Latest BWFC Accounts - Year ended 30th June, 2020

Thanks for that reply Sluffy.

I guess time will tell.

I hate to be the fly in the ointment but the article does NOT say the debts have been settled, only that "agreement has been reached between the club and unsecured creditors". While that is in and of itself good news especially given it means we don't now suffer a 15 point deduction it does not mean we're suddenly in the clear.

I don't claim to know what's happened here but is it possible the debt has been restructured or that the creditors have agreed to some sort of instalment plan? As has been mentioned on this thread the press release is long on upbeat tone but very short on actual details.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:I hate to be the fly in the ointment but the article does NOT say the debts have been settled, only that "agreement has been reached between the club and unsecured creditors". While that is in and of itself good news especially given it means we don't now suffer a 15 point deduction it does not mean we're suddenly in the clear.

I don't claim to know what's happened here but is it possible the debt has been restructured or that the creditors have agreed to some sort of instalment plan? As has been mentioned on this thread the press release is long on upbeat tone but very short on actual details.

It's difficult to answer Peter without knowing a few facts.

My logic fwiw goes something like this...

The unsecured creditors are of the company that once owned the club namely Bolton Wanderers Football and Athletic Club Ltd and as such it would be the Administrators of BWFAC (which to complicate things a tad more, has changed its name to BWFC2019).

In order to settle the unsecured creditors they would require payment from FV who have bought the football club as an asset from them.

So I don't think that FV are actually paying the creditors directly.

In theory these creditors require to be paid 25p in the £ within two years from exiting Administration (in this case that would be two years from the purchase of the asset by FV from the Administrators) to prevent the EFL triggering a 15 point penalty on the club.

The theory continues that this period of time can be extended by a further year if the creditors are paid 35p in the £.

Well we do know from what has been said that the EFL has lifted the sanctions against the club so my thinking is that all the creditors (or rather the majority of them in terms of amount owing - as I believe they have to 'vote' to accept whatever 'offer' is put before them) have been paid the 25p in the £ but still await the remaining 10p in the £ to be paid within the next twelve months.

I can't see the creditors being offered to settle at less than the respective 25p and 35p deadlines as that would fall short of the EFL's rules on exiting Administration - and trigger the points deduction.

That's my flow of logic anyway but I've no idea if the EFL would waive the points deduction if the majority of creditors voted to accept less than the 25p/35p in the £ from FV?

The rule if you will is artificial in that it has no standing in law, merely just what the sports governing body in respect of the club has imposed as one of their rules.

As for where FV may have found circa £2.5m to pay the first amount of 25p in the £ is anyone's guess.  Iles in his wisdom suggest that the money has been leveraged against assets - which seeing all assets have been fully leveraged against already would seem highly unlikely to me.

I can only assume that the money has been drawn down from the £20m credit facility that Sharon set up?

If that was the case it might be seen to be a 'soft' loan, in the way Eddie's where - in that Sharon would be in effect charging herself interest on loaning her money to the club she owns.

It's all guesswork on my part but I think it is more likely than any of the stuff I've read on social media so far!

Sharon has some fairly well-heeled contacts, Sluffy, but I rather doubt that she was ever willing (or able) to personally commit £10m to the project. I also doubt that the £20m referred to is a 'credit facility' for reasons I've explained previously

FV might be committed to a one club, one community, one town ethos but they are rarely quick to share financial information with the supporters who have to rely on the scraps they publish infrequently, usually in a fanfare of PR, or on the fumbling incompetence of the local rag.

I do wonder if the property or landholdings in Birmingham have been sold. I've no idea what they might have been worth but they were part of the Mosaic merger in 1997.

That's a thought Bob, I guess anyone interested enough could look back over the Administrators report (or even the Administration thread on here where I first mentioned this), note the location of the land and do a free search on the Land Registry service which I believe lists the last selling prices.

I've not bothered myself on the logic that if the land was worth much then I would have thought it would have been loaned against/sold off when the club needed the money, first when Eddie turned off the taps and we sold off the car parks and all the while Anderson was here.  I simply can't imagine that land worth a million or more had simply been overlooked during the last three or four years when money has been so tight!

In fact thinking about it I would have though the Administrators would certainly have looked to dispose of it during their time in charge.

I agree with you that I doubt Sharon's personal wealth is behind all of this - and so on that line of thinking, just because the £20m secured creditor status is listed as being her's, it doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't given or loaned to her by someone else - for all I know it could have come from her joint bank account with Mr Brittan for instance.

What I'm trying to say is that Eddie's investment wasn't put in to the club by him personally but by the offshore Moonshift company of which he was a director of.  It could be equally feasible that some offshore investment company has invested a sum of money incognito using Sharon as the named person.

I guess my point being is that somebody, somewhere has put a lot of money into BWFC by buying it out of Admin and funding it ever since and it seems unlikely to both you and I, that Sharon is that person alone.

I'm not saying that it is Mr Brittan, or an offshore investment company, or even the ST's swear box money is where the investment has come from - but it has come from somewhere.

So if the £20m 'credit line' is merely under Sharon's name rather than belonging to her per se, then why not look as the money actually being a line of credit that, on paper at least, it purports to be?

I'm happy to admit I'm just thinking aloud about this but until someone comes up with anything better then what else is there other than Sharon pissing away her children's inheritance or Iles' marvellous financial insight of leveraging assets that are already fully leveraged against already?

How much has gone in? All we know about is £2m share capital and £4.5m secured loans. It isn't all down to Sharon either and we don't really know much about the secured loans other than the fact that they are secured on assets paid for by the late Eddie Davies. 

If there were a large line of credit why would the unsecured creditors be made to wait for so long for the pittance they are going to get. According to Iles (pinch of salt needed) they include landladies who provided accomodation to kids in the academy for heavens sake who should imo have been paid out pronto and in full.

The Council can wait. The club, according to KA, was being charged business rates as if it were still a Premiership outfit with an annual turnover in excess of £50m. 

Its all shrouded in a bit of a fog as per usual, but it wouldn't surprise me if FV didn't want to tell the BN much. Who in their right mind would expect the Beeno to report competently or impartially anyway?

Ten Bobsworth wrote:How much has gone in? All we know about is £2m share capital and £4.5m secured loans. It isn't all down to Sharon either and we don't really know much about the secured loans other than the fact that they are secured on assets paid for by the late Eddie Davies. 

If there were a large line of credit why would the unsecured creditors be made to wait for so long for the pittance they are going to get. According to Iles (pinch of salt needed) they include landladies who provided accommodation to kids in the academy for heavens sake who should imo have been paid out pronto and in full.

The Council can wait. The club, according to KA, was being charged business rates as if it were still a Premiership outfit with an annual turnover in excess of £50m. 

Its all shrouded in a bit of a fog as per usual, but it wouldn't surprise me if FV didn't want to tell the BN much. Who in their right mind would expect the Beeno to report competently or impartially anyway?

I've no insider knowledge so all I can do is make a best guess based on the few facts we do know.

If the £20m (x2) is/are lines of credit then it doesn't mean they should max them out from day one - especially as we believe Sharon doesn't have the deep pockets needed to commit to all that has been committed to so far.

Remember the old saying 'nothing personal, just business'.

I assume once credit as been drawn down then interested upon it would start to accrue - and if you've got two years make payment, then why do so on day one?

More so perhaps when you remember these creditors getting 25p/35p in the £ aren't in that position because of FV but because they gave credit to BWFAC Ltd which went into Administration and thus defaulted on its payment to them.

Maybe the plan is something along the lines that Sharon spends 'her' money on the running of the club (hence the mantra for the business to run in a financially stable way), but the costs of buying the club (in excess of her budget) and the covering of annual losses until that point is reached is covered by her 'backers' who are happy to wait for their money back, if at all?

And of course they should keep their finances and funding to themselves - it has nothing to do with anyone else - least of all a financial numpty like Iles.

I've never understood why football fans think they are entitled to know stuff like this just because they are simply patrons of their clubs - they don't ask the landlord of their local pub about his finances, or the owner of the chippy they frequent, or even Tesco or Sainsbury's or anywhere else they shop.

And fwiw even when they do get some facts and figures, nearly all of them don't understand or comprehend what they mean - and have to rely on the likes of Iles for an explanation!!!

Talk about the blind leading the blind, eh!

I'm not sure I'd agree, Sluffy, that the relationship of football supporters with clubs is analagous to that of pub customers with pub landlords. But if the pub was run by a limited company, it would be required to file its balance sheets within the time frames laid down in law and you might therefore wonder why FV didn't but instead ran up Fergie-time before filing its 2020 accounts.

But isn't there a public interest too if football clubs are being sustained with public money? May I respectfully refer you to Vince Watch regarding the funding of FGR and the £millions in public money spent in keeping that club and Dale Vince in the manner to which he has become accustomed.

The case of the academy landladies seems to have been raised by Iles to justify his role in fomenting the virtual 'lynching' of Ken Anderson but would you not  be concerned if it was the case that these ladies have been required to wait more than two years for 25P in the £ to save trivial amounts of interest charges?

The larger creditors issue is different. I expect some, not least Bolton Council, were a matter of dispute but if you have the money to settle the debts within two years (at a 75% discount) why does FV seem to have been dissatisfied with that (allegedly)?

Well football is just a game when all said and done.

If you, I, or anyone else wants to invest a part of ourselves into it in terms of emotions, or it being core to the community, then that's down to us - nothing to do with the game itself.

We can do exactly the same with whatever hobby, interest, belief, relationship, etc, we want to - but it doesn't change what the hobby, interest, belief, relationship returns to us.

The Reebok is in Horwich these days - hardly the heart of the community - and when it was built it limited its capacity to just over 25,000 - the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton has a population of just short of 300,000 - so even at its peak less than 1 in 10 people bothered trailing off to Horwich to see the team they are so wrapped up in.

Indeed the capacity shows that the demand to watch some 'entertainment' for indeed that is the category falls under, was about 1 in 10 of the local population at best - and even a further 10,000 or more have drifted off because the team isn't as successful as it once was.

I know you, Bonce and several others off here are very passionate about the club but do your other half's, family, friends, etc feel as deeply about the club as you and Bonce etc are - I bet not.

I also suggest that they have their own hobby's interests. belief's, relationships in things and people that you don't share an interest in to anything like the same extent as they do.

That's what life is all about isn't it, finding something you like, love even, and sharing that with others who feel the same.

Just because WE like BWFC it doesn't mean the rest of Bolton (let alone the world) has to - they see it for what it is - a game - a 'stupid game' as one of my ex's was fond of telling me - and she was right, I used to invest more of myself into my 'hobby' than with her - and she was a real person - that's when the penny started to drop with me that other things meant more to me than watching a bunch of blokes kick a ball about.

In fact I realised how ridiculous I was that my 'hobby', my 'interest', my 'passion' was being spent on a 'game' when I was losing out, ignoring, hiding away, escaping - call it what you will - from my 'real' life.

I guess that's why I've always easily seen the divide between having fun on the internet and taking it far, far too seriously and it crossing over into peoples real life's.  I'd been there already, even before social media had been invented.

I'm certainly not here to judge anyone or tell them how to live their life's but football IS a game and it means more to some than others because they simply value it and invest emotionally, financially (and maybe even spiritually) than others - even their own loved ones (who simply tolerate it because they love you 'the person' and put up with you at times as the 'BWFC fanatic').

I have fun following BWFC, it is my hobby, interest, I am happy when they win and less so when they lose.  I'm happy to share the ups and downs with fellow Wanderers on here - but I know at the end of the day that football IS just a game - an entertainment.

I am not fanatical about them.

As for public money in football clubs, that's a bit of a red herring Bob if you don't mind me saying so, as almost every business in GB has had help from the public purse during the pandemic.  Why should football clubs be singled out as a special case to be monitored?  

What does intrigue me though is your frequent references to FV filing their accounts a week or so late?

Clearly this is something of importance to you - and I take your concerns in respect of accountancy seriously as you have expert knowledge about such things.

Obviously FV would have known the filing date and would have worked to it, so clearly something wasn't as it should have been as they got close to deadline date.

However they did file within days of it.

So whatever the problem was, it wasn't insurmountable if it could be 'fixed' within days in order to file.

Sounds to me either that something had been 'forgotten' about and had to be included in the accounts at the last minute, or conversely something that shouldn't have been added in them had, and had to be removed at the last moment.

Neither of these scenarios seem plausible to me so the only other thing that comes to my mind is the auditor signing off the company to be a going concern - maybe FV had to prove their financial soundness and it took longer to do so than they thought it would for the satisfaction of the Auditors?

Even if this was the case, the auditors did end up putting their name to the accounts.

I'd be interested to learn what you have seen in all of this which I and everyone else have missed?

As for the landladies - I might be wrong but as I understand things, unsecured creditors are required to all be treated equally, so if FV had paid out the pennies to them, they would have had to pay out to all the other creditors also at the same time - if so that's why they didn't and why other deserving causes such as St Johns, were not settled earlier either.

As for not settling with everybody from day one if they had the money, then I guess that's down to how deep their pockets really are and cash flows and contingency planning, brining in players (and their wages) budgeting for life in the fourth tier if they couldn't stay up that first season and whatever else they had to concern themselves with - paying £2.5m (or whatever it was) to EDT to settle their debt, etc.

I don't know the answer obviously but as far as I can see things FV have never been flushed with cash and if money was no object then you would have hoped they could have settled the unsecured creditors from day one.

As they didn't I just work on the basis that they are operating within something of a constrained budget and settling unsecured creditors simply wasn't at the top of their list of financial priorities.

Would you view it otherwise than this?

I suspect FV found more of a mess than they thought they would when they took over. I don't blame KA for this at all by the way, I blame Dean Holdsworth and the fiasco surrounding his 'investment' that hamstrung Ken from the moment he came in. I still can't believe so many 'fans' of our club seem to feel Dean did and can do no wrong simply because he used to play for us. Frankly I remain astonished that someone with no tangible assets was able to arrange a loan he knew he would not be able to repay, secure it against assets he did not yet own and then simply walk away with a fat 'consultancy fee' while leaving his 'partner' to hold the bag and take on the debts but Dean somehow managed to do all of that.

luckyPeterpiper wrote:I suspect FV found more of a mess than they thought they would when they took over. I don't blame KA for this at all by the way, I blame Dean Holdsworth and the fiasco surrounding his 'investment' that hamstrung Ken from the moment he came in. I still can't believe so many 'fans' of our club seem to feel Dean did and can do no wrong simply because he used to play for us. Frankly I remain astonished that someone with no tangible assets was able to arrange a loan he knew he would not be able to repay, secure it against assets he did not yet own and then simply walk away with a fat 'consultancy fee' while leaving his 'partner' to hold the bag and take on the debts but Dean somehow managed to do all of that.

Nice to know there's another Wanderers fan with his thinking head on.

I rather doubt that FV discovered much they didn't already know though. Mike James/PBP had been involved as a secured creditor since March 2016 and possibly knew most, if not all, of the entire story and FV had had plenty of opportunity to fill in any gaps before and after the appointment of the Administrators.

They certainly didn't jump into it but they did take on a lot, that's for sure.

Wouldn't it be nice to know who recommended Dean Holdsworth for an honorary degree at Unibol and why?

Its pleasing to note that someone has reminded Sharon that today is the third anniversary of the death of Eddie Davies. Would Marc Iles have remembered if he hadn't been prompted?