Andrew Dickson, Head of Football Administration

[craig 5,199]

Maybe not £15m because with the administration & legal fees taken off it there would have been under £10m left for HMRC and the other creditors, but I certainly think a cash CVA pot of £20m or so would have given HMRC a situation where they were practically forced to accept it because even with the huge administration & legal fees taken off it there would still have been a very large sum of money left in the creditor pot.

 

All that was really needed was a CVA offer which would leave a large sum in the pot so that HMRC and other creditors would actually get something back, but the CVA proposal finally submitted by Duff & Phelps and Green's group wasn't going to leave the creditors with much if any cash at all. It was a CVA proposal destined to fail because it was designed to fail.

 

As was EVERY other bid Zappa.

 

You are making it sound like Green's was the only low bid. It wasnt. NONE of the bids would have been close to getting a CVA. NONE.

 

This is a moot argument because NOBODY was willing to pay that much to get a CVA.

 

Murray had been trying to sell the club for years - why would somebody decide that NOW was a good time with an additional 14 million in HMRC debt plus having sold off the ST's to Ticketus ? Makes no sense.

 

If SDM couldnt sell it for a reasonable amount before Whyte sure as hell wasnt getting rid of it for as much as 20 or 25 million.

[Zappa 0]

Don't understand this 'designed to fail' thing either when it's the largest CVA that was offered

 

I don't see what's difficult to understand about it. Duff & Phelps tabled a CVA proposal to the creditors which had a bottom line that would essentially give the creditors back almost nothing. The only reason that a bunch of the creditors actually voted "yes" to that pitiful, inadequate CVA proposal is that they didn't want to see the PLC put into liquidation. At the end of the day though, it was always going to come down to HMRC's vote and there's no way on this earth they were going to accept a CVA proposal that small, so my own logic tells me that Duff & Phelps and Green's group knew fine well that it would fail to be accepted and they would be taking the pre-arranged newco option.

[Zappa 0]

That is all good and well but who was going to offer that ?

 

There wasnt one single bid that was sufficient enough to get even close to that amount.

 

Absolutely and I'm not saying that there was Craig. Nobody was willing to invest enough money.

[craig 5,199]

I don't see what's difficult to understand about it. Duff & Phelps tabled a CVA proposal to the creditors which had a bottom line that would essentially give the creditors back almost nothing. The only reason that a bunch of the creditors actually voted "yes" to that pitiful, inadequate CVA proposal is that they didn't want to see the PLC put into liquidation. At the end of the day though, it was always going to come down to HMRC's vote and there's no way on this earth they were going to accept a CVA proposal that small, so my own logic tells me that Duff & Phelps and Green's group knew fine well that it would fail to be accepted and they would be taking the pre-arranged newco option.

 

"designed to fail" is nonsense though. "Destined to fail" would be far more apt.

 

You are suggesting that the CVA was designed the way it was to make it fail. The reality is that BOTH Green and TBK's bids would have failed. What were D&P supposed to do ? Accept neither ? Then what ? The end result would have been the same. I dont think it was "designed to fail" at all, but I do think it was "destined to fail"

[Zappa 0]

As was EVERY other bid Zappa.

 

You are making it sound like Green's was the only low bid. It wasnt. NONE of the bids would have been close to getting a CVA. NONE.

 

This is a moot argument because NOBODY was willing to pay that much to get a CVA.

 

Murray had been trying to sell the club for years - why would somebody decide that NOW was a good time with an additional 14 million in HMRC debt plus having sold off the ST's to Ticketus ? Makes no sense.

 

If SDM couldnt sell it for a reasonable amount before Whyte sure as hell wasnt getting rid of it for as much as 20 or 25 million.

 

I completely agree, although I'm certainly not trying to say that Green's was the only low bid, so if it comes accross that way to you, then you're misreading my point.

[craig 5,199]

I get what you are saying, but I still dont think it was designed to fail, more destined....

[Zappa 0]

"designed to fail" is nonsense though. "Destined to fail" would be far more apt.

 

You are suggesting that the CVA was designed the way it was to make it fail. The reality is that BOTH Green and TBK's bids would have failed. What were D&P supposed to do ? Accept neither ? Then what ? The end result would have been the same. I dont think it was "designed to fail" at all, but I do think it was "destined to fail"

 

Well, almost everything pointed towards Duff & Phelps preferring to go down the newco route Craig, so I'm quite happy with using the word "designed" to describe the CVA proposal they tabled knowing full well that it would be rejected. They didn't even need to go through with a CVA proposal at all because they could have just taken the newco option, but the CVA proposal was a sideshow that made it look like they were doing their best and trying to save the PLC. In actual fact, the time and costs involved in the CVA proposal just made Duff & Phelps and the lawyers more money in fees and took a larger chunk of cash off the creditors pot supplied by the newco deal.

Edited September 8, 2012 by Zappa

[craig 5,199]

Well, almost everything pointed towards Duff & Phelps preferring to go down the newco route Craig, so I'm quite happy with using the word "designed" to describe the CVA proposal they tabled knowing full well that it would be rejected. They didn't even need to go through with a CVA proposal at all because they could have just taken the newco option, but the CVA proposal was a sideshow that made it look like they were doing their best and trying to save the PLC. In actual fact, the time and costs involved in the CVA proposal just made Duff & Phelps and the lawyers more money in fees and took a larger chunk of cash off the creditors pot supplied by the newco deal.

 

If you use designed then we will have to agree to disagree.

 

They didnt know full well it would be rejected, unless you disbelieve what they say - which I get many do.

 

They said that HMRC were willing to work with them and then that changed, and HMRC changing that stance was a deal breaker, no matter who it was.

 

You do realise that if they really wanted they could have been appointed admin and very quickly determined that liquidation was the best scenario ? Yet they tried to work through cost saving measures to ensure that the club survived and didnt have to be liquidated.

 

As registered administrators they have ethical standards to uphold and I doubt they would put them on the line simply for a big pay day - I doubt Messrs Clark & Whitehouse have to worry about their next pay check.

 

I dont think it was designed at all. They accepted the best bid that they could get which would allow the club to at least be alive this season - any further delay and we may not have been playing football at all this season, given when we got our licence.

 

You are entitled to believe that D&P were doing nothing but trying to rip off cash. But none of us know what was actually happening behind the scenes. In fact, much of the cash that Whyte siphoned off is still missing. So what kind of intricate web did he weave and how difficult did he make it for ANY administrator to come in and do their job.

 

And creditors had the opportunity to refute their fees.... which I believe they did but they were upheld by the courts, were they not ? So were the judges that upheld their fee request also in on this ? Nope, didnt think so.

Edited September 8, 2012 by craig

[Zappa 0]

If you use designed then we will have to agree to disagree.

 

They didnt know full well it would be rejected, unless you disbelieve what they say - which I get many do.

 

They said that HMRC were willing to work with them and then that changed, and HMRC changing that stance was a deal breaker, no matter who it was.

 

I think there's an element of arguing over semantics here. The way I view it, is that Duff & Phelps did indeed design a CVA proposal that was "destined" to fail. Ok, so they only designed it using what they had at their disposal, but that doesn't mean they didn't do so for their own (and Green & co's) benefit. Going through the motions of a CVA proposal that was destined to fail was a waste of valuable time and money for the club and creditors, but it wasn't a waste of time and money for Duff & Phelps or Charles Green's group, so no I didn't believe what Duff & Phelps said about HMRC changing their tune. Duff & Phelps were bullshitting and I said that at the time. They actually had the brass neck to come away with all that nonsense about believing it to be a good CVA proposal which they thought had a good chance of success, when it was clearly a poor CVA proposal that had almost zero chance of being accepted, something which I also said at the time.

 

You do realise that if they really wanted they could have been appointed admin and very quickly determined that liquidation was the best scenario ?

 

Yes and they could also have relatively quickly newco'd the company as a reputable administrator experienced in football club administrations may have done.

 

Yet they tried to work through cost saving measures to ensure that the club survived and didnt have to be liquidated.

 

They very much laboured over the cost-cutting measures whilst racking up a large bill for themselves and ultimately failed to save the company after labouring over the rest of the administration process.

 

As registered administrators they have ethical standards to uphold and I doubt they would put them on the line simply for a big pay day - I doubt Messrs Clark & Whitehouse have to worry about their next pay check.

 

I'm very uncertain about their "ethical standards" given their own companies' involvement with the Whyte takeoever, but you're certainly right that they won't be worrying about their next pay day.

 

I dont think it was designed at all. They accepted the best bid that they could get which would allow the club to at least be alive this season - any further delay and we may not have been playing football at all this season, given when we got our licence.

 

You are entitled to believe that D&P were doing nothing but trying to rip off cash. But none of us know what was actually happening behind the scenes. In fact, much of the cash that Whyte siphoned off is still missing. So what kind of intricate web did he weave and how difficult did he make it for ANY administrator to come in and do their job.

 

And creditors had the opportunity to refute their fees.... which I believe they did but they were upheld by the courts, were they not ? So were the judges that upheld their fee request also in on this ? Nope, didnt think so.

 

We'll probably never know the answers to all of the questions we can think of because as you say, there definitely was a lot going on behind the scenes. As for the fees being refuted by creditors and upheld by the court, I think that's only to be expected if no evidence of wrongdoing or falsification of fee amounts was provided to the court. Their fees were no doubt relatively above board for the amount of time the administration process took.

[forlanssister 3,060]

I get what you are saying, but I still dont think it was designed to fail, more destined....

 

Whilst it's a fair argument that it wasn't designed to fail it certainly wasn't designed to succeed either.

 

The irrevocable fall back of the £5.5m newco option when you consider you get the (reputed) £2.5m SPL prize money and (assume) you get all the players registrations TUPE'd over means the buyers would have no reason for shedding few tears over what could be viewed as simply saving yourself £3m on your initial outlay (and picking up all the assets for effectively £0).

 

I'm not convinced the differing CVA's were compared using equal criteria by Duff & Phelps but that's now a moot point anyway.