Takeover

Quoted from chipsandgravy

Next losing run....havent you heard were not having one!

Well far be it for me but we have currently lost two on the bounce

Quoted from Bigdog

As of May 2018, the club was worth minus 600k taking into account the "benign" loan, so yes, as it stood then, the shareholders (including JF) on paper in pure accounting terms would be facing paying a potential investor around 25p per share held (not receiving £1 per share) as a contribution towards paying JF his loan off and get the club back to exactly where the club would be worth on the balance sheet without the loans if the deal were to be equitable, and that's not including the necessary cost of upgrades at BP in the very near future too. It underlines how much a potential investor would have to "waste" before ever investing positively in the club if they had to pay the 1.8m loan off and buy the 2.25m shares at face value and take on the burden of BP. The accounts and JF's stranglehold are seriously fooked up in pure accounting terms. Proper little black hole bunker JF has built for himself and the future prospects of the club.

Not only is JF demanding investors pay a substantial amount to get the club back to zero just to gain control, they need to prove additional funds for investment in a new stadium and a vision for the future. He will then walk away with his cash back in full, having cost the club 3m for leading us back into the Conference and never having provided a vision himself. Seriously fooked up state of affairs when you look at the proposition in pure accounting terms in my opinion..

I'm all for the current board ensuring that potential investors prove that they have the funds to take the club forward, but JF seriously has to consider the true value of what he is selling (and hopefully he will be taking this into account) rather than insisting on them paying for a worthless and punitive financial barrier before ever being able to allocate funds for physical investment..

So Bigdog, why not hop on a plane back to Blighty and put your money where your mouth is If it's oh so simple and as straight forward as you think it is?

Quoted from Ipswin

Well far be it for me but we have currently lost two on the bounce

I do wonder about you Swin, sometimes you have to let go of the past and look to the future and for the record...a football no longer has laces or a pigs bladder🤣🤣

The loans are benign though. Obviously they sit on the books and we're paying them off but other than that completely benign.

Quoted from Fishy_fishtails

So Bigdog, why not hop on a plane back to Blighty and put your money where your mouth is If it's oh so simple and as straight forward as you think it is?

The point I was making was that it's not so simple and straightforward for an investor to get involved and if I had 5mill spare I wouldn't invest 60% of the 5mill into something that was worthless on paper to have 2mill left to spend on the project.. but anyway, thanks for raising the level of debate.. again!!

And by the way.. the only people that are putting their money where their mouth is are the fans and for a good few years now..

Quoted from rancido

The problem with this thread and others like it is that they just go round in circles and we are still none the wiser. Obviously this is a message board and all topics should be discussed but any thread involving JF inevitably goes in one direction and that is that he should go. I agree with this wholeheartedly but he will only go when the conditions suit him and that, in all fairness businesswise, is not an unreasonable position to hold. He has made it absolutely categorically clear that he wants out and is slowly loosening his dealings with the club. All we can hope is that some kind of deal acceptable to him comes soon otherwise this whole saga will just keep going on and on and on.

But that's the point. We've already spent 18 years going nowhere - JF has ultimate control, has a board of directors that nod their heads and the Trust sold their souls down the river by voting Mike Parker's shares over.

Quoted from Bigdog

The point I was making was that it's not so simple and straightforward for an investor to get involved and if I had 5mill spare I wouldn't invest 60% of the 5mill into something that was worthless to have 2mill left to spend on the project.. but anyway, thanks for raising the level of debate.. again!!

And by the way.. the only people that are putting their money where their mouth is are the fans for a good few years now..

So how does it become no longer worthless? I assume you mean that JF should write off his loans and donate his shares to the Trust? The only thing wrong with that is that I can't think of any person who would do that in the same position. Would you do that in his position? But then you could argue that you wouldn't have made the same decisions as he has to put the club in that predicament. But that is an easy riposte if you have never been in those sort of circumstances.

Quoted from rancido

So how does it become no longer worthless? I assume you mean that JF should write off his loans and donate his shares to the Trust? The only thing wrong with that is that I can't think of any person who would do that in the same position. Would you do that in his position? But then you could argue that you wouldn't have made the same decisions as he has to put the club in that predicament. But that is an easy riposte if you have never been in those sort of circumstances.

I agree with you, It's so easy for people say he should walk away and leave the club but as you've stated above who in all honesty would walk away and write off that amount of money?

Quoted from Fishy_fishtails

I agree with you, It's so easy for people say he should walk away and leave the club but as you've stated above who in all honesty would walk away and write off that amount of money?

Someone whose decisions have lost the club thousands of pounds by having to operate at least one level and possibly two for a large percentage of his period in power. And someone who has continued to fail to deliver the new stadium “that the club needs to survive financially “ - his words.

Quoted from rancido

So how does it become no longer worthless? I assume you mean that JF should write off his loans and donate his shares to the Trust? The only thing wrong with that is that I can't think of any person who would do that in the same position. Would you do that in his position? But then you could argue that you wouldn't have made the same decisions as he has to put the club in that predicament. But that is an easy riposte if you have never been in those sort of circumstances.

In all honesty I would have invested into the club by buying shares and been accountabe for my performance in running the business by way of share value rather than having a free hit by loaning. I'm not assuming that JF should write off his shares and donate any shares to the Trust other than the ones they gave to him, but something has to give somewhere because the 925k shares that he owns plus the 1.8m loan he's owed added together fall way below the book value of the business in the accounts. We are going to be in a perpetual state of non-investment and stagnation at this rate.

And I think your questions should be addressed to JF rather than me as after 18 years he is the architect of the mess we are in off the pitch. I'm just a fan pisssed off with eternal stagnation, he's the one whose responsibility it is to get the club in a better financial state and secure a new stadium. He knew that when he signed up for the job and has delivered nothing in the advancement of the club and merely plugged up one black hole with his own while presiding over the worst spell on the pitch in the club's history. He's had 18 years to make the club more attractive to investors and failed and chased one or two away. He's had 18 years to get a new stadium sorted and even though the council are making the right noises, due to lack of cash and the downbeat message he gave, I feel we're just as far away as ever. Chances were missed in developing a collegiate atmosphere in the boardroom to build on and grow with MP but that went pear shaped and JF seems as difficult now as ever with his stubbornness re PP.

We're either going to have to wait for football fortune until JF gets his money back or we're going to have to keep putting the pressure on for something to happen and keep the debate open. Let's say it takes the club another ten years to pay off the benign loan. Would 28 years of stagnation at our beloved club justify one person having a free hit at living out his dream? Morally that doesn't stack up to me at all. The club has trundled along at its lowest ebb for far too long now and somehow fans who are cheesed off about it are the bad guys for asking questions and opening up the debate? If they had 15mill in the bank, I would like to think that most posters would throw a chunk into the GTFC pot without tying a noose around its neck for what's looking like its going to be at least a quarter of a century and live quite happily off the other 13mill..