bigmac95 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:51 pm
Bombadel wrote: ↑Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:31 pm
Presume it’s the same as the play your part, contribute for the love of the club. Imagine if we’d had to return the few million that Casson had pumped in?
I suspect it depends on the value of the club, on what the market thinks is a fair price for this stake. Casson left the club in a mess financially and was probably not in a position to sustain the losses during a search for a buyer. In any event, I doubt it would have covered much beyond the value of the land.
For MH the situation is totally different. The club has value. The ground has been upgraded, the league we are in has some good revenue opportunities and the players are on contracts which offer value if they were to be sold.
I doubt MH will get the full amount back but I would be shocked if the stake wasn't worth somewhere in the region of £150,000, putting the value of the club in the region of £1.5 mil. (obviously this is complete guesswork and I have no idea but I wouldn't be surprised).
I dont know the ins and out of the specifics of the situation but I very much doubt the shares have any real value.
My outsiders view is that the owners have bought shares and each year there has been a loss. To cover this loss new shares have been issued in proportion to the existing shareholders to maintain their equity stake. Each year there is a loss they have agreed to contribute their % of the loss and purchase more shares to that value.
Therefore the underlying value of the company hasn't really increased (yes the ground has been improved but I would question whether it has really 'added value' as a lot of it was to maintain some things that had deteriorated over the years and others were costs for grading purposes that had to be done -) - Also the only way an value is obtained from the ground would be to sell it which I suspect would only happen if a new one was being built and therefore any proceeds would presumably be rolled into the cost of a new one not be available for any owner to get the funds out.
The other main thing about value is that you are in effect 'buying' an obligation to spend more money as you would be required to fund your % of future losses - and whilst the idea of a club running at breakeven sounds simple there are probably 90% of lower league clubs who have not managed to achieve this consistently. You are therefore not buying an asset as much as taking over responsibility for a future liability.
From a buyers perspective would you pay £150000 for some shares from one person and then immediately pay another £75k to cover the losses of the company and then also at best be committed to another £35k next year.
Casson put a lot of money into the club and converted it all to shares which the current owners then took over for nothing, but they did take on the responsibility to fund future losses. I woudl expect that any of the current owners would end up in a similar position as if you had £225k to spend woudl you rather pay £150k to someone and only put £75k into the club or would you rather keep the £225k all to use for the future costs of the club.
I suspect the idea of football club owners 'investing' is a bit of a misnomer - they are funding the club not investing it as I cant think of many lower league clubs where someone has ploughed loads into a club and then sold it and recovered all or even any of their money (except for some dodgy attempts at land grabs which is certainly not the case in this situation)
I wish Mark well but I would suspect he is looking more to offload a liability rather than expecting anyone to pay back what he put in (but I may be wrong)