BrahimHemdani

All countries must have a football association or they can't play in international tournaments, CL/EL transfer players etc etc. So you are correct the SFA is here to stay and has made quite lot of changes in line with the McLeish Report. I'll pass on your regards to Mr Regan The SPL and the SFL will be merged, you can bet on that.

Done now although it gave me heart failure as it threw me out as it posted the thread. Had it on a WORD doc this time though. Trouble is when you do it that way you lose the para formatting, bold, colours etc and have to redo them on the site. Bit of a pain, come on you Administrators get it sorted!

On Wednesday night I posted a comment that I was concerned about the involvement of one of the Blue Knights and that I had written to his employers in that connection. I am now prepared to name that person as Mr John Bennett. I would stress that my concern is in no way personal. It is simply the case that as an employed person I could not see how Mr Bennett could make enough time for Rangers as well as his full time occupation. Mr Bennett is employed as a fund manager with Henderson Global Investors, so I wrote to the CEO of that company as follows (name and address omitted): Wednesday, 14 March 2012 RANGERS BLUE KNIGHTS â?? MR JOHN BENNETT I am writing to you as an IFA who has transacted business with your Company for many years as well as some of the companies that you have acquired recently, such as Gartmore and New Star. At the same time, I am a lifelong supporter of Rangers Football Club and a former secretary of Rangers Supporters Trust. Although I do not have any direct link to a supportersâ?? organisation at the moment, I have been a shareholder for nearly 30 years. In terms of Funds Under Management, currently I have approximately £xxx,xxx invested in your products, either directly or through the xyz platform; of which just over £xx,xxx is invested in Mr Bennettâ??s European Selected Opportunities Fund and £xx,xxx in your European Growth Fund managed by Mr Pease. The juxtaposition of these two Funds is something that has been exercising my mind since your acquisition of Gartmore last April and the fund integration in July 2011. As a supporter and shareholder in Rangers Football Club, naturally I welcome any moves to bring the club out of administration as soon as possible but as an IFA with clients invested in Mr Bennettâ??s Fund, you will appreciate that I am extremely concerned about the possible impact on Fund performance of his involvement with the â??Blue Knightsâ?. I understand that Mr Bennett is the sole Manager of this Fund and also your European Focus Fund, lead Manager on four other funds and co-Manages your European Absolute Return Fund; with total assets well in excess of £2 billion. Therefore, it does seem to me that he certainly has his hands full managing seven funds, without the added pressure of being involved in the â??Blue Knightsâ? group and the possibility of becoming a Director of Rangers FC. I look forward to your comments with great interest and hopefully you will consider that this matter is urgent, given that offers to purchase the club have to be submitted by this Friday, 16 March 2012. Yours sincerely Mr Bennett called me at 2.00pm today. The call lasted about 40 minutes. He told me that he fully understood my concerns. He said that â??he was one of the parties to have expressed an interestâ? in the consortium but that his name had been quoted by PM â??earlyâ?. He told me the background to his involvement and said that he had been in Glasgow yesterday and that he had had an â??extensive talk with PMâ?. I told him that I would be posting details of the conversation on Gersnet this evening and he agreed that I could say that he had given me an undertaking that he would do nothing that would compromise his ability to do his day job. He had â??looked at the complexities in terms of the management (of Rangers) and had had time to study what was requiredâ?. In his opinion it would require a â??full-time commitmentâ? and that was â??not something that he was able to offerâ?. I asked him about the amounts that individual members of the consortium were able to contribute and his response was that he was sure that â??the BK will raise sufficient funds to bidâ?. He did not know how much of that would come from Ticketus. Not surprisingly he would not say how much he intended to invest personally but commented that he â??would want a big say for (that) type of moneyâ?. This took him back to say that that would involve â??too muchâ? of his time. I told Mr Bennett that I was also concerned that the description of him in the Daily Record as a â??financial big hitterâ?¦.from Londonâ? might lead some fans to conclude that he would be able to invest some of the â?¬3 billion that he has under management at Henderson, in Rangers and he confirmed that this was a certainly not the case and that to that extent the description of him as a financial big hitter was false. He agreed with me that he should take steps to ensure that if there was any such misconception it be corrected as soon as possible. He concluded by saying that he would meet me the next time he was in Glasgow on business.

Yes you're right New thread coming now.

Quite so! Just started it again, give me half an hour.

I just spent half an hour writing the new thread and the system kicked me out, so I'm going to feed my face, pump up the tyres for tomorrow and come back to it about 10.30pm - 11.00pm hopefully.

John Bennet is NOT a financial "big hitter" inasmuch as he does not have mega millions to invest in Rangers either personally or institutionally. I will be posting his comments shortly.

Great idea; and not too many would be the answer to your question!

Well he's a conman par excellence but he's got balls that's for sure!

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/spl/2012/03/15/hearts-players-set-to-miss-out-on-their-monthly-wages-again-86908-23789891/ Is that 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of their wages?

Could AJ be involved despite backing Murray?

Just downloaded and saved looks like a fine piece of work; will try to get my head round it another time.

It may well be BD, but if I was Ticketus, I would want a gurantee that I was getting at least some money now e.g. directly from the investors or indeed the share issue rather than unknown future trading, wouldn't you?

91% in fact (though it is an incredibly small sample).

The BK's don't seem very popular!

I don't really see how any money paid to Ticketus would NOT impact other creditors but, as you say, it's as clear as mud. As an aside, I have a problem with the involvement of one of the other (10?) BK's, not in a personal sense at all, but in connection with his everyday employment. I have written to the CEO of the company concerned and will consider posting the letter and any reply I receive before Friday. This doesn't really impact the bid itself.

As you say this is an extremely "extreme" example. I see no reason why BK would offer significantly more than anyone else, on the contrary they might believe that there are reasons why they could offer less.

Thanks, have clariified wording in OP; appreciate you may still not agree.

I mean you put those people who you believe are not creditors in a position where they will be repaid some part or all of the money you believe they are not owed, by others e.g. potential shareholders. Why would you accept a bid from their consortium that put them in that enviable position?

If I understand this correctly the BK's justification for including Ticketus in the consortium is that: 1. We owe them £24M from season ticket sales over the next three seasons (and BTW how much of that is due at the end of this season/beginning of next?) 2. If they are included in the consortium it might be easier to do a deal with them, which presumably means repaying the £24M out of say 4/5 years ticket sales rather than 3 or from the share issue, directly or indirectly or getting some kind of goodwill reduction. 3. They will also be a source of an unspecified amount of money for working capital up front (repayment terms and interst unknown) But at the same time according to the BBC "It has also emerged that Duff and Phelps are set to challenge the creditor status of finance firm Ticketus. A two-day hearing is set to get under way at the Court of Session on Thursday." So if you were Duff and Phelps why would you accept a bid from a group that included a company whose creditor status you are about to challenge and whose part in the original purchase remains unclear? If you are there to protect the creditors and you don't believe Ticketus are a creditor are you not acting against the best interests of the remaining creditors if you accept a bid that means putting them in a positon where they might be able to recoup some part or all of the money that you do not believe they are owed? Or am I missing something here?

Just a few of comments the first one extremely pedantic I know. The second tier should start at £1001 and the third at £500,001 (assuming round pounds only). I'm not known as Mr Pedantic for nothing. The second tier is far too wide. IF I had £500,000 for say 500 £1000 shares I'd want a bit more in terms of representation than the guy with 1 @ £1001. I'd suggest £1,001 to £100,000. IF I had £500,000 or perhaps £1M I'd want a seat on the Board myself. It would be very interesting to know how much the BK's are likely to invest themselves and how many of them are looking for seats on the Board.

That's the Far East and Asia.

Ellis had Middle East backers until they found out it wasn't QP Rangers; maybe someone should tell these guys.

I am not sure where that was stated but I have previously posted this from Wikipedia:

Could Rangers Play in England I said on the Leaving Scotland and on the Fantasy/Nightmare thread I started on the 8th, â??my understanding is that UEFA will not allow it.â? I was wrong. The following comments are from an expert on UEFA who is on first name terms with Platini: First of all the decision would have to be made by the football associations and leagues of both countries, If they would agree that Rangers should play in the EPL then they would have to take the case to UEFA. UEFA would only then take a position on such a proposal. You could not take this case to UEFA before the respective governing bodies havenâ??t made a decision or developed a proposal for such a move. Second, the EU really doesnâ??t want to get involved in what they consider matters concerning football â?? not the EU. The football authorities would also do their best to avoid another Bosman case. Unless you have a lot of time and money to get a legal adviser involved who could explore the different possibilities it is not worth going down this road. I have not come across any UEFA or EU rules on this. So if someone did have the time and money, then it is possible. Could Rangers Play in the SFL3 This is what I said on the Fantasy/Nightmare thread: That well known comedian, Chick Young quoted Neil Doncaster as saying on Sportsound that there is no direct route into the Third Division and, of course, that is correct but assuming two teams move up from SFL1 (one to take Rangers place) and so on, then it follows that there would be vacancy in SFL3 in which case: â?¢ Rangers (2012) could apply to join SFL3 and take their chance alongside Coldstream, Nairn County or whoever; OR â?¢ They could buy an existing Third Division Club, thereby gaining automatic entry, rename it and apply to move the ground from wherever to Ibrox (assuming newco own Ibrox) I have had it confirmed to me today that that is substantially correct except that: (as has been stated elsewhere), there would be no relegation from the SPL but that still creates a vacancy in the SFL which would work through to the 3rd Division, and that If Rangers were to buy a current SFL Club then it would require a vote of the existing SFL Clubs to accept them. "but would there be a place for Rangers in the SFL, of course there would".