Jackie Broon

How many times does this point need to be addressed? Rule F.1. A Person shall be disqualified from acting as a Director and no Club shall be permitted to have any Person acting as a Director of that Club if: F.1.1. in relation to the assessment of his compliance with Rule F.1 (and/or any similar or equivalent rules of The Football League or The Football Association) at any time, he has: F.1.1.1. failed to provide all relevant information (including, without limitation, information relating to any other individual who would qualify as a Director but has not been disclosed, including where he or they are acting as a proxy, agent or nominee for another Person); F.6. Upon the Board becoming aware by virtue of the submission of a Declaration or in the circumstances referred to in Rule F.5 or by any other means that a Person is liable to be disqualified as a Director under the provisions of Rule F.1, the Board will: F.6.1. give written notice to the Person that he is disqualified, giving reasons therefore, and (in the case of a Person who is a Director) require him forthwith to resign as a Director; and F.6.2. give written notice to the relevant Club that the Person is disqualified, giving reasons therefore, and (in the case of a Person who is a Director) in default of the Director’s resignation, it shall procure that within 28 days of receipt of such notice the Director is removed from his office as such. The PL Board made "a clear determination as to which entities it believed would have control over the club following the proposed acquisition" in June. Therefore the PL board 'became aware' that the proposed directors had failed to provide all relevant information relating to someone who the PL board determined would qualify as a director. Rule F.6. required the PL board to give written notice to the proposed directors that they were disqualified, which could then have been appealed. The PL did not need that information to make a decision, in fact their rules require that without that information they disqualify the proposed directors immediately.

It isn't clear that the CAT case is going to court yet, they're challenging the jurisdiction of the case. If they lose that challenge they could conceivably throw in the towel at that point.

I don't get why everyone is so negative about this news. We now know that arbitration is well underway and the hearing will be in July. We didn't even know whether it had started before today, or that it was an expedited process (in which a decision is typically made within 6 weeks of the hearing). This means we will likely have a decision either just before or shortly after the start of the season, if the CAT case doesn't force a settlement before then. For the first time we have a pretty definite timescale.

My mistake in wording, by 'tribunal' I meant the arbitration hearing. Edited my original post for clarity.

It's clearly referring to the tribunal hearing. It also says that the PL has applied for an extension of the deadline for disclosure in the arbitration case to the 26th May and that is also the deadline for the submission of their evidence.

The arbitration hearing is in July, but the arbitration process has started. The PL have applied to extend the deadline for disclosure in the arbitration case to the 26th May, which is also the deadline for filing their arbitration evidence. I think this is actually good news, the arbitration is further along than we'd been led to believe and is being expedited.

Well that's bullshit as usual from Jacobs, the papers in fact reveal that the arbitration case is well underway and is currently in the disclosure stage, with a deadline of the 26th of May for filing evidence. It's the tribunal which will be in July and they apparently only last a few days, we could conceivably have a decision within a month of that.

And it will eventually bite them in the arse. For all that the judiciary are meant to be impartial and not let stuff like that influence them, they're only human. Part of our case will be about them deliberately delaying things, if they constantly delay and ask for extensions in this process it will not look good for their defence.

Not necessarily, the arbitration hearing is due in July and is an expedited process, so we could conceivably have a decision on that before the start of the season, or the PL could conceivably settle at any point before then. For example, if the CAT tribunal dismiss their jurisdiction claim or if they're forced to disclose damning evidence.

Confirms that arbitration is being heard in July.

Yeah, there is discretion both ways, they could have just accepted that PIF is legally separate if they had wanted to, like they just accepted that Crystal Palace is owned by a company that doesn't have to disclose it's owners.

Technically a shadow director is something different and not what the PL's position is. A shadow director is defined in UK law and needs to both have the ability to influence the decisions of a company and act on that. The PL's position is that the KSA would have 'control' of the club. The PL's definition of control goes beyond that of a shadow director in UK law: “Control” means the power of a Person to exercise, or to be able to exercise or acquire, direct or indirect control over the policies, affairs and/or management of a Club, whether that power is constituted by rights or contracts (either separately or in combination) and having regard to the considerations of fact or law involved, and, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing, Control shall be deemed to include: (a) the power (whether directly or indirectly and whether by the ownership of share capital, by the possession of voting power, by contract or otherwise including without limitation by way of membership of any Concert Party) to appoint and/or remove all or such of the members of the board of directors of the Club as are able to cast a majority of the votes capable of being cast by the members of that board; and/or (b) the holding and/or possession of the beneficial interest in, and/or the ability to exercise the voting rights applicable to, Shares in the Club (whether directly, indirectly (by means of holding such interests in one or more other persons) or by contract including without limitation by way of membership of any Concert Party) which confer in aggregate on the holder(s) thereof 30 per cent or more of the total voting rights exercisable at general meetings of the Club. For the purposes of the above, any rights or powers of a Nominee for any Person or of an Associate of any Person or of a Connected Person to any Person shall be attributed to that Person; The difficulty for the PL is that it has to demonstrate that the Saudi state has control over PIF, if PIF is formed as a legally separate entity and makes decisions independent of the government that might be very difficult for them to do. There is clearly a level of discretion, however, that discretion still has to have a sound basis in law to stand up and the relevant law in determining the control the Saudi state has over PIF would be Saudi law I think.

Thursday is when the PL have to submit their initial response to the CAT case by.

What is surprising though is that the PL haven't come out publicly with a statement disputing that they've breached competition law and/or affirming their commitment to competition law. From what I can tell in other competition law cases the companies involved tend to do that. Also, lack of public statements distancing themselves from potentially anti-competitive behaviour can actually be used as evidence against a company in a competition law case.

But there has to be a legal basis to that judgement. Also, in the case of Crystal Palace they accepted a company based in Delaware taking majority control of the club despite the directors of that company not being known because the law in Delaware doesn't require that. But, like with just about any legal case, it could still go either way. In terms of the competition case I think it is more about how the PL has acted in arriving at it's position. If the PL think there is a significant chance they'll be found to have broken competition law there's a very good chance they'll want to settle and make it go away by reversing their position on the O&D test.

But the issue for the PL is they have to establish that in legal terms. The legal relationship between the Saudi state and a Saudi company can only be a matter of Saudi law and apparently there is no concept of shadow directorship in Saudi law.

I don't think that necessarily means that PIF is not legally separate from the state. For example if the queen sits on the board of a company would that mean that it were controlled by the British state? I think the issue is whether PIF is set up in a way that gives it independence of decision making, which I belive it is. From what I can gather it also has very limited requirements to report back to government, less so than most other SWFs that are established as legally separate entitles.

Because it sets out the basis of NCSL's original anti-competition case, which the club has now taken on because (probably rightly) the PL responded to that saying that NCSL didn't have the legal standing to bring the case. The case included that beIN's letter objecting to the takeover was anti-competitive and that the PL had a legal duty to report both it and the reported lobbying of other PL clubs against the takeover to the competition authorities, and publicly distance themselves from it. If that is the case, it looks like the PL might be screwed.

Yeah, you're reading the wrong one, it's this:

It's explained in NCSL's letter before action to the PL.

When you watch that, set against the case made in NCSL's original letter before action, that the PL had a legal duty under competition law to publicly distances themselves from any hint of influence from beIN, it does not look good for them.

That Hoffman is his BFF and will sort out the Newcastle issue.

Yeah, even if the PL can make a sound case that the KSA would control the club, it's the way they've gone about things that will be the main issue for the CAT case I think. The delays, refusing to make a formal decision, failure to distance themselves from the influence of beIN and other premier league clubs, the leaking of negative information. That makes it look like their decision was not fair and balanced. Plus the potential inconsistency when set against what they've required from Man City and Crystal Palace.

On the topic of separation I didn't realise that NUST had released their barrister's letter to the PL, which was kept private at the time. "The KSA PIF board is responsible for ‘the long-term strategy for the fund, approves the business plan and the annual budget, PIF’s organization and governance structures, investment pools, and major investment decisions’. The KSA PIF’s ‘Program 2018-2020’ identifies the KSA PIF’s ‘Funding Sources’ and ‘Governance and Operating Model’, which indicates that the KSA PIF is an entity separate to the KSA system of government. Further, Qatari- and the KSA-based lawyers have reviewed the KSA’s laws applicable to the KSA PIF to advise that the KSA PIF is a separate legal entity to the KSA system of government." https://nufctrust.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NUST-Letters-with-PL.pdf

They might not be, we'll know fairly soon whether they're going to fight it or not. So far they have been suspiciously quiet about it.