Eddie Davies.

Do we 'the club' owe him something like £140 Million ?

If so how are we ever going to get stability until we get rid of our huge debt .

I can't see him pumping his own money in if we owe him all that can you.

If you think about it there's dark times ahead of the club , especially when our parachute payments run out , and we're still in the championship .

Where will we be in five years time ?

It is about time the club and the owner set out their plans for the future. The "trust us we know what we are doing" line is wearing thin. My understanding is that Eddie Davies isn't worth the kind of money Bolton Wanderers owe him, although he guards his privacy tenaciously, so if he is guarantor who do we actually owe?

It is also not good sense in the long term to talk up big ideas about investing and promotion to the Premier League if, and I don't know this is the case, drastic action is being planned to reduce the debt and make the club more attractive to a different ownership.

Don't worry about it.....Eddie passed away five years ago......

Meanwhile we will just default on that money.  It's personal money not owed to a bank as I understand it.  Like if you or I gave money to the club out of our pockets. Just a bad investment....

terenceanne wrote:Don't worry about it.....Eddie passed away five years ago......

Meanwhile we will just default on that money.  It's personal money not owed to a bank as I understand it.  Like if you or I gave money to the club out of our pockets. Just a bad investment....

Exactly - its all a personal debt structered by a few finance companies (not banks) but groups like Angel Investments.

But as it is a personal loan/debt the most they could ever claw back through the courts would be £5000 - as it would be a small claims court matter, and even then thats very tenable!

terenceanne wrote:Don't worry about it.....Eddie passed away five years ago......

Meanwhile we will just default on that money.  It's personal money not owed to a bank as I understand it.  Like if you or I gave money to the club out of our pockets. Just a bad investment....

Eddie was at the statue unveiling.

One way would be to go the Southampton/Leicester/Leeds route.

Administration, clear the debts and start again.

that is the most likely.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:One way would be to go the Southampton/Leicester/Leeds route.

Administration, clear the debts and start again.

that is the most likely.

We honestly do not need to go down that route at all.


As I, and someone else, has said the debt we owe is basically personal debt.  We owe £125 to Eddie as a personal debt, whilst £15million to the Banks as secured debt.

Of the personal loan we effectively do not need to pay it back - if it did go to small claims court (the furthest it could ever go by the way as its a personal loan with no security tied to it) then the most we would have to pay is £5000!

As for the Banks we have more than enough security to cover the £15million - even taking into account The Stadium, the Hotel, the training ground, the players etc etc etc

I don't know where some of you are getting your information from. I suggest that you go on line and get hold of the latest set of Accounts and read them carefully. You'll see that its not  a 'personal' debt at all. The loan may have come through investment vehicles registered off shore- mainly in the Caribbean-  but the terms of the debt will be confidential between the Wanderers holding company and the investment vehicles.
Talk of small claims court action is simply not the case.
Whether Eddie owns the investment vehicles or not is information which is not in the public domain.
Nobody invests over £100 million and makes the terms public- mainly to keep HMRC at arms length.
None of you know the conditions, terms or covenants in the loans- so you might as well stop speculating.
The only real hope of ever clearing the debt would be if Eddie (and his co-investors) decided to convert the loans to equity in the way that Jack Walker did for Blackburn several years ago, and which Abramovitch has done at Chelsea That would shift the debt- but how would it make us a better club? it would save some interest payments but might end up ,depending on the terms of conversion, leading to higher dividend payments ( read the Accounts and you'll see that these already take place).
How well did Blackburn do from shedding the debt? The answer is not very well.

Eddie may 'love' Bolton Wanderers, but his involvement in the club is as an investor and as such he does very well - much better than he would do if his money was in the bank.

Well said.Hes getting a better return than Barclays would on 135 million at 1-2 percent.Could do with someone buying us with a few quid,piped dream maybe but that guy at Cardiff put money in and they're only a small club ,ground capacity 20-000.Fuck it was there in the 4th 3rd and the yo yo years of the 90's when McGinley n Blake knew where the net was.So regardless will be there every other Saturday at home and as many away matches i can afford.What else would you do on a Saturday.Hope springs eternal.BWFC till death do us part.

If people honestly think that the best investment in the world is to put £125 million into Bolton Wanderers "because they will get a better interest return than if they were with a bank", then they are well and truly deluded.

If that were the case the super rich all over the world would have long since been snapping up all the league football clubs in this country.

As for Mr Amos suggesting that Mr Davies as invested more than his entire personal family wealth (£125 million) on the security of just £5,000 is quite frankly laughable.

The points that I have long been trying to make is that the total invested in Bolton by Davies is considerably more than his known wealth that came from selling the kettle business in which he received £93 million for.

I therefore have speculated that not all of the money originates from Davies - which I think most people would accept as a fair assumption.

The next point I have tried to make is why would anyone want to put millions into Bolton (under Davies name) and lock it away for years, simply for a reported 5% interest (although I heard that figure had now gone down to just 2.5%) AND run the risk that the club doesn't go bust - it certainly hasn't been run efficiently for years.

It just doesn’t add up to me.

I don't think he intentionally threw £135 million in straight away.Im sure any original money was borrowed with a percentage return a little higher than the banks.As the money went out of control I'm sure Eddie Davies is an astute business man and the loans which are all to be paid back even if over 20 years are still to be paid back.In the mean time he will be earning a better interest of Bolton Wanderers than Barclays.This is where we need to get back in the premier.Phil Gartside handed out some massive money to Megson who blew £30 million,Knight £5million,Cahill£4million,Martty Taylor £4 million,Elmander£8million,Steinnson 3.5million,Muamba £5million that's just off the top of my head £29.5million.mark Davies best buy £1million.Yet when BSA wanted £20 to get us in the champions leauge million not Quid.He got pancaked.So Anelka went £15million when he could of been in the CL with us.Bolton wanderers are at a crossroads if Eagles is back ASAP and Beckford can hit form he left Dunne for dead so he still has speed to hurt lumbering centre halves at this standard things can turn quickly.Medo hitting the post at 1-0 v Reading,daft penalty,QPR's goal down to the lack of speed and quality in defence.Its not coincidental that we have not won at home since Dawson left.Lets see where we are after 10 matches.

Don't know why I bother wasting my breath, I've said this so many times before but it is a matter of record that the money that Megson got to spend came from the new Sky deal that kicked in that season. Allardyce (and Lee) were not given any money because it simply did not exist at the time.

If anyone doesn't believe me simply check out the club accounts - its all there in black and white.

But people much prefer to make things up and believe Allardyce was denied the money for some reason or another.

As an aside when he did get money to spend at Newcastle a few months later he wasted much of it on his 'big' buys.

Once again check it out if you don't believe me.

It is all there but why let facts get in the way of a good story?

Debts of around 36m plus mortgage on the new Bok. Sam left, debt rises to 90=m in a short space of time. Financial mismanagement on a grand scale approved by Phil and the board. Now 130+m
Debts a mix of mortgage and loans. Commercial loans underwritten by Eddie's personal money.

While the cats away living on the Isla of Man the mice have been playing at the Reebok. Eddie is not bothered as he will own the stadium land and all buildings along with the Academy when it goes belly up, he isn't that financially daft too risk losing too much of his own money. He will risk what he considers justifiable without risking the bulk.

Phil struck lucky with the Normid rescue plan saving the club. He should have gone after the Bok move in my opinion. The financial and football world was in it's new era needing new fresh men in his role who could deal with the changes. Not as if he hasn't got enough fingers in different pies to feed him.

Before Sam left would you have given 16m to stay and have a crack at Europe ? Why did the board say no and shove Sam out. Then the new manager held Phil to ransom over so called trouble making players who had to be sold or else. It's about time those questions were asked and Phil brought in to answer prior to collecting his P45.

Great savings for fans next year - We won't need a sat nav or need maps to away grounds we already know the way from years gone by to the clubs in League 1.

Hello and welcome carrs, great first post.

Not sure I agree with all of it - for instance why would Davies continue to let Gartside waste his money over all these years unless he is happy enough with the way the money was spent/invested?  

Also there was no money (in the club anyway - Davies might have had a wad of his own money available?) to give to Allardyce to chase the Champions League - the clubs accounts at the time show that.  The money Megson spent came as the new Sky contract kicked in at the start of the following season.

Early days to be worried about relegation yet but it is clear the team does need to be strengthened if we want anything out of this season.

Hope you stick around and look forward to reading your other views on the club and Mr Gartside!

Sluffy wrote: 

Also there was no money to give to Allardyce to chase the Champions League - the clubs accounts at the time show that.  The money Megson spent came as the new Sky contract kicked in at the start of the following season.

But surely the club knew there was going to be a pot of money at the beginning of the following season? Why not just ask Fat Sam to hang around a few weeks?

Sluffy wrote:

As for Mr Amos suggesting that Mr Davies as invested more than his entire personal family wealth (£125 million) on the security of just £5,000 is quite frankly laughable.

I know instead of brushing of what you don't know as laughable, try looking it up - Revolving Facilities!!!

Facility is so much but over time it can be 3,4, 10 or even more times than the facility as to what has been used, just as long as the amount given in any one period (usually monthly) does not go over the facility!

e.g. the Facility could be £7,500.  Being paid back on a monthly basis with interest (for example repayment being £120/month of which £50 is interest and £70 is principle) the principle can be re-used (e.g the £70 can be taken out again thus reaching the limit of the facility once more).

The life of the Facility iss eternal or until it is fully repaid, whichever is earliest.

I know how it works because I have a revolving facility on my normal retail current account with ABN Amro.  Here in the UK it is more extensively used for Commercial and Corporate accounts rather than retail accounts.



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Sluffy
That's my point above Eddie doesn't let Phil waste his own personal wealth he ain't that daft. He is willing to risk a certain amount. He has the assets worth a tidy sum should it go tits up. His love for the Whites remains and always will, . He juggles many things, us, his business, charity and his family. Like us all he would not risk everything on just the football he spreads his bets and tries to keep everybody happy by prioritising and juggling his interests.

The option was there to give funding. Natasha is correct that waiting was one option, there was more.
Don't believe all the Sky money hype, many are aware of the personal issues which ruled Phil's head at the time. A fatal mistake in business. The Super John quick exit saga all over again, he will never learn. Mr Greaves and Rioch had a much better way of dealing with such issues you would thought he would have picked up and learnt you know self development and all that on some good points over the years.
People forget to add up the interest payments, loans taken out to cover projected expenditure, restructuring and mix it up with transfer funds, compensation, increased wages and contacts etc etc don't forget to throw a curve ball every so often for world economic fluctuations. There be a lot more to it than some people would like to believe.
The easy fact to understand is the amount of debt when Sam left and the amount of debt when the ginger thing left. That be utter incompetence and justifies P45's in my book.
The horse has gone the door still open and the locks bust. Best would be a new broom it's had 35 new heads and 20 handles so that's out.

So Megson got money from the Sky deal, how come the wage bill was cut in half by Coyle and again by Freedman and yet the 'trickle down Prem payments' have not been used either to bring in better players by Freedman or to wipe off some of the debt?
By the way, Eddie 'bought' the club for 14 million. He's worth less than 100 million, yet he can 'carry' the clubs debts of 135 million. Does this mean he would have to sell the club for 149 million hust to break even?

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Sluffy wrote: 

Also there was no money to give to Allardyce to chase the Champions League - the clubs accounts at the time show that.  The money Megson spent came as the new Sky contract kicked in at the start of the following season.

But surely the club knew there was going to be a pot of money at the beginning of the following season? Why not just ask Fat Sam to hang around a few weeks?

Obviously more than meets the eye here.  One can only surmise from the murky Panorama scandal, that it was in everyone's best interest to part ways when they did.