[Bullseye]

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:23 pm  

I would suspect that any takeover from ABC or anyone else would be ready to do a deal with HMRC.

Whether HMRC are open to deals is another matter.

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 3:59 pm  

Bullseye wrote:

I would suspect that any takeover from ABC or anyone else would be ready to do a deal with HMRC.

Whether HMRC are open to deals is another matter.

Didnt Gary Tasker say something along the lines of "we are not in a position to make any payment to creditors"?

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 4:08 pm  

No payments can be made to any creditors. Basic law of insolvency.

Creditors have to be paid in a specified order, out of available assets:

Preferential (nowdays means certain employee amounts)

Secured by first floating charge (in this case, anything still owed to Natwest)

Secured by second floating charge (in this case, the council. The RFL released its charge when their loan was repaid)

Unsecured creditors (since 2002, including HMRC).


The only way of resiolving this is a CVA, whereby a proposal has to be agreed by 75% of the creditors by value. HMRC are very unlikely to consider a CVA unless the amount being paid in the pound is substantial - they are sick and tired (and rightly so) of being ripped off with some stupid 10p in the pound proposal by sports clubs, and current thinking is that they would rather see a club go into liquidation pour encourager les autres. After all, most monies owed to HMRC were never a club's money in the first place, having been collected or deducted effectively on trust for the taxpayer.

Failing that, the administrator either sells the assets, and repays creditors as far as he can out of the proceeds (in the Bulls' case, I doubt there would be a penny for the unsecureds), or he gives up and the company is liquidated - in whch case the liquidator does the same, but since he is not selling a going concern you normally get even less.

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 4:28 pm  

How does the Administrator get paid ? Is he preferential or would he have to wait like the other creditors ?
Or is he already on the payroll ?

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 4:30 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

:BOW:

Two points
That much is clear.

Tosh. This "claim" means nothing. I say I "concluded correctly" too. Equally meaningless.

I am no accountant but I do not believe that the RFL carries out any sort of "audit" in the sense you mean. And my problem with this claim is that the answer to your implicit question would be that the RFL knew the Bulls were effectively trading whilst insolvent but loaned them money. I don't buy it.

I don't see any serious failing on the part of the RFL. We know so little about the smallprint of the deals but what little has emerged seems to only indicate a governing body trying to help keep afloat a club with cashflow issues. Not for the first time, not for the last.

Of course "something different" might have happened. The RFL might have refused to do anything and the club might have gone rapidly down the pan, for one thing. Would you have been happy then?

That is a contradiction in terms. Someone who is not interested in buying is no sort of "alternative" that I recognise! Anyway, who were these consortia? Were they even worth tuppence? Or just pie-in-the-sky merchants?

"The books". What "books"? If you mean they saw the size of the debts, then that doesn't wash, as whatever deal they advanced, they buy from the administrator free from debts. So what else do you mean? (Genuine question - if you mean it wasn't being managed properly pre-admin -that would surely be irrelevant to any new purchaser who would surely be putting in their own team)

if they want to continue to cause needless confusion, what can anyone do? Presumably it suits the RFL (who have already pretty much admitted that they don't feel at liberty to give anything like the whole story) to nuttily blame "conditions" rather than have to make decisions and give simple answers to simple questions.

WHAT INTERVENTION though? Who would have intervened? How would they have done it? If there was anyone able to, why did they not do it?

What is the scale of the disaster? Can you give me a link to the figures? All I've seen is two wildly contrasting scenarios advanced via the press through Hood, and Caisley's appointees, seasoned by yet more disinformation from the bank. What was the scale of the disaster then, and how is it worse now? What money have we spent since, that we could have avoided spending?

Bottom line is your view seems to me to be just a bowl of wishful thinking, sprinkled with hindsight. In reality, it was up to the (what we now know to have been) warring factions within the club to bring the situation to a head and they all failed to act. The majority of the blame is on those who were running the club, a very substantial share of the blame is with the others who were not only seemingly washing their hands of it all, but allegedly not even prepared to meet and talk.

And to me, (not that there is now any point to this navel-gazing) therein lies the answer to your claims; at that time the Board and shareholders were hopelessly and irreconcileably divided, poles apart, and seemingly remain so. Given that paralyzing situation, I don't see ANYTHING that could have been done, unless that lot had done it. Between them, they owned the club, and without their agreement, nobody else had any way of getting in.

So on what basis did the RFL lend the club 700k? On Peter Hood's word and nothing else? As a comparison I'm pretty sure the RFL sent its people into the Crusaders when they experienced difficulties. This became public knowledge. In the Bulls case they appeared simply hand over 700k and keep it secret. I'm not an accountant and I think it's really good that you're not one either. Even allowing for this, how many repayments would need to be missed before you thought, 'er there's a problem here'?

In this context they then negotiated, without any reference to the shareholding of the Bulls or the member clubs to purchase the lease on Odsal Stadium to 'preserve an iconic stadium' when they knew this wasn't true. You don't think this sequence is unusual but I do.

By potential consortia I'm assuming what Guilfoyle meant was that they withdrew when they saw the potential liabilities going forward against the likely income. Three consortia withdrew, the ABC consortia and now Khan/Sutcliffe have made offers. This makes 5 consortia. I don't know who they are but they expressed an interest.

The RFL could have intervened if by no other means saying, 'no Peter, you can't have 700k'. Cibaman makes the case a few posts back. We would have got to where we were last March much sooner and still holding the lease. The club would have entered administration having not lost both the RFL's and the supporters cash. The lease would not now be a 'condition' and the RFL sat with a £1.5 million piece of paper. These factors mean the situation is now much, much worse than the day Peter said 'give me 700k please'.

Had they made the loan conditional on the RFL's accountants entering the club we may even have an independent view on the state of the club. Something you believe we don't have (probably correctly).

I certainly don't disagree with your views on the main shareholders but the conduct of the RFL is inexplicable and this is the point of the 'navel gazing'. The RFL share some of the responsibility for the situation as is. They've acted as governing body of a licensing process which is meant to have an audit and also as a bank of last resort to a club asking for money and appear to have never taken the most cursory interest in the clubs finances. It doesn't take wishful thinking or hindsight to say this situation is very, very odd.

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 5:04 pm  

ABC consortium submit third bid.
Hope theres no conditions attached this time.

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 5:50 pm  

Does anyone know who is heading the ABC bid now that the original leader has withdrawn?
Has this third bid been circulated to other SuperLeague clubs like the last one?
Does anyone know if the Sutcliffe consortium has submitted a written bid to the administrator and if so has it been passed to Red Hall?
Can a trade journalist actually do their job and give us a clue what's going on rather than just repeating the statements made by the administrator and Red Hall? You are allowed to ask questions and approach people you know-

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 5:56 pm  

Just been on Look North,Sutcliffe written bid officially handed in.

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 6:04 pm  

Can i put forward a question to the folks from other clubs suggesting we simply sell players to fund the August wage bill?

Pure speculation but lets say Hull FC offer £10k for Whitehead, Wire offer £15k for Bateman, Wigan offer £10k for Kearney and Leeds £5k for l'Estrange. On the basis Wakey appeared to get £5k per player when they were in a similar sitution to us but much earlier in the season compared to where we are now, these figures dont appear unreasonable. Also include the fact the most squads of teams above wont have much money under cap left (probably!), s/l deadline for signings seems to have passed and in a few weeks they can probably get most of above for nowt they dont need to be raiding benefactors piggy banks to make massive bids

If this did happen our reported £160k monthly wage bill would drop by say £20k (?) as I think Whitehead & Bateman are still on their original contracts so not massive salaries this would give us £40k liquid cash to cover wage bill now in region of £140k. Any suggestions from all the fans saying just sell players to cover wage bill, please address directly to Mr Administrator, c/o Odsal Stadium, Bradford as I am sure he would benefit from your expertise

Re: Latest state of play posts only : Tue Jul 31, 2012 6:51 pm  

M@islebugs wrote:

So on what basis did the RFL lend the club 700k?

Dunno, neither do you, speculation pointless.

M@islebugs wrote:

In this context they then negotiated, without any reference to the shareholding of the Bulls or the member clubs to purchase the lease on Odsal Stadium to 'preserve an iconic stadium' when they knew this wasn't true. You don't think this sequence is unusual but I do.

Of course it's unusual - unique even - though the bit about "without reference" is plain wrong - neither the Bulls, nor the RFL, are run by committee, consulting member clubs or consulting shareholders would simply not be the way it works.

M@islebugs wrote:

By potential consortia I'm assuming what Guilfoyle meant was that they withdrew when they saw the potential liabilities going forward against the likely income.

Well yes, but just be sure you aren't blaming the previous management for that, liabilities and income going forward is in the hands of the incoming management, if they couldn't think of a viable plan then fair enough but starting pretty much from scratch, that's down to them.

I tend to think slightly different, I've no doubt that the basic premise (they couldn't figure a way to make the numbers work) is right; but IMHO the numbers could be made to work for a new owner who wasn't looking to make a pile of money, but no investor who wanted to make a reasonable return on investment would invest.

M@islebugs wrote:

The RFL could have intervened if by no other means saying, 'no Peter, you can't have 700k'. Cibaman makes the case a few posts back. We would have got to where we were last March much sooner and still holding the lease. The club would have entered administration having not lost both the RFL's and the supporters cash. The lease would not now be a 'condition' and the RFL sat with a £1.5 million piece of paper. These factors mean the situation is now much, much worse than the day Peter said 'give me 700k please'.

In your opinion, but with respect you don't know. You don't have the details of what went on with the RFL or how it worked (no-one does).

And the point you miss is that I'll grant the situation is much worse now than then, but teh situation is NOT much worse than the day before we went into administration. It was better, because we had done a deal with the RFL that had helped keep us going. Hood didn't put us into administration. You think we would have gone tits anyway, but I'd have rather taken our chances with the old Board and whatever potential 'investors' they were talking to, than what actually happened.

Would that have been any better? We can't ever know. But it couldn't have been worse.

M@islebugs wrote:

Had they made the loan conditional on the RFL's accountants entering the club we may even have an independent view on the state of the club. Something you believe we don't have (probably correctly).

I have no idea what the RFL did. For all we know maybe they did this. But any view on the club from accountants is whatever the person briefing and paying them told them they want it to be.

M@islebugs wrote:

The RFL share some of the responsibility for the situation as is. ...

Maybe they do, maybe they don't, unless the full details ever emerge we won't ever know (like much of the stuff that has gone on). It would be fascinating to have chapter and verse but in terms of point, I don't think there is one.