lottery, that income will have to come from success on the pitch.

As he is unwilling or unable to attract investors (not sure which) if we are going to speculate to accumulate at some point in time, that investment in the squad will have to come from Anderson himself, but I honestly can't see that happening.

When you put it all together - no new investment, no ambition on the pitch and an unsustainable business model, the outlook doesn't look very promising for BWFC.

If we do eventually go under, we are likely to do so with considerably less assets than when Anderson took over - which makes going into administration and taking the hit back then look increasingly preferable even if some fans couldn't countenance the idea at the time. But I guess BWFC was an opportunity too good to miss for Anderson.

Our best hope in the short term is that Parky manages to cobble together a team that is good enough to survive which in turn should slow down our loss making, but if we are ever to move forward as a club, a change in ownership will be needed sooner or later IMO. Preferably sooner.

Lusty, to get the change in ownership will not be simple. This isn't a rant by the way. Before Ken can hope to either attract more investment or sell the club he must first turn it into a viable business and whether we like it or not that means cutting costs to the bare bone. No one, I suspect Ken least of all believes that alone is going to work in the long term. However, in order to make us an attractive proposition to someone with the kind of money needed to move us up we first need to prove we can trade at a profit. As to BWFC being too good an opportunity to miss well, all I can say is that's extremely unlikely given the situation that actually pertained when Ken came in with Dean.

It's easy to forget that Ken didn't intend to be the sole owner of the club but thanks to the mess with Blu-Marble and Sportshield he was left with no choice but to try and salvage a colossal mess. As I understand it there's still over 4 million quid outstanding on that issue alone and a significant chunk of that is due out soon.

While I share your frustration at the ongoing situation I believe you're being extremely unfair or closed minded towards Ken Anderson. In all honesty he's worked wonders with what he had in simply keeping us alive. By the way, administration would NOT solve our problems, it would be nothing short of catastrophic especially now. We simply could NOT survive it in the long run. Just look at Glasgow Rangers, they quite literally ceased to exist and had to reform in the scottish third division despite the enormous fanbase and revenue they have coming in. Leeds United are still reeling from their various tenures in admin, Portsmouth are struggling desperately and whether we like it or not we don't have anything like the sort of potential any of those clubs have to attract fans, sponsorship and other revenues.

It's my firm belief that administration would actually result in liquidation because no one wants to take that kind of risk any more. The days of chairmen owning a club as a hobby and not minding taking a loss are long gone and FFP has made it impossible for them to return.

For Bolton Wanderers to survive much less progress in the long term means a lot of painful decisions and acceptance of painful realities in the here and now. First order of business has to be balancing the books, something Ken IS doing and given the circumstances doing quite well imo. It's a difficult balancing act in that Ken has to lower the debts (preferably eliminate them altogether) while simultaneously finding the players that allow Phil to improve us on the field.

I personally think we're heading in the right direction, I'd like it to happen faster as would all of us but not at the cost of seeing us lurch from one court hearing to the next and one financial crisis to the next. If that means we bump around the bottom half of the championship for a couple more seasons then so be it. We've been in worse shape both on and off the field and came back up. I don't know if Ken could take us to the Premier League but I do believe he can make the club a viable and attractive proposition for someone who CAN.

It just won't happen overnight and we're going to have to be patient because turning a business as sick as ours was all the way around is a difficult job.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:Lusty, to get the change in ownership will not be simple. This isn't a rant by the way. Before Ken can hope to either attract more investment or sell the club he must first turn it into a viable business and whether we like it or not that means cutting costs to the bare bone. No one, I suspect Ken least of all believes that alone is going to work in the long term. However, in order to make us an attractive proposition to someone with the kind of money needed to move us up we first need to prove we can trade at a profit. As to BWFC being too good an opportunity to miss well, all I can say is that's extremely unlikely given the situation that actually pertained when Ken came in with Dean.

It's easy to forget that Ken didn't intend to be the sole owner of the club but thanks to the mess with Blu-Marble and Sportshield he was left with no choice but to try and salvage a colossal mess. As I understand it there's still over 4 million quid outstanding on that issue alone and a significant chunk of that is due out soon.

While I share your frustration at the ongoing situation I believe you're being extremely unfair or closed minded towards Ken Anderson. In all honesty he's worked wonders with what he had in simply keeping us alive. By the way, administration would NOT solve our problems, it would be nothing short of catastrophic especially now. We simply could NOT survive it in the long run. Just look at Glasgow Rangers, they quite literally ceased to exist and had to reform in the scottish third division despite the enormous fanbase and revenue they have coming in. Leeds United are still reeling from their various tenures in admin, Portsmouth are struggling desperately and whether we like it or not we don't have anything like the sort of potential any of those clubs have to attract fans, sponsorship and other revenues.

It's my firm belief that administration would actually result in liquidation because no one wants to take that kind of risk any more. The days of chairmen owning a club as a hobby and not minding taking a loss are long gone and FFP has made it impossible for them to return.

For Bolton Wanderers to survive much less progress in the long term means a lot of painful decisions and acceptance of painful realities in the here and now. First order of business has to be balancing the books, something Ken IS doing and given the circumstances doing quite well imo. It's a difficult balancing act in that Ken has to lower the debts (preferably eliminate them altogether) while simultaneously finding the players that allow Phil to improve us on the field.

I personally think we're heading in the right direction, I'd like it to happen faster as would all of us but not at the cost of seeing us lurch from one court hearing to the next and one financial crisis to the next. If that means we bump around the bottom half of the championship for a couple more seasons then so be it. We've been in worse shape both on and off the field and came back up. I don't know if Ken could take us to the Premier League but I do believe he can make the club a viable and attractive proposition for someone who CAN.

It just won't happen overnight and we're going to have to be patient because turning a business as sick as ours was all the way around is a difficult job.

I admire your optimism but feel that intentionally choosing a path that has diminishing returns would be more likely to put off investors rather than attract them, especially as there will be less and less to invest in.

Investors accept that debt is an acceptable risk in a football club these days and their only consideration is ROI. Problem with Anderson's approach is that there is no obvious way in which they are likely to get their investment back/make a profit. Worse still is the fact that if he continues to lose money, sooner or later we will be bankrupt, with no prospect of getting investment or making money from our trading activities.

Frankly, "bumping around in the bottom half of the Championship for the next couple of seasons" is probably the best we can hope for until investment arrives - but I'm struggling to imagine who would invest whilst we have such little ambition, and even less so the longer this regime continues.

You see this glass as half empty or more probably because you are determined to see Ken as bad for the club. I see it differently as someone who has run a business and whose father and brother still do.

Lusty, in short Ken has not been able to wave a magic wand that made all the debts go away overnight. When he came in I think even you would agree that our spending compared to income was ridiculous.

As to taking loans against the assets of the club that's common practice in business and what matters is that those debts ARE being serviced per the agreements made when they were incurred. It's a well known approach called 'debt consolidation' in which a loan is taken (eg against the Hotel) in order to pay off other debts and thus lower our repayments to a manageable level.

Think of it this way, imagine you have five credit cards that cost you in total £1000 a month to repay and you don't have that. You might take out an extension on your mortgage or some other form of secured loan from your bank that costs 500 a month and use that money to pay the cards off in full. Yes it may cost you more in the long run in terms of total repayment but what matters is your ability to make the MONTHLY payments in the here and now.

If I was a potential investor in BWFC debts that ARE being serviced wouldn't concern me anywhere near as much as an over inflated wage bill. So long as total current outgoings are less than total current revenue you've got a potential for profit.

If Ken HAS taken loans secured against assets then that's fine by me provided the capital raised is being used sensibly and so far from where I sit that does seem to be the case. In truth football is NOT the automatic gold mine people seem to think it is unless you're already in the premier league and even there we're seeing clubs struggle to survive in the face of ever inflating transfer fees and wage bills. In truth for us to survive and grow in the long term we have to do some painful pruning and make some painful decisions because under the previous regime things not only got out of hand they were cataclysmically out of control. It will take years to fix and we may even need to cut costs further before we can really start to climb back up.

I understand your fears, I even share some of them but I think you're wrong or simply over optimistic in believing that someone with a large wallet is desperate to put money into us. People with big wallets want to keep them big and so they won't open them unless they're certain they'll be putting more in than they take out.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:You see this glass as half empty or more probably because you are determined to see Ken as bad for the club. 

I'm not "determined" to see Anderson in that way - I just don't trust him and see fault in his non-entrepreneurial approach to turning the business around. So far, he's done nothing to alleviate my concerns and plenty to exacerbate them.

MartinBWFC wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Oh dear.

Where and when was this taken? Surely if someone is refusing the Hotel credit the BN would have reported as much with a suitably "WE ARE DOOMED" headline from Iles along with at least a dozen comments from the ST?

wanderlust wrote:

MartinBWFC wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Oh dear.

It happened at the start of last year over an unpaid bill to Heathcoates.  Assume it will be the same thing and will be sorted in the coming days.

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DEANO82 wrote:

wanderlust wrote:

MartinBWFC wrote:[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Oh dear.

It happened at the start of last year over an unpaid bill to Heathcoates.  Assume it will be the same thing and will be sorted in the coming days.

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If it is true that he will have the money to pay the bill "in the coming days" does that mean that cashflow is so bad the club is now surviving on a day to day basis?
Does it mean that there is no forward planning? No CFF?  No....erm...management?
Surely a 16 year old with GCSE Business Studies would have known that the bill was coming months ago?
Is Anderson incompetent, dishonest or both?

Heathcotes are in breach of contract.  Nothing to do with ken (not that it will stop people slating him.)  Heathcotes contract has been terminated.

y2johnny wrote:Heathcotes are in breach of contract.  Nothing to do with ken (not that it will stop people slating him.)  Heathcotes contract has been terminated.

That's not what Heathcoates are saying.

DEANO82 wrote:

y2johnny wrote:Heathcotes are in breach of contract.  Nothing to do with ken (not that it will stop people slating him.)  Heathcotes contract has been terminated.

That's not what Heathcoates are saying.

It IS what the club is saying - OFFICIAL STATEMENT -

Bolton Wanderers Football Club and Bolton Whites Hotel have issued the following statement:
"As you may be aware, Bolton Whites Hotel are currently involved in a dispute with Special Catering Services (SCC/Heathcotes).
"This dispute has been brought about by a number of recent serious breaches of the agreement by SCC, which they have not rectified.
"The Agreement clearly sets out the procedures in the event of a dispute, but unfortunately SCC chose not to follow these procedures.
"Accordingly, following their actions yesterday, which were a further breach of the agreement, we have instructed our lawyers to terminate the agreement.
"We apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused our valued clientele and can assure you we are doing everything possible to limit the inconvenience.
"As this dispute is now in the hands of our legal advisors, no further statements will be issued on this matter at this time."

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Heathcote's statement -

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Sounds to me as though he's seen what the players did and has gone on a sort of unofficial strike himself.

Thing is though KA needs the players but he doesn't necessarily need Heathcote's.

Sounds to me like Anderson continues to f*** over the club's suppliers and run up debts even if the Michelin starred chef has been supporting BWFC long before Lee Anderson was even born.