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Takeover in trouble

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Whoah there lads. A media campaign about us to drive a wedge between the club and fans? Absolute nonsense. I just don't trust SD and CM, and entirely because of their own words and actions.

Almost everything I posted here (top of page 28) came from
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. They spent an hour giving enough detail that the questions below present themselves. Listen to that mealy mouthed excuse that he used £25m of the club's money, then also loaned himself the remaining £9.6m balance (see point 5), listen to him saying 'the club was insolvent, so we are allowed to act as we wish'.

I understand that GOM wants to give them a chance to explain themselves, but it needs to be said that these people are barely even disguising their deeds here.

KittenMittens said:
These are all from Donald's own words and things we know

The deal:

1) 37m purchase
2) 25m SBC liability paid on behalf of Short by Donald (guaranteed vs parachutes) - characterised as 'club debt', but used by Donald as 'funding' for initial deal - eg: taking away Short's obligation to pay it off in lieu of Donald paying actual cash.
3) 12m madrox pay for club 'personally' (initially 15m, reduced to £12m upon due diligence)

The financing:

4) Paid £5m deposit
5) Remaining £7m (Madrox) secured vs parachute payments
agreed to pay balance in September £9.6m (Actual money for this was loaned to Madrox from the club, big question here about how much and what was paid off, I believe the reduction from £15m-£12m debt to Short was negotiated after this which may mean he got £2.6m 'back' effectively)
6) £25m SBC debt secured vs parachute payments and paid off. ('to be put back into the club' no specified timeframe or means)

The cash flow:

-£32m operating costs 18/19 ( including outstanding player costs)


+£20m revenue
+£3m from Sartori (for 20% equity)
+£?m of 19/20 parachute payments (£15m loan taken out, not all used 'bulk' still left over, he says £5m, but given the vagaries of his accounting, they could theoretically have used £7m).
+£1.5m Maja up front payment
+£? transfer fee installments from Borini, Lens, Khazri, McNair and Asoro sales (I think it's reasonable to say that £2.5-3m of the 20m total may have been available as working capital from installments).

That takes us to £31.5m of £32m, with not a penny paid by Donald yet. Did he put in the extra £500k? Maybe. Or maybe the 'running costs of £32m' were actually um... y'know... um... um... um... '31.5m')


My biggest concern is that right now, the only thing we know for a fact is that the amount Donald has outright paid for the club from his own pocket, without funding via a loan to Madrox from the club, without using parachute payments advances on next season, is somewhere between £5m to 5.5m . of a £37m deal.

Sure, he's accrued debt on behalf of madrox, but if a future buyer in turn waives that debt, they are effectively giving madrox £10m instead of the club. Given the financial means of someone buying the club today, that is not an insignificant amount. Similarly, the £25m that Donald claims he will drip-feed in over time (more likely via investment) will be turned over to the new owner as that is the club's shortfall and Donald has simply committed to getting rid of it in an unspecified time frame, with no obligation to do so.

'We did a good deal, we did a GREAT deal, yeah, we got in at the bottom'

He is too vague. You don't need to spend an hour tripping over yourself and defending the right to use those payments as you see fit if you have nothing to hide. They sued the DM not because they got it wrong in principle, but because they felt the figure (32m in parachute payments used to fund the purchase) Should have read as £25m. The rest? They loaned it to themselves.

Incredible.
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I'm sorry like but how anyone can try and say that Stewart Donald is using the club as some kind of cash cow is absolutely mental.

He makes millions from insurance and car leasing, if he was a Mike Ashley kind of character he would never go to games, he wouldn't waste his time doing podcasts or any talk ins, yet he is always doing those things.

He might make some money from the club but then he's already been offered profit to sell up and refused it, I genuinely do not understand how anyone can think from his actions that he's scalping the club, it's totally bizzare.
 
Lewberry pie said:
I'm sorry like but how anyone can try and say that Stewart Donald is using the club as some kind of cash cow is absolutely mental.

He makes millions from insurance and car leasing, if he was a Mike Ashley kind of character he would never go to games, he wouldn't waste his time doing podcasts or any talk ins, yet he is always doing those things.

He might make some money from the club but then he's already been offered profit to sell up and refused it, I genuinely do not understand how anyone can think from his actions that he's scalping the club, it's totally bizzare.
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Have you taken the time to look into it?

He literally loaned Madrox (himself effectively) £9.6m to pay off his own debt to Short, then Short reduced that debt to £7m. As yet, we know nothing about the terms of that loan, any repayment schedule, or what happened to the £2.6m extra. If you think this is normal and we should just shut up and tow the line, you're going to be in for a rude awakening one day.

And I have some magic beans for you.
 
Lewberry pie said:
I'm sorry like but how anyone can try and say that Stewart Donald is using the club as some kind of cash cow is absolutely mental.

He makes millions from insurance and car leasing, if he was a Mike Ashley kind of character he would never go to games, he wouldn't waste his time doing podcasts or any talk ins, yet he is always doing those things.

He might make some money from the club but then he's already been offered profit to sell up and refused it, I genuinely do not understand how anyone can think from his actions that he's scalping the club, it's totally bizzare.
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A hybrid of the two would be nice.
 
It's simple. All newspapers hate Donald. All journalists hate Donald. Some of our players hate Donald. Parents of youth players hate Donald. Lyle Taylor hates Donald. Investors hate Donald. Agents hate Donald. Employees hate Donald. Chris Weatherspoon hates Donald.

Owt I've missed off?
 
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KittenMittens said:
Have you taken the time to look into it?

He literally loaned Madrox (himself effectively) £9.6m to pay off his own debt to Short, then Short reduced that debt to £7m. As yet, we know nothing about the terms of that loan, any repayment schedule, or what happened to the £2.6m extra. If you think this is normal and we should just shut up and tow the line, you're going to be in for a rude awakening one day.

And I have some magic beans for you.
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What's £10M between friends...
 
Grumpy Old Man said:
What's the point in the owners doing that? The truth would come out eventually, and the reaction would be far more severe than either saying nothing or admitting there were problems. The worst of all worlds in being caught in a lie. We certainly won't have been told everything; it's not realistic to expect that. But telling the fanbase out and out untruths is about as dumb as it gets.

I am concerned about the number of recent negative stories, but not for the reasons some are. This is starting to look like a concerted effort to create a rift between the owners and the supporters. Why now, and who's pulling the strings? Because at the moment, it seems to be working.
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Information regarding the club seems to follow a well worn path of hearsay and rumour very quickly becoming 'fact'. I have thought for a while that there is a concerted campaign against the current owners and having witnessed a recent Twitter spat between Stewart Donald and a former player and the embarrassing backtracking of Micky Gray on Talk Sport at the beginning of their tenure, I wouldn't be surprised if the Donald and co. take what profit they have made and walk, leaving us at risk of further turbulence and uncertainty.
 
KittenMittens said:
Have you taken the time to look into it?

He literally loaned Madrox (himself effectively) £9.6m to pay off his own debt to Short, then Short reduced that debt to £7m. As yet, we know nothing about the terms of that loan, any repayment schedule, or what happened to the £2.6m extra. If you think this is normal and we should just shut up and tow the line, you're going to be in for a rude awakening one day.

And I have some magic beans for you.
Click to expand...
Where did the loan come from to lend himself that much?
 
Alma said:
Information regarding the club seems to follow a well worn path of hearsay and rumour very quickly becoming 'fact'. I have thought for a while that there is a concerted campaign against the current owners and having witnessed a recent Twitter spat between Stewart Donald and a former player and the embarrassing backtracking of Micky Gray on Talk Sport at the beginning of their tenure I wouldn't be surprised if the Donald and co. take what profit they have made and walk, leaving us at risk of further turbulence and uncertainty.
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Profit they made by paying for the club with it's own money, then borrowing on behalf of the club's assets and loaning £10m to themselves, some of which is completely unaccounted for? And also setting up the loanee company so that we likely will never see the details of where SAFC's money actually went?

Alma, all I'm saying is please get a job at HMRC and audit my company accounts.

Botchie said:
Where did the loan come from to lend himself that much?
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I'll give you a clue. It rhymes with 'scarachute blayments'.
 
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KittenMittens said:
Profit they made by paying for the club with it's own money, then borrowing on behalf of the club's assets and loaning £10m to themselves, some of which is completely unaccounted for? And also setting up the loanee company so that we likely will never see the details of where SAFC's money actually went?

Alma, all I'm saying is please get a job at HMRC and audit my company accounts.
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Just in the interest of transparency, what were your claims to inside knowledge when the club was being sold by Short? Was it a party in Donald's consortium you were linked to or another consortium altogether?
 
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Chucky Puddin said:
I heard as far back as January from 2 players that if we didn’t go up we were “fucked” financially wise, all this call for investors and saying it’s only for the long term incase we go up I think is a load of bollocks tbh, we’ve not long ago listened to SD and CM on the latest podcast and say the finances are better than we thought they would be and they can keep whatever players we want as we can afford them, well it’s pretty clear that we obviously can’t as we are letting players go without even having a replacement ready, pretty obvious we need the high earners to be gone so the finances can’t be as great as they are making out! SD has came off Twitter as he knows what backlash he’ll get with Cattermole gone and potentially others to follow with only 1 in at the start of pre season training, how about SAFC getting ahead of the game and bringing players in before pre season training instead of rushing and panic buying! Seems to me we have no forward thinking plan and we’ll just go along and see where it takes us like last season
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Not sure why any player would say that. There are a few main sources of income for clubs; TV money, gate receipts (including corporate) and sponsorship. For us there's also parachute payments. I'm led to believe that if you're getting parachute payments you don't get the share of the TV money (although presumably we still get the additional money when selected for coverage).

Had we gone up we'd have had the same parachute payment. Gate receipts would likely have been a bit higher but not significantly, attendances seem to be holding up well, sponsorship would only be marginally higher as well. So income-wise we probably wouldn't have been much better off in the championship. Then you have to take into account that we'd have had to spend a lot more to have a chance at competing. Most of our players would have wage rises in their contracts so wages would be significantly higher. Financially we are better off (this year) in league one. The problem will be if we are still in this league when the parachute money runs out (tv money is a fair bit better in the championship).

The only issue is whether they continue cost cutting to protect themselves should we not go up, or whether they spend a bit in the hopes that it will ensure promotion. The former is a dangerous tactic because we ended the season looking far from a promotion side. There's shouldn't be any issues in terms of finances taking this coming season on its own though
 
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