madras Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another fuck up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Correct, at the last count it was about £250 million in total of his money invested in us. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. no, he fucked up on the purchase price (some may say it's lucky he did as everyone else who looked at the books hightailed it sharpish), after that he put in over 100million. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interpolic Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 To cover debts, so he wasn't paying anyone else interest. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. no, he f***ed up on the purchase price (some may say it's lucky he did as everyone else who looked at the books hightailed it sharpish), after that he put in over 100million. Thought he skipped the financial due dill and there was more debt than he thought so banged in the money post purchase to clear it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interpolic Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Actually, wasn't it a term of the purchase that he had to pay the debt back? Whatever, this is a distraction - he's never paid out any money in relation to NUFC that won't benefit him in the long run. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. no, he f***ed up on the purchase price (some may say it's lucky he did as everyone else who looked at the books hightailed it sharpish), after that he put in over 100million. Thought he skipped the financial due dill and there was more debt than he thought so banged in the money post purchase to clear it. true, then a bit more. he could've just kept the debt at the bank and let the club service it with no risk to his cash. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdckelly Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. no, he f***ed up on the purchase price (some may say it's lucky he did as everyone else who looked at the books hightailed it sharpish), after that he put in over 100million. Thought he skipped the financial due dill and there was more debt than he thought so banged in the money post purchase to clear it. also covered the losses that were quite big until very recently. Some of it self inflicted some of it left over from the Shepard era Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Just want to make it clear I'm not defending him. He cowboyed the purchase and it bit him in the ass and he didn't have the football nouse to cope. And every attempt to fix it has been farcical. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. The main two things that due diligence would have revealed were that the debt was repayable on a change of ownership (that's a pretty common condition but its not always the case) and the club was in the process of losing about £30 million for the year. Without being entirely sure why he bought us (and no one is) it's not easy to call whether he would have cracked on with the takeover if he was aware of those two issues. The club is actually in a far better state and worth a lot more now than when he bought it that's for sure. Whether its worth more than he paid for it is another matter. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 i'd love to be able to get an outside, independent expert to look at how the club is run. I don't mind him not spending "his" money on players etc but I'd love to know where the money going into the club is really going (ie those merchandising deals) and if the promotion/advertsing/commercial activities are being crappily ran. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
midds Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 i'd love to be able to get an outside, independent expert to look at how the club is run. I don't mind him not spending "his" money on players etc but I'd love to know where the money going into the club is really going (ie those merchandising deals) and if the promotion/advertsing/commercial activities are being crappily ran. Hear, hear. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Definitely Madras. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 i'd love to be able to get an outside, independent expert to look at how the club is run. I don't mind him not spending "his" money on players etc but I'd love to know where the money going into the club is really going (ie those merchandising deals) and if the promotion/advertsing/commercial activities are being crappily ran. Wasn't the merchandising raised at the recent meeting with the fans? I haven't totally digested what was said but it sounds like some sort of outsourcing arrangement where the club picks up a cut on the transactions. So club revenue goes down but the case is that we make more profit. I agree that more transparency would be good. I'd love to see a comparison of the before and after finances. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanj Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. The main two things that due diligence would have revealed were that the debt was repayable on a change of ownership (that's a pretty common condition but its not always the case) and the club was in the process of losing about £30 million for the year. Without being entirely sure why he bought us (and no one is) it's not easy to call whether he would have cracked on with the takeover if he was aware of those two issues. The club is actually in a far better state and worth a lot more now than when he bought it that's for sure. Whether its worth more than he paid for it is another matter. Not knowing the terms of the loans exactly, he could have refinanced the debt OR put debt on the club at more favorable times and taken advantage of low interest rates and crawled back some of his cash. Would make it easier for him to sell as well if he was to get favorable financing due to his padded balance sheet. There's no reason for us to be "debt-free" by the way - we could easily have a favorable debt encumbrance and it would lower some of Mike's exposure. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
quayside Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Easily the most stingy and least ambitious owner any PL club could ask for. yet he's put in over 100million above the purchase price, is this right ? Was that because he didn't do the correct due dill before buying? Just another f*** up, got his fingers burnt, tried to spend his way out, got his fingers burnt again. Now we have conservative mediocrity. The main two things that due diligence would have revealed were that the debt was repayable on a change of ownership (that's a pretty common condition but its not always the case) and the club was in the process of losing about £30 million for the year. Without being entirely sure why he bought us (and no one is) it's not easy to call whether he would have cracked on with the takeover if he was aware of those two issues. The club is actually in a far better state and worth a lot more now than when he bought it that's for sure. Whether its worth more than he paid for it is another matter. Not knowing the terms of the loans exactly, he could have refinanced the debt OR put debt on the club at more favorable times and taken advantage of low interest rates and crawled back some of his cash. Would make it easier for him to sell as well if he was to get favorable financing due to his padded balance sheet. There's no reason for us to be "debt-free" by the way - we could easily have a favorable debt encumbrance and it would lower some of Mike's exposure. Refinancing the debt with Barclays wasn't an option. They called it in and in so doing took a lot of risk off their books. In June 2007 the club was technically insolvent, by somewhere between £80million and £90 million from memory. Why would anyone lend us anything in those circumstances? The credit crunch was big at the time as well and banks were crapping themselves. Ashley had to cough up. No one would lend much on our balance sheet. The main thing that has been achieved under Ashley is some sort of financial stability on a year on year basis but we are still insolvent if he calls his debt in. Thats why he has to guarantee not to do so every year, and that guarantee is recorded in the accounts. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Yet some on here would have you believe he's not made a penny off us. Serious question - so far do you think he's made money out of owning the club? And if so how? He's getting millions of pounds' worth of worldwide exposure for his main interest (which coincidentally has increased in value by over 700% since he bought NUFC) via probably the world's most popular sporting event, for free. Just that. I just can't see that his ownership of us has had much to do with the growth of SD. If you look at the Sports Direct annual report you can see that he has virtually bought the entire UK market which accounts for more than 90% of their business. They basically own the UK market as a result of buying up the major brands and elimating the competition. The profit they made from international business was only about £11 million (total SD profits were about £290 million). To put it in perspective the SD international profit in 2013 was about 5% of what he has currently invested in us. Their international business is peanuts (relatively) and fwiw so far none of it comes from the Far East. Makes you wonder why he does it then. Just for a laugh perhaps. That is certainly possible. A "vanity project" was always one of the contenders. The best scenario for us is that at some point soon he does actually decide to launch Sports Direct on the Far Eastern market and does decide to use us to help him. I'm sorry but if that is the case - the man actively and deliberately damaging the club's prospects for no reason other than to massage his own ego (this is surely even worse than using it to further Sports Direct) - then it only makes your continued defence of him and his actions even more staggering. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
madras Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Yet some on here would have you believe he's not made a penny off us. Serious question - so far do you think he's made money out of owning the club? And if so how? He's getting millions of pounds' worth of worldwide exposure for his main interest (which coincidentally has increased in value by over 700% since he bought NUFC) via probably the world's most popular sporting event, for free. Just that. I just can't see that his ownership of us has had much to do with the growth of SD. If you look at the Sports Direct annual report you can see that he has virtually bought the entire UK market which accounts for more than 90% of their business. They basically own the UK market as a result of buying up the major brands and elimating the competition. The profit they made from international business was only about £11 million (total SD profits were about £290 million). To put it in perspective the SD international profit in 2013 was about 5% of what he has currently invested in us. Their international business is peanuts (relatively) and fwiw so far none of it comes from the Far East. Makes you wonder why he does it then. Just for a laugh perhaps. That is certainly possible. A "vanity project" was always one of the contenders. The best scenario for us is that at some point soon he does actually decide to launch Sports Direct on the Far Eastern market and does decide to use us to help him. I'm sorry but if that is the case - the man actively and deliberately damaging the club's prospects for no reason other than to massage his own ego (this is surely even worse than using it to further Sports Direct) - then it only makes your continued defence of him and his actions even more staggering. was it a defence of ashley or an objective appraisal ? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 Whatever you like. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan_Taylor Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 He's a fucking fat wanker. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasy Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Yet some on here would have you believe he's not made a penny off us. Serious question - so far do you think he's made money out of owning the club? And if so how? He's getting millions of pounds' worth of worldwide exposure for his main interest (which coincidentally has increased in value by over 700% since he bought NUFC) via probably the world's most popular sporting event, for free. Just that. I just can't see that his ownership of us has had much to do with the growth of SD. If you look at the Sports Direct annual report you can see that he has virtually bought the entire UK market which accounts for more than 90% of their business. They basically own the UK market as a result of buying up the major brands and elimating the competition. The profit they made from international business was only about £11 million (total SD profits were about £290 million). To put it in perspective the SD international profit in 2013 was about 5% of what he has currently invested in us. Their international business is peanuts (relatively) and fwiw so far none of it comes from the Far East. Makes you wonder why he does it then. Just for a laugh perhaps. That is certainly possible. A "vanity project" was always one of the contenders. The best scenario for us is that at some point soon he does actually decide to launch Sports Direct on the Far Eastern market and does decide to use us to help him. I'm sorry but if that is the case - the man actively and deliberately damaging the club's prospects for no reason other than to massage his own ego (this is surely even worse than using it to further Sports Direct) - then it only makes your continued defence of him and his actions even more staggering. was it a defence of ashley or an objective appraisal ? It seems like its not good enough just to dislike Ashley or see the mistakes you believe he's made, absolutely everything has to be negative or you're part of his defence league. I'm not trying to have a go at anyone, but it does feel like that on here sometimes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrmojorisin75 Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Refinancing the debt with Barclays wasn't an option. They called it in and in so doing took a lot of risk off their books. In June 2007 the club was technically insolvent, by somewhere between £80million and £90 million from memory. Why would anyone lend us anything in those circumstances? The credit crunch was big at the time as well and banks were crapping themselves. Ashley had to cough up. No one would lend much on our balance sheet. The main thing that has been achieved under Ashley is some sort of financial stability on a year on year basis but we are still insolvent if he calls his debt in. Thats why he has to guarantee not to do so every year, and that guarantee is recorded in the accounts. how does it benefit him to keep the 100m loan (or whatever it is) as a debt to the club rather than just writing it off and him then demanding it as part of any potential sale price? genuine question to be honest, he's not gaining interest on the money or anything as it's gone Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanj Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Documented note payable to Mike Ashley so he has maximum equity stake and can prove to any potential buyer the value of the club includes the payment of interest free debt to MASH? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrmojorisin75 Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Documented note payable to Mike Ashley so he has maximum equity stake and can prove to any potential buyer the value of the club includes the payment of interest free debt to MASH? that would still exist in the accounts if he writes it off no? also he owns the club entirely so he can set any price he sees fit regardless of what is in the accounts Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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