Cripesginger wrote:
2. The RFL will probably want HMRC / Council / Green (as a minimum) paid up front if the new owner wants to enter SL.
Not at all. The RFL's only concern as far as the funding goes is to prove that they have the funds to run the club, instead of knocking on the RFL's door every Monday asking for more handouts.
If you really believe that the RFL would demand, or much more that any new buyer would pay, HMRC and the debenture, then you really must be naive. Look, the buyers are buying the business at a price off the administrator. He then pays off whatever of the debts he can out of the money he has left. That's it.
It is NOT a "rescue" of OK Bulls Ltd. If anyone had the money or the inclination to pay off the debenture and the tax bill then we would not be having this discussion, would we, they would just do a deal with the administrator to take over the company lock stock and barrel (well maybe not the barrels as I believe the rights to sell beer for the season were sold off by Whitcut) and no creditors would be affected.
The only discussions that were had with RFL (who of course have a huge vested interest in HMRC not being regularly shafted by RL clubs) is what moneys they were volunteering to pay to old creditors. All we heard was that they were apparently going to look to pay all trade creditors (ie not HMRC and ie not the debenture and certainly not the Council) but over a period of years (5?). I heard or read of no statement, plan, intention or request to pay anything to HMRC nor SSG, nor BMDC. And the relevance of the discussion so far as BB2014 were concerned was that (seemingly) they had been given to understand that in return for what they were proposing, there would be no points deduction. (And then it collapsed when all of a sudden the RFL said full 6 points, plus you will be in special measures).
Anyway HMRC will not, apparently, accept repayment in preference to other creditors, on general principle. And all the Council has said about their loan is that it "was secured" (The Council has security in place in respect of the loan, by means of a separate guarantee signed by the owner") so they say they will if necessary go down that route to get repayment.
You seem to think that a buyer will pay a sum to buy the business off the administrator, but will then perversely ignore the benefit of having bought it free of a single penny of debt, act as if they were the old owners and as if they owed and must repay all the old owners' debts. Whilst also getting no distribution money, and (so the RFL suggested last week) also repaying to the RFL recent advances made to the administrator.
I think the position is very clear. The new owners (whoever they are) will I guarantee you have neither the funds nor the inclination to pay off all the old debts, and while they may look (as did BB2014) to do something for trade creditors you can forget paying the rest. That ship sailed when OKB went tits.
If that position is untenable for the RFL then the RFL would have to accept that the Bulls would continue in SL despite the caning received by HMRC, or else they would have to invent a new rule that in an admin., either the new buyer pays off all the debt including HMRC or else no play. In other words, the rule would have to be essentially that the administration /prepack route taken by thousands of other businesses all day long up and down the country is nevertheless infra dig for a RL club and unavailable to a RL club.
Before you go off on one, I personally would not have a big issue with such a rule, if that is what it had always been, and was the same for everyone. I think it is disgusting how the taxpayer is regularly shafted in prepacks, but that is the law of the land. And so long as it is the law of the land, why should I dislike it any more in the case of a RL business that I happen to follow, as opposed to any other business?
All I am saying is that this "repay HMRC or go to hell" has never been the case for any previous RL club and so if they did it now, it would break new ground, just like the outrageously stupid and short sighted decision to make up a new rule for the Bulls when they decided to rob a year's distribution from OKB which sadly was always going to end in tears, regardless of the degree of incompetence of the persons running that business.
