The problems with unsubstantiated rumours are that some of them might turn out to be true.
Yesterday Planet Fitba was on fire with chatter about Sevco and an imminent insolvency event.
Then betting was suspended on the prospect of the Engine Room Subsidiary being bottom of the SPFL Premiership at the end of this season.
Given that administration would only result in a 15 point penalty that one appeared to be difficult to fathom.
What I DO know is that elements of the Sevco High Command have recently sought quotes from insolvency practitioners.
The Blue Room chaps wanted to know what the cost of an administration would be.
Moreover, the brogue wearing brethren at the top of the Marble Staircase had a price in mind.
That isn’t a rumour it is a strong story, stood up with multiple independent sources.
However, there was one lingering question:
Cui bono?
I tried to address this when I first broke the story.
An administration could have two benefits for the anti-King faction in the Blue Room.
Firstly, an administrator would have the legal power to cut the wage bill at Sevco within the first 14 days of the administration.
Unlike the situation with the original Rangers in 2012, there is no massive queue of external creditors waiting to be paid.
There ARE unpaid suppliers, as I have already reported here.
However, although the total monies are now at least a substantial six-figure sum it isn’t enough to put the basket of assets under.
No, the issue for Sevco in 2018 is liquidity.
A shortage of operating cash.
It is as simple as that.
Secondly, if the pro-administration faction could blame King for the shambles then they would have a way of ejecting him and shredding his reputation with The People.
My scoop about approaching the four insolvency practitioners is fact.
I have the names of the companies that were approached.
The rationale behind some within the Sevco High Command wishing to go down this route is informed speculation on my part and is advertised as such.
Before they tried to price the services of an administrator the anti-King faction also looked for invoice financing.
I took this as an implicit statement that they didn’t believe that the Impecunious Kid south of the Limpopo was going to provide the necessary funds as per the published accounts of RIFC.
Since I broke those stories one thing I have been told from an impeccably placed source is that Alastair Johnston has formed an ad-hoc finance committee at Sevco.
Apart from the USA based businessman, there are two others on this body and I believe that the Serious Professional is one of them.
The unsuccessful attempt to secure invoice financing from four companies providing that service was almost certainly the first move by Johnston’s committee.
The Stateside businessman knows the entire extent of Sevco’s financial predicament.
He has known it since just before the RIFC AGM.
Everything since then makes sense.
He knows that his beloved basket of assets must access external finance in order to survive.
Moreover, they must do so rather sharpish.
If they access external finance then they will be able to continue to operate as a business.
However, there is a corollary to that statement.
Whether or not you choose to go to the bookies with that rationale is totally your choice.
Please Sevco responsibly.
Shirley it must be time for another round of league reconstruction…
No reconstruct the s t a
Hurrah!
What have The Scottish Transport Authority ever done for us?!
The whole admin thing / possibility though will need actual hard cash to buy the operating company (TRFC) from the illiquid parent (TRFC). That is the only way out of the ownership / shareholding issue. No one is going to put in money without getting control of the club and with the whole TOP issue clouding the waters, you don’t want to have to buy the shares as part of the deal.
That is the only way this even starts to make sense, but is fraught with problems and issues.
1) Everyone who lent money to TRFC gets max 20p in the £ – massive losses all round
2) The Operating company still loses money so needs continuous cash injections
3) Cutting salaries is fine in principle, but the good players can walk away with no fee
4) All the shareholders get zero – won’t go down well with the 1872 bunch no matter how you dress it up
5) No European football next season plus 15pt deduction
6) No one will or should give them any credit terms
7) Football debts still need to be paid in full and there are a LOT of them
8) The stadium still needs lots of money spent on it
9) Fill this one as you see fit….
But then I suppose what is the alternative?
Liquidation?
Continue with more and more money into a big hole to wave it goodbye?
It certainly feels like the dam is finally getting very close to breaking point.
“Ad hoc”… nice term.
Mistakenly or not, I have always taken this term to mean “on the fly”.
In this case, it may be very suitable… as there are plenty of fly men circling around the smouldering basket of assets.
Ad hoc:
” created or done for a particular purpose as necessary.”
The Sevco relegation story is fantasy. An admin even would see a 15 point deduction ( wrong for those teams already down there, as I have previously posted ) However the corrupt factions within the SFA SPFL would ensure the officials see them OK. The help they get would increase, so as to make sure they never went down. So why waste money with this bet? First off it makes the media, therefore many who are unaware of their predicament, will now think twice before doing any work without money up front. This alone will make it harder for them to function, and an admin event more likely. So pile the money on lads!.
For Sevco it is “Carry on regardless.” and that Fat Lady is DEAD. They have learned nothing from their international fraud and neither FIFA nor UEFA applied their strict rules to this cesspit at Ibrox. I would be interested to see if this time, Sevco were ordered to fire coaches and players, as everyone else was the last time. I would want to see justice being done and every loan player should be returned to their parent club. The FIRE SALE is close too and the LORD has seen everything. They are going DOWN!
If they are unable to raise the external finance required to see out the season then they will not fulfill their fixtures and will be classified last ie. bottom ie. relegated ie. liquidated ie. fucked.
This is bewildering on a number of levels Phil.
Your reporting is top notch, and I don’t doubt your sources (although I may doubt the motives of your sources).
What doesn’t make sense to me is why Alastair Johnston, knowing the full financial predicament RIFC are in, recently became ‘a Person With Significant Influence or Control’ by virtue of his extending a loan to the parent company after the AGM? He’s presumably a smart guy and doesn’t fancy pouring his own personal wealth down the toilet. So he provided the loan, at a minimum, with a plan of being paid back. A more reasonable person would insist on a risk-adjusted rate of return, although being a RRM, he may have waived that last requirement.
What are the terms of this loan? Specifically, the interest rate (presumably zero, but I wouldn’t bet my own money on someone knowingly extending an interest-free loan to an insolvent institution)? And also what is the maturity date of the loan? Was this a bridge loan for a period of weeks or months? Regardless, Alastair can single handedly force an insolvency event by refusing to extend the term of his loan, just like all the other director-creditors can when the maturity dates of their loans come.
If that is what is going on behind the scenes, and I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute, that would mean Alastair is the lender of last resort to RIFC and holds all the cards at the poker table. This is a power-play, pure and simple. But he likely saved RIFC from having to ALREADY file administration paperwork.
Lastly, your reporting that Campbell Dallas recently paying an unscheduled visit to the Blue Room doesn’t jive with their obligations as RIFC’s auditor. The mid-year accounts (which weren’t even being drafted at that point) aren’t audited anyway, and their next formal obligation wouldn’t commence until after the 2017-18 season concludes this June. So why the reason for the visit? The answer is obvious to anyone with a curiosity, an internet connection, and 5 minutes of spare time.
http://www.campbelldallas.co.uk/services/restructuring-and-insolvency/
It takes a very, very clever person to go to a foreign country with nothing and make massive amounts of money. Whether one is straight or dodgy or downright corrupt, that principle never changes. You have to have brains.
Yes, at times, such an individual will make a mistake, back a loser or take a wrong turn but it will rarely result in a complete financial wipeout as they will always make sure that someone else takes the fall.
The only exception to that is in taking on a government, particularly one as dodgy and corrupt as South Africa as King found out, but even then he will have a fortune tucked away, as the further point is that once someone has a degree of wealth it is easier than ever to hide a lot of it.
Which is why there is a further corollary to your above post Phil. Despite some wrong turns, Dave is not stupid. He has played the others like an expert and my fervent belief is that Admin 2 and even Liquidation 2 is his endgame in order to snatch the securities that he has, hang the others with their IOU’s out to dry and recoup as much of the £20m that he previously lost.
There is no doubt in my mind that the fate of the club, the ire of the fans, the bankruptcy of anyone else involved in this is of no concern to him.
I tend to agree with this.
The spend strategies, and debt strategies deliberately over exposing the company and gearing it to large OPEX spend above income is deliberate.
He said he was deliberately going to do it. But he said he would cover the overspend.
If he doesn’t cover it then it crashes.
Is this his plan all along?
After SDM, only Charles Green made money from a Rangers and got out. I think he envies Green.
I agree also, there is far too much evidence to suggest this isn’t deliberate.
Baiting Ashley, the merch, shamelessly lying about everything to everyone, the overspending, the press manipulation, the seriously bonkers appointment of Pedro, the dreadful signings, the expensive signings, the sackings, the compensation cases, the court cases, etc. etc.
The circles King moves in don’t give a toss about concert parties, they don’t even operate in the same business arena as us mortals. It’s lesser players like the 3 Bears that are goosed.
But trudging round the city asking for finance looks the part. He’s good at making a show of making an effort I’ll give him that.
Having operated in the murky waters of SA business, does anyone think he couldn’t access a seriously large amount of “slightly soiled” cash in an emergency if he really wanted to?!
One thing it’s easy to forget is that everybody at Rangers got exactly the same info as we all did…..he’s a lying b*****d.
Like the Fast Show character who is a compulsory thief but people keep asking him to look after stuff. “No don’t, don’t, I’ll just steal it.” And he does, so what did they expect?!
Whoever triggers Admin 2 will be savaged mercilessly by the King-controlled media and will be dead men walking in the eyes of the fans. Ergo, King will once again become either the lesser of two evils or indeed his stock could even rise on the back of positive spin.
Fans don’t give a fig for austerity, they want Celtic stopped at all costs, and debt free, the Jim McColl’s and Brian Kennedy’s will come out of hiding. King’s hands-on role will be neutered, but as an executive chairman say, he’ll forever sit at the top table as a hero.
You heard it here first!
From all the evidence, Dave King is not a ‘very, very clever’ person at all, he is, instead, the very definition of a psychopath or, as the new medical dictionaries prefer it, he ‘suffers from’ an ‘antisocial personality disorder’, hence his cold blooded ruthlessness in lying to and robbing from, indeed, clearing out, the South African children’s charity and the pensioners’ massive pension fund by narcissistically posing as a chartered accountant over a period of many years and he will do the same to Sevco and their three monkeys support, as running ‘long cons’ of this type is his chosen stock in trade.
The man should be under constant medical supervision, preferably in a locked ward, as his brutal actions over many decades have repeatedly shown him to be a genuine menace to society.
However, as our society is actually run by psychopaths, he is rewarded with the chairmanship of a Scottish football club and the SFA lick wipe his shoes for him every time he snaps his fingers.
Dave King is the very embodiment of all that is wrong with rampant capitalism, freemasonry and our western society at large, where self gratification has become standard practice for all but the few with the eyes, and the wherewithal, to recognise it for what it is.
What are the chances, eh ..?
‘The Psychopath Test Questions
As stated, each item on the psychopath test checklist is really a trait or psychopathic symptom and not a question. The following are the traits listed on the PCL-R:
Glibness-superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth (narcissistic psychopath)
Need for stimulation
Pathological lying
Conning-manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect
Callous-lack of empathy
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavior controls
Promiscuous sexual behavior
Early behavioral problems (Do child psychopaths exist?)
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility
Failure to accept responsibility
Many marital relationships
Juvenile delinquency (behavior of psychopathic children)
Revocation of conditional release
Criminal versatility’
As we can see, Grand Master Glib ticks more than a few of the boxes.
https://www.healthyplace.com/personality-disorders/psychopath/does-a-psychopath-test-exist-diagnosing-the-psychopath/
He never lost 2om on original mob he took 18m out so net 2m loss per what was written at the time
I don’t bet on anything….but if I did….it wouldn’t be on Sevco being relegated.
Even with a 15 point deduction…That ain’t gonna happen.
I think I’m also correct in saying that….If this new club goes into Liquidation…then that would not be classed as Relegation…should they re-invent themselves again…with more help from the Authorities.
I think the Bookies have suckered a lot of punters here.
And having been involved with one for many years….I know he’ll be smiling today.
Lord Bannatyne ruled the original Rangers FC Liquidation was not legal Relegation or demotion.
A New Rangers agreed a new contract with the SFL to join their bottom tier.
I don’t bet on anything either, Mike, never have nor will, as a wee bird told me when I was young that ‘the bookie always wins’ and I’ve seen in the interim just how right that wee bird was …
That’s why I didn’t stick 20 quid on Sevco’s ‘bottom six finish’, as skint and as sick as I am because I’d rather have 20 quid in my pocket today than a hypothetical 3 grand that I know the SFA will deny me come May, whether Sevco go into admin or not.
We all know it’s admin at the very least now and we also all know how well briefed Regan et al are when it comes to all things Blue Room from the bloggers’ extensive coverage down the years so their ‘rescue plan’ for Sevco-Next Zombie Entity will already be at an advanced stage.
In fact, they already knew form the off what the scam was with the NewCo, it couldn’t be clearer, yet these malignant men are allowed to sit under UEFA’s umbrella quaffing champagne while claiming that they can’t even afford to use Hampden p, which is just their way of testing the waters to fund the forthcoming Lost Marbles Staircase meltdown.
So I still have my score in my pocket, and a song in my heart, thanks to the imminent approach of the above 🙂
And I’ll never act on the word of someone who ends their sentences with ‘Just sayin ..’, as my instincts tell me that he’s probably a bookie himself drumming up some interest.
Know wot I mean? 😉
One can only wonder what the end-game could be, even in the event of administration, for a company whose only salient business strategy is to run indefinitely at a loss.
Running at a loss without football success. Success that delivers revenue.
Why, it’s crash it and start again, of course.
Sevco are the proof of it.
You having a bet on it happening phil
I don’t gamble and I’m not advocating anyone else to gamble.
On anything…
I bet my wife a fiver you’d say that….
OOPS.
I’ve already had a tickle for them to finish in the bottom six: £10 @ 150/1 with Skybet on the 4th January. Betting on this was suspended on the 8th January. They’ll dish out all the special offers, but the Skybrox won’t take another £10 on this bet. Try it Bhoys: when bookies baulk at a bet, the punter must know more than them!
If Administration come a calling, then a 15 point penalty would be incurred, but only on Sevco!!
For the continuation believers, as this would be there second administration event, this would result in a 25 point penalty as per the “jam tarts” events of not too long ago.
The 25 point penalty applies to a 2nd occurrence within 5 years. The original liquidation of Rangers (even assuming that the SFA treats this as the same club) is now beyond that 5 year window, so by rule only a 15 point deduction would follow.
Short of a disastrous run of results after the break, they should finish no worse than 10th even with the points deduction.
Whether or not they’re still around to play in the SPL next season is an entirely different question that hinges on whether or not they’re liquidated prior to then. But I think it’s a safe bet that they won’t be relegated on sporting merits.
Benjamin, as you say, a 15-point deduction would only take them down to seventh with eighth and ninth-placed Motherwell and Hamilton each having a game in hand over them. Rangers would only be five points off the play-off spot currently occupied by Partick.
The question for me would be whether the administrators forced them to shed any critical players as part of the health package. A weakened squad might still be able to maintain their new position in life. Or they might slip further down the table.
The continuation myth of course won’t fly on this one but, hypothetically speaking, wouldn’t the fact that Rangers’ liquidation is still in process affect the points penalty decision?
This in the wholly unimaginable scenario of having an entirely clean, uncorrupted, non-Masonic body as the ruling football authority?
I am sure I will be with many others who have a continuity thought. if rangers is the old company (1872) then this is the second time they will have gone into administration and surely the penalties are stiffer than 15 points? by suggesting they are a new company to save points deductions at a higher level they will need to admit that the rest of the story was fiction and the bears will not be having a picnic (jelly and ice cream for others though) but will be livid, the SMSM will look silly for peddling the lie. however if they get docked 25 points they may not qualify for that money spinning European adventure. its a quandary.
Paul, both the 15 and 25 point penalties were formalized in the rulebook subsequent to Rangers 1872 liquidating. The 15 point deduction applies to the 1st administration event, and the 25 point penalty applies to the 2nd or greater administration event WITHIN A 5 YEAR WINDOW. We are now beyond the 5 year date of the assets being transferred to RIFC and the ‘club’ playing under the new corporate entity. It will be treated as a 1st occurrence according to the letter of the rulebook.
As for Europa, there is a UEFA rule that is ironclad that states that clubs cannot qualify for UEFA sponsored tournaments if they have sought or are under court protection from creditors (administration events) at any point during the relevant qualifying season. Even if they win the Scottish Cup, they cannot play in Europa next season if they file for Administration prior to June 30. And if the exit date for any hypothetical administration event is July 1, 2018 or later, that would preclude them from Europa and/or Champions League (haha) in 2019-20 as well.
When the fun stops, stop…
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Is this the Alistair Johnson who was mocked, during Whyte trial, by advocates and some witnesses for his other worldly approach to business whilst on Oldco board?
No, that was his Holding Company.
Would you bet £100 on sevco being relegated or £2M on Sevco making the champions league and paying you back with interest ?
They won’t be relegated.
They’d rather die first.
Chortle chortle
Friend don’t let friends Sevco.
That’s ever so slightly more informative than the Daily Record’s “don’t worry lads, it’s fine” article late last night! Keep up the good work!
Meanwhile, I have been conducting my own examination of the prospects of a Sevco insolvency… If I may, here are my findings…
https://theclumpany.wordpress.com/2018/01/08/administration-rumours/
Superb…as usual.
Wow…the Sevco doomsday clock just took a giant lurch forward and the bells are away to ring…tick tock.
Seems the game is fast approaching a conclusion for Mr King…
Sorry forgot to say the above amount/s are transfer fee due