calscot

Could we then relocate to Govan?

I'll take your word for it but my point is that although the rates are normal, it doesn't make them value for money. To me it seems like they have a closed shop and a lack of competitive practices - and from what I've seen, I can't help but think they are grossly overcharging for what they actually do. I think there should be some mechanism where the court tenders for the contract and takes the best offer - not solely based on fee. £600 an hour may be normal, but to me it seems in this case to be infeasible and is certainly not in the best interests of the creditors. Let me deal with this first. What I meant is that they are not special in themselves in the powers they have. The powers they use are given to them by the court and the insolvency process. It might take skill to fly a plane but that does not mean the pilot is special enough in that he can fly himself without the plane. I don't find that a good argument - I doubt they can do mine. Without being vain, I doubt a lot of people could even acquire the ability to do my job (and I assume even less for yours) but that doesn't mean they should be paid a hell of a lot less than me. Again, my masters in physics was hardly a breeze but that doesn't justify me having huge wage demands - in fact I get paid a lot less than people with less tough qualifications. (I can see you saying that I would if I could but that is a different argument). Well you are agreeing with me. I'm saying that after the CVA there will be no £55m debt to pay. Your getting back to my plane analogy. Did the plane get you there or the pilot? Here's another analogy: imagine it is compulsory to use an estate agent to sell your house - are they justified in inflating their fees to 35%? Are they worth it if they make you some money? To be honest in the administration I can't see where they are adding value as like entropy, the total value to everyone outside the accountants is lower. The creditors don't gain £55m, they lose more than that. But here's another one, you couldn't have gotten your job without the administrator who processed your degree, but should they get 10% of your wage? They added a lot of value to you... Should we pay 10% of the value of our car for an MOT? Should a customs person who saves the government £10m get paid £1m? Actually if that was the case we'd have been off the hook ages ago and given an sustainably affordable bill over a period of time. Basically you are saying they do a difficult job and add value. My point is that most of the value is added by the process rather than them, and a difficult job does not justify a far higher fee per person than say the President of the US? You can get him for $400k a year. I'm not saying they don't add value, I'm saying I can't see £3m worth of value for the work they did. Especially as their competence has been called into question from many quarters. My point is that in this kind of instance you should be paying someone for a job. Just because fixing a leaking roof massively improves the value of your house, doesn't mean the roofer should be paid more. My main point is that if there was a proper open market - we're talking proper capitalism too, would the job have been done cheaper? Or in a less capitalist point of view, could we have employed say 10 people earning between 30k and 200k per annum have done about as good a job for a tenth of the price using the same administrative powers? In football terms it's like we're paying Advocaat's Rangers team wages for finishing just above the relegation place in the SPL when we could have done better with the Motherwell team and their wage bill at a fraction of the price. You might go to a liquidation auction and by a collection of classic cars for £8.5M, writing off all the finance and owning something much more valuable. But how much do you pay the auctioneer? You couldn't do it without him. How much value did he add? In fact a BAD auctioneer raises less money for the seller and therefore saves the buyer money. In this case what looks like a bad auctioneer is being paid a commission of about 35%. You can't have the auction without him and he's saved the buyer a lot of money, but I can't see how he's earned 35%.

Sorry but while that may be correct, it's incredibly hard to believe. What about companies who go into administration with a turnover of less than £12m a year? It just makes the whole system non-viable and pretty stupid looking. How much does it really cost for four of five decent accountants? I can't imagine their wages would be more than say £600k a year and that could be reduced by using some of your normal accountancy staff on normal if highish wages.

I don't quite get your first point as my point as you're ignoring the part where there is no logical reason why administrators couldn't do it for a lot less money. What they are earning is NOT value for money. They are NOT doing anything special for their fee to write off the debts, it is the law that doing that. Administrators being paid less could do the exact same job, if not a hell of a lot better. I don't quite get your second point either - the debt will have to be included in the CVA or written off using a newco. Would you pay £8.5m for a collection of classic cars worth £30m from a bankrupt guy, on the condition that all finance on them is written off? That's what's going on here. And we're talking in a scenario where all your future running costs are paid by visitors to your garage while the value appreciates...

It's weird, Rangers win a point of principle and we're the bad guys...

However, Green's is also laughable, just not so hilarious. So where is Kennedy with a proper and decent bid? He only needs £8.5m and then he can get his money back by selling the club to the fans in a few years. You know rich people spend a load of money on hobbies - Ferraris, yaughts, planes etc and don't make money out of them. Why can't someone see Rangers as a hobby where after the purchase price it is free?

Administration is a weird thing. You take a company in financial straits and then charge them £1m a month for a few people to run them "better"... The irony is that if they were in charge for that fee without admin, we'd be out of business. Surely something like £200k a month should be way more than enough to get some decent business brains in?

I thought they already had? Fergus left with £30m in his back pocket and how much as Desmond put in? The figures are irrelevant anyway as the point is that someone would definitely pay £8.5m of their own money for Celtic and probably a hell of a lot more. Our best offer is £2 plus the amazing good grace of a commercial loan, after Rangers were bought last year for £1. I want to pay a lot more for Rangers and I'll bet thousands of others do too, so your first premise is wrong. All we lack is a vehicle to put our combined bid on.

The point is if that's an ok option then who better to implement it - a ruthless businessman trying to make as much as he can from the situation or 45,000 people who love the club and see no need to make a profit? I can't see why 45,000 wouldn't put £200 in without getting their money back - surely a rich Rangers fan could put up the money and even allow the fans to pay it up over 8 years at £25 a year plus say 5% apr interest - so £30 a year? That's a decent commercial rate. How would that not be affordable? There are many fan based scenarios but it needs a rich leader to underwrite it.

Can't believe the crap people are getting about being naive about business. You can be in business and make money without shafting everyone. You could easily put up £8.5m of your own money, get Rangers back on track and sell for a good profit - even if you ONLY made 50% over 5 year that would be a pretty decent return in a recession. How is that spunking your money away? However, you don't even need to make a direct profit from football to make a return for owning a famous club. The fact you own it is good for the rest of your business. Celtic are supposedly worth £52m, how are we not worth more than £2 plus a £8.5m loan to be paid back with interest? There are a lot of people who seem to think we're worth fuck all and then like to ram that down other people's throats.

Seems to me that everyone wants Rangers for free. What is to stop fans getting together and offering £9m - with that paid back to them over 8 years? Who wouldn't buy into that? 45k people at £200 quid each - you own a share of Rangers with a vote AND get your money back... The only problem is organisation and getting people to actually put their hands in their pockets. Why can't the likes of Joe Lewis or someone else underwrite something like this. After all, he's already lost a lot more millions for nothing in return to SDM. At worst in this scenario, he ends up owning Rangers for zero net investment after a mere £9m outlay. Actually SDM could probably do it to pay back the fans... However, I will not buy into a share issue where I am lining some charlatans' pockets. Anyone who gets Rangers for free will get nothing from me.

I was under the impression that there is £8.5m offered for the CVA but only £5.5m offered for the assets to start a newco. The differential makes sense, otherwise there's no incentive to take the CVA - plus a newco is not worth as much due to increased costs and reduced income potential. The danger to me is that £5.5m is so low the creditors may decide that they can gain more by selling off the assets separately.

The impression you gave is that we should actively chase off any buyer if we have any slight doubts about them. Whether they would be actually be chased off or not is another story.

Can't see what's outstanding about it. Leggo used to be good but it's now so packaged up in hype that even if or when he is right, it's very difficult to see it. I now find him very difficult to read.

I would find it exceptionally difficult to buy into a share issue that mostly lined the original investors pockets. I've been saying for a while that some of the consortia look to be investing little of their own money and then taking a disproportionate share holding after raising millions from fans in a share issue. We could be buying say 10% of the club for 70% of the investment. The sad thing is that out of so many interested parties, there's not one we can find highly credible with the interests of Rangers to the fore (while fairly protecting their own interests). Or is it what we need? McCann came in and did a job without all this messing around but also left with a reputed £30m of fans' money. However, they are in a decent position now. Rangers are not the most attractive proposition, but when you read of Celtic being worth £52m, it's hard to understand why someone can't come in with half that money to get Rangers back on its feet and be left with owning something of similar value. Pity those Euromillions winners in Largs are not diehard Rangers fans... But it's strange how oil sheiks can come in and spend over a billion on Man City, but there's no-one interested in a more historical and prestigious club at a tiny fraction of that. I think part of the trouble is that Rangers fans have not given the impression that we'd put our hands in our pockets as shown by the modest amount raised by RFF. I'm very disappointed that that wasn't more like £5m raised - 100k fans at 50 quid each. If the opposite was true then all we'd need is a rich fan to underwrite a fan ownership model. Then we'd just need 50k fans at say 400 quid each to raise £20m. But it's all too easy to think like or get pledges but getting everyone to pitch in is the difficult part.

So we should chase off any buyer when the slightest doubts arise? There is a point when you have to suck it and see - especially when most of it is outwith your control.

So what is your understanding now? It may be £16m after interest and penalties for all I know but that's irrelevant to attempting to ascertain future costs.

Maybe it's more like the press taking the piss - the big tax case goes from £49m to over £75 in some reports and the total bill goes to something like £125m in other reports. I have no idea of the current cost as the penalties and interest seem to balloon very quickly. According to the D&P report the original bill was "circa £3m" so perhaps you're taking the piss with the implied £2.25m? I actually thought it was less but was also attempting to address gunslinger's 16m figure for which I assumed the unpaid tax was about £7m. Instead of being insulting, why not just give the correct figures? None of us are perfect in our knowledge or memory here - and you are obviously no exception.

The payments may have been net - as most payments are - but that does not make them net profit: you have to subtract the costs...

I was under the impression that Rangers received no money from Ticketus. So you don't agree we paid Ticketus?

See point 5.9 in the D&F report "5.9 In June 2011, the first £3m of the liabilities due to Ticketus were paid by the Club, followed by an additional payment of £5m in September 2011." "5.23 Shortly afterwards HMRC lodged a creditors‟ petition to appoint an Administrator in respect of the unpaid taxes which had accrued since August 2011 of circa £9m. After discussions between the parties, HMRC decided to withdraw its petition, consenting to the appointment of Paul Clark and David Whitehouse of Duff & Phelps as Joint Administrators." Sorry, I remembered this as £7m but in fact is was £9m. So your numbers are £15m out - does that mean the £10m hole turns into a £5m profit? :fish:

Would someone like to publish the NET income from Europe? Gross income doesn't tell us much. I recall we were told we didn't make much net from the UEFA final year due to bonus and costs. It led to fans asking where the missing millions were.

Eh? That's not what the D&P report said. They may not be the most reliable but where are you getting your info from? I recall the unpaid tax bill (without penalties) was more like £7m. The we tax bill which balooned to about £9m but is irrelevant as we obviously won't be due to pay that every year in the future... We also didn't run out of money in March, we didn't have enough to finish the season. We were about £3-4m short.

PS Last season we made very little from Europe or the cups, paid £8m to ticketus and had other income snaffled by Whyte and yet we were about £10m short. Next season we won't have the Ticketus bill or Whyte. We've also lost our highest earner in Jelavic and Papac is leaving which will be a significant reduction. If the TV deal goes through that will also increase our income by over half a million. If tickets sales stay the same then I can see us plausibly breaking even. We can't even break that by signing anyone.

Before Whyte, I've been led to believe we were making something like an effective £7m surplus which went to pay the debt and interest. Any hole will be almost wholly due to lack of Europe and differences in ticket sales. Of course that changes if we are not in the SPL or have other sanctions. Assuming an ideal scenario of similar ticket sales, are we saying that not being in Europe will cost us £17m net per season that we rely on? I for one, doubt that.