OFFICIAL CLUB SOLD TO FV!!!!!

Looks ridiculous!

Norpig wrote:Looks ridiculous!

Just in case you hadn't picked up on it - the company is the play thing of Sharon's sons...

Sluffy wrote:

Just in case you hadn't picked up on it - the company is the play thing of Sharon's sons...

There had to be a connection somewhere with them originating in Beaconsfield.

It's almost a copy of the KISS music band logo!

Whitesince63 wrote:
There had to be a connection somewhere with them originating in Beaconsfield. :slight_smile

Hasn't someone on here been commenting on this company's misfortunes for quite some time?

The company reported losses of £463k on its last filed accounts taking aggregate losses to date to nearly £1million.

Maybe things have picked up since then but I expect it will be another six months before we know owt about it. I can't say I am a big fan of the Dulux Brilliant White teeth look myself.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:
Hasn't someone on here been commenting on this company's misfortunes for quite some time?

Why do you think I posted about it on this specific thread ffs, could it be so that the "person commenting on this company's misfortunes for quite some time", wouldn't miss the latest news about it, perhaps..?

Sluffy wrote:

Why do you think I posted about it on this specific thread ffs, could it be so that the "person commenting on this company's misfortunes for quite some time", wouldn't miss the latest news about it, perhaps..?

I think it could be safely assumed that you hadn't forgotten, Sluffy. I also agree with Norpig, it does look ridiculous but ar Neil in't 'alf a spinmeister in't 'ee.

The company was 'Founded in early 2020 by brothers Toby and Ollie Brittan' NH claims.


No it wasn't Neil. It was actually founded in 2014 as a £2 company with A and B shares split between Ollie and his mum, Sharon. i.e. differing rights attaching to the two shares.

Toby became a director in January 2019 following which the share capital seems to have been increased to £4 with the shares split between Sharon, Toby, Ollie and a guy called Tomas Jansons.
 
A bit of fancy financial footwork seems to have followed, including running up nearly a million quid in losses over the last couple of years, as reported in accounts filed at Companies House. 

There are now eight shareholders including Sharon, her two sons and a gentleman with the now familiar name of Nick Luckock.

Seems the Swiss Investors aren't really Swiss at all - although I doubted they ever where!

A group of investors led by Ben Luckock, global head of oil at trading house Trafigura Group, has emerged as a significant minority shareholder in Bolton Wanderers.

(Bloomberg) — A group of investors led by Ben Luckock, global head of oil at trading house Trafigura Group, has emerged as a significant minority shareholder in Bolton Wanderers.

The group, which invests in the club through an entity called BMLL Limited, consists of around 25 families, some of whom are also executives at Trafigura. The group is said to now own around 25% to 35% of the shares in the club, according to people familiar with the situation.

Bolton, one of 12 founding members of the English football league in 1888, is currently standing near the top of the third tier. The once-successful club has struggled in recent years, and was rescued from liquidation by Luckock’s brother, Nick, and current Bolton chair Sharon Brittan in 2019, who shared connections via the venture capital industry.

“We’re willing to be very much in the background,” Ben Luckock said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I’ve got a huge amount of trust in my brother and zero interest in delving into any control aspects.”

Ben Luckock, who first invested about two years ago, said that the size of the group’s shareholding had “drifted up over time” and that he’d got involved after having been convinced by his brother’s sensible approach to investing in a football team. “Some of the hard yards had already been done by then,” he said.

Commodities investors were once one of the biggest backers of English football. Russian steel magnate Alisher Usmanov held stakes in Arsenal FC and backed Everton FC, Roman Abramovich owned Chelsea FC, and Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal still has a minority stake in Queens Park Rangers.

More recently, chemical magnate Jim Ratcliffe has bought a stake in Manchester United. Torbjörn Törnqvist, the co-founder of energy trader Gunvor Group, also owns sailing team Artemis Racing, while Ivan Glasenberg, the former chief executive officer of Glencore, last year bought elite cycling brand Pinarello. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, majority owner and chairman of Sunderland AFC, is the scion of the family that runs one of the world’s biggest agricultural merchants.

While Bolton Wanderers is smaller in scale, there remains ambition to reinstate the club in the higher levels of English football, after it was relegated from the Premier League in 2012.

But running football teams can be an expensive business. Broadcast income for Premier League clubs is over £100 million ($127 million) a year, compared to less than £10 million a year lower down the pyramid. But each time a team climbs a league, it generally has to invest further in its playing squad to remain in that league or move up again.

And like most clubs in the lower leagues of English football, Bolton normally makes a loss. In the last set of accounts for the club’s holding company, Football Ventures, the club lost £3.7 million in 2022, from revenue of £13.8 million.

"Everyone’s in for the journey and is aware that it costs more to run a Championship club,” said Ben Luckock. “You need to look at what you are doing with recruiting and trade sensibly,” he said.

Before joining Trafigura in 2007, Australian Ben Luckock spent 10 years with BP as a crude oil trader. Last year he was made sole head of Trafigura’s oil department, which trades over 260 million tons of crude and oil products per year.

Both he and his brother Nick were aware of how much Bolton meant to the local community. When Nick joined the board after the takeover, the club was £160 million in debt. Then Covid happened, which meant fans were unable to attend matches for many months. Some loans were subsequently renegotiated, according to details on the UK’s Companies House, while a pandemic-related government loan was converted into club equity.

“I think supporters believe in what we are doing,” Nick said.

Attendance at home matches has risen from around 8,000 to 20,000. Nick said the aim is to fund the club through equity and a fan-led bond. Last year the club raised £4.5 million through a fan-supported bond scheme.
Bolton’s management team, including the first team coach, also has equity in the club, something fairly unique in football but which both Luckocks say helps keep them aligned with ownership that also includes Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.

The brothers recalled that a group of around 80 people related to the investors made a trip last season to see Bolton play at Wembley, England’s national stadium, half of whom were the investors’ children. Many of the investors’ children now regularly wear the Bolton colors in and around Geneva, Switzerland, where Trafigura is headquartered.

“You can’t overestimate the value we are getting through our kids,” Ben Luckock said. “Everybody feels good about the investment.”

—With assistance from Todd Gillespie and Laura Hurst.

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In case you've missed it, the article probably explains why the 'Swiss Consortium' is named as such -

Many of the investors’ children now regularly wear the Bolton colours in and around Geneva, Switzerland, where Trafigura is headquartered.

Hmm. I think ‘Swiss’ not because of their nationality, but simply that’s where they’re based!

Also, it does reflect the comments I’ve previously made that possibly this was rich people having fun rather than looking for a return.

BarrygoestoBolton wrote:Hmm. I think ‘Swiss’ not because of their nationality, but simply that’s where they’re based!

Yes, that was the point I was making.

BarrygoestoBolton wrote:Also, it does reflect the comments I’ve previously made that possibly this was rich people having fun rather than looking for a return.

Yes, it does now seem you were correct.

And to be fair what Bob had been also suggesting was FV's pre the Swiss consortium interest, also.

Seems I've been searching for a reason that was never there in the first place?

I must admit to still feeling there's more to it than it being a group of rich people throwing their money away for fun but its looking more and more that I was indeed wrong about that.

Looks as though 'Rahim' is another of the 'Swiss' as well...

Saad Rahim

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Saad Rahim
Trafigura
Chief Economist

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Sluffy wrote:

Yes, it does now seem you were correct.

And to be fair what Bob had been also suggesting was FV's pre the Swiss consortium interest, also.

Seems I've been searching for a reason that was never there in the first place?

I must admit to still feeling there's more to it than it being a group of rich people throwing their money away for fun but its looking more and more that I was indeed wrong about that.

Well, one person’s ’throwing their money away’ is another person’s good value. 
I’ll always remember the (probably apocryphal) comment made by George Best: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest of it I just squandered."

BarrygoestoBolton wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Yes, it does now seem you were correct.

And to be fair what Bob had been also suggesting was FV's pre the Swiss consortium interest, also.

Seems I've been searching for a reason that was never there in the first place?

I must admit to still feeling there's more to it than it being a group of rich people throwing their money away for fun but its looking more and more that I was indeed wrong about that.

Well, one person’s ’throwing their money away’ is another person’s good value. 
I’ll always remember the (probably apocryphal) comment made by George Best: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest of it I just squandered."

Depends on your personal values in life I guess.

At the end of the day it seems to come down to between a choice over money or people, to me.

I could have been a whole lot richer if I was prepared to shit on people to get to the top, rather than by not chasing the wealth and by treating people fairly instead.

Personally I rather not have so much money that I could afford to wastefully piss loads of it away like Best did, or the Swiss on a vanity project like BWFC and instead have. say, doctors and nurses getting paid a more reasonable wage for healing the sick and saving lives - for instance.

I'm sure the 'Swiss' are all decent people but maybe there are much worthier things to do with their millions than spend it on subsidising a football club, who have spent more on players wages than it has received in total revenue.

That's my credo on life anyway.

Sluffy wrote:

Depends on your personal values in life I guess.

At the end of the day it seems to come down to between a choice over money or people, to me.

I could have been a whole lot richer if I was prepared to shit on people to get to the top, rather than by not chasing the wealth and by treating people fairly instead.

Personally I rather not have so much money that I could afford to wastefully piss loads of it away like Best did, or the Swiss on a vanity project like BWFC and instead have. say, doctors and nurses getting paid a more reasonable wage for healing the sick and saving lives - for instance.

I'm sure the 'Swiss' are all decent people but maybe there are much worthier things to do with their millions than spend it on subsidising a football club, who have spent more on players wages than it has received in total revenue.

That's my credo on life anyway.

I wasn’t attempting to make a moral judgement as to whether this was a ‘good thing’ of not. However, I think you’re being a little harsh on the ‘Swiss’. How do you know, for example, how much philanthropy they’re involved in. 
I guess you might contend they’re in Switzerland to avoid tax, but, on the other hand, that’s where their work is based.
In any case, either BWFC was going bust or someone was going to buy it. You could argue that whatever money anyone spent on it would have been better spent elsewhere.
By the way, I reckon my credo on life is not dissimilar to yours. I hope you take my comments purely as discursive as not as criticism.

BarrygoestoBolton wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Depends on your personal values in life I guess.

At the end of the day it seems to come down to between a choice over money or people, to me.

I could have been a whole lot richer if I was prepared to shit on people to get to the top, rather than by not chasing the wealth and by treating people fairly instead.

Personally I rather not have so much money that I could afford to wastefully piss loads of it away like Best did, or the Swiss on a vanity project like BWFC and instead have. say, doctors and nurses getting paid a more reasonable wage for healing the sick and saving lives - for instance.

I'm sure the 'Swiss' are all decent people but maybe there are much worthier things to do with their millions than spend it on subsidising a football club, who have spent more on players wages than it has received in total revenue.

That's my credo on life anyway.

I wasn’t attempting to make a moral judgement as to whether this was a ‘good thing’ of not. However, I think you’re being a little harsh on the ‘Swiss’. How do you know, for example, how much philanthropy they’re involved in. 
I guess you might contend they’re in Switzerland to avoid tax, but, on the other hand, that’s where their work is based.
In any case, either BWFC was going bust or someone was going to buy it. You could argue that whatever money anyone spent on it would have been better spent elsewhere.
By the way, I reckon my credo on life is not dissimilar to yours. I hope you take my comments purely as discursive as not as criticism.

Yes, I don't worry about what people think of me, certainly not on social media, but I do try and play fair with everybody (on here and in real life) and accept what you say in good faith.

I don't know the 'Swiss' from Adam but the article states that 80 of them (including kids) turned up for our Wembley final and (without looking it up) the Swiss had invested something like £6m into FV shares - so lets say a family unit is say 4 people, that would give us 20 units of investors at an average investment of £300k each - to 'gamble' with.

Maybe there are 30 units instead at £200k each, or 40 at £150k each - whatever it is, these are sums that most people certainly don't have to risk losing.

Fair play to them for earning so much but is buying and selling oil, or whatever it is they do, do, really worth being paid so much that a couple of hundred grand or so is simply play money to them - in the scheme of things?

Gandhi once said "the world has enough for everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed", do these corporate moguls really need what they are paid, today we heard that the Chief Executive of the Post Office demanded to have his £500k salary doubled because it was not enough - at the same time...

"You hear about the bonuses at one end for the senior executives, and then you hear about distress funds for sub-postmasters who aren't generating enough trade to earn a living."

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Footballers can earn over £1m per week for being good at simply kicking a ball about whilst junior doctors get paid not much more than minimum wage...

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I can't change the world but I can certainly think of a better use for £6m than throwing it into some ginormous money pit of a football club which BWFC is - our last owner bar Holdsworth/Anderson - threw £200m into it - sheer stupidity to me.

If people want to throw their money into football - and they do, that's up to them but it doesn't make the world a better place - might actually be making it worse than what it should be, with all the negative stuff surrounding it - such as fans behaviour - another example taken from todays news...

Former England striker and broadcaster Eni Aluko has criticised Elon Musk's X social network for allowing people to "vomit their hatred unchecked".

Aluko, who faced a wave of abuse after ex-footballer Joey Barton attacked her punditry, told the BBC that black women are being systematically targeted.
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To me football is not a God.

Clearly I'm in a minority yet again but we get what we deserve I suppose.

If anyone from the Swiss consortium happens to read this, then I would like to say to them, thank you for putting your money into our club and I do hope you get much enjoyment from it, but don't you think that if you can afford to lose your stake money, that possibly there would be more worthy causes where your money would have benefited them much more and give you the knowledge and personal satisfaction that you are actually helping to make the world that bit better a place to be, than making an already rich footballer, a bit more richer than he already is - for simply kicking a ball about?

Just how I look at things.

A very thoughtful response. A couple more considerations 
Firstly, of course, one might consider the whole professional football model broken in the sense that most clubs lose money and need cash injections to keep them going. Player wages are the main component of that. Until something is done about that the merry-go-round will continue. You may recall a few years ago the EFL tried to impose salary caps in L1 & L2 of £3m & £1.5m respectively, which the PFA challenged successfully. I’ll bet the wage bills of the top-spending clubs in L1 in particular are considerably more than double that now. I think I’m right in saying that Sheffield Wednesday lost around £25m three running (albeit they did escape L1 by the skin of their teeth). 
Secondly, the Swiss are not bound to lose money. The club could feasibly be worth what they invested, especially if we get promoted. Consequently, I acknowledge, while they are risking the whole amount they put in, in fact it’s very unlikely they’ll lose all, if indeed any, of it.