Big Rangers Administration/Liquidation Thread - All chat here!

[cyderspaceman]

Wonder if this will ever get made into a movie.(comedy)

There will be no shortage of sequels...............

[cyderspaceman]

Last game is Saturday the 3rd ... ?

From the Telegraph

Rangers will begin the 2014-15 season in the Championship with a 25-point deduction if the season-ticket boycott by supporters is successful and the club is consequently plunged into administration at any time following Saturday’s game against Dunfermline at East End Park.

The Scottish Professional Football League board’s view is that the club’s season officially ends immediately after their final league fixture and not, as has been speculated, once the play-offs have been concluded on May 25.

ETA My bad..............I presume you can't do CVAs on a Saturday morning.

Edited April 29, 2014 by cyderspaceman

[nsr]

Not sure which I would prefer really: Sevco to die and never exist again, or to continue to stumble on providing endless giggles.

[Mybitchunderprotest]

That Telegraph article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/rangers/10794515/Rangers-facing-25-point-deduction.html makes no mention of the SPFL considering asking Rangers to lodge a £720,000 bond similar to that required from Livingston by the SFL in 2009 and which for not lodging same Livi were relegated to Division 3.

Surely the SPFL would have to consider something similar given the precarious financial state of the 2 year old club and the distinct possibility of it failing to fulfil fixtures in the event of liquidation..

[nsr]

The authorities will do whatever is humanly possible to keep them going in some form or other. They know full well there'd be riots on the streets if Sevco actually ceased to exist.

[cyderspaceman]

Here's another viewpoint

The current regime will limp forward with the ST renewals that have been banked and hope to garner investment with a buy one get one free (or 1p) share split, which has been the modus since the IPO. From the 35.000 who paid for ST last season,I predict 15,000 to pay now (£6M); 5,000-10,000 in the trust;10,000-15,000 wanting to pay at the gate. The trust won't achieve its aims. Pay at the turnstile will be introduced. So expect a minimum of 25,000 paying customers, with 10,000 paying £450 as the ST must be better value than pay as you go (£4.5M). Merchandising will not be hit by the lack of CC facilities as it is outsourced, so another £1M. TV and 32 Red another £1M. Match day catering and publications another £1M. So worst case circa £13.5M. Deduct £1.5M for loans, £12M. Sell Edmiston and use proceeds for maintenance at Ibrox,with £2M from operational revenue. So £10M and if only 50% uptake on share issue, you get £15M or best case £20M. So in the final analysis they should have enough to turn up next season.Salary McCostly should go, with Durrant, and the higher paid players sold. McCostly has upset the board with his failure to win the Ramsden and Scottish Cup final. If he had succeeded in these tournaments the fans would have been anaesthetised into ST renewal. He did not, so he will go, saving £1M. McCostly's product on the park is so poor that rather than being an asset for ST sales, he is a liability. In time add the trust fans who will pay as you go after dragging their heels,so another £4.5M. £14.5M -£19.5M/£24.5M after investment round. So this is the real future. The rest is just rhetoric.or scaremongering to sell ST tickets.

[cyderspaceman]

The authorities will do whatever is humanly possible to keep them going in some form or other. They know full well there'd be riots on the streets if Sevco actually ceased to exist.

That's that Arma-fkn-geddon thing again, isn't it? Pffft.

You are half correct but they will only do it because of the MONEY! Skin the berrz.

[archie guevara]

Serious question. No, really. I know that Rangers have been kept going on a tsunami of indignation over the past couple of seasons, but are the fans now beginning to see that the indignation needs to be reflected back on those who have run the club over recent years and made it a laughing stock?

[BigRubberFist]

Sevco then. Sevco now. Sevco for a couple more days at least.

[strichener]

He's not factoring in the "running costs" to get them to Sept. Granted they will not be as high as during the season .. but staff will have to be paid, player bonuses for winning the league, excutive bonuses, Salary and his pie account must be maintained ..

Players wages automatically increase, those on mercenary contracts .. Preseason wages kick in ..

While the income maybe true ... there will be less to start the season than is being predicted.

There is also the massive assumption that all season tickets will be purchased at full price. We know that this is not the case based on historical accounts. Therefore the revenue is over-stated.

Edited April 29, 2014 by strichener

[Apache Don]

Thought ..

The whole Dave King saga and meeting with the board (the discussions that are not being revealed) since December onwards, it seems unlikely they didn't try to broker a deal, but King being the tightwad he is (and his actions of late throw doubt on his "I lost 20 million .. boo hoo" routine) wanted to screw the original investors as much as possible.

King's action scream of attempting to force them to announce administration before the points deduction kick in next season.

Is this some kind of Mexican standoff .... Can they allow the club to take the hit next season?

What ever happens .. it's not going to be a pretty season for them ... there will be no warchest or triumphalist promotion and return to the big league.

Have to disagree with the last bit. They will unload a few overpaid tatties in the summer - Cribari and likely Peralta - freeing up enough wages to bring in at least 1 new striker (Boyd?) & another CB (Hutchieson/Gunning), which is all they really need to canter through The Championship. Sure they'll lose a few games but there will be no other team in that league capable of the type of consistency required to finish above the squad they will have. The fans will cave in and by start of season ST sales will be 'staggering', queues all the way to Paisley and Motherwell. This, even with McCoist still at the helm. A 25pt deduction for next season is best case scenario for us popcorn munchers but the cynic in me, says that won't be allowed to happen.

[BossHogg]

Its the unsurpassed dignity of fuking over dozens of creditors again.

[Apache Don]

Without administration that operation cannot sustain itself. They have have contracts that can be broken and need to be broken along with some that are apparently 'bullet proof' bar a liquidation event. These contracts are possibly the reason the review took so long and are the reason the board/spivs cannot agree on putting this abortion into administration ...

There is nothing stopping them and it makes no financial sense from the reports given not to have done it already ... the loan to tide them over was unnecessary ...

Like I said, call me a cynic but there will be a team in blue, with Rangers in the name playing at Ibrox, in The Championship next season and they will not begin with a 25pt handicap. I am so sure of this, that in the event I am wrong, I will come on here and publicly declare that ''I am.......

......ASTOUNDED''

[Florentine_Pogen]

Sevco then. Sevco now. Sevco for a couple more days at least.

BRF, for some unknown reason, that wee line tickled my funny bone. A+...........

[G-MAN]

Been quite a silence from Sevco since Friday. All we have had is a small tweet that Salary's budget discussions are taking place.

No response to UOF or King.

Also, quite interesting that the SFA have commented on an event Sevco said had no chance of happening. Certainly not the usual stance from them. They would have just said "Until the matter is brought to our attention we have nothing to comment on"...

[cyderspaceman]

I don't think they need to arrange anything .. they only need to announce they are going into admin?

Don't know tbh. Don't really care either, as long as there are plenty of laughs

[Ross.]

A 25pt deduction for next season is best case scenario for us popcorn munchers but the cynic in me, says that won't be allowed to happen.

25 points and same club but pretty much ensure they can get to the play offs at best.

15 points, new club and maybe a shot at straight promotion.

[Florentine_Pogen]

Not sure if already posted. From CQN :-

Insolvency, how they got here, what next

28th April 2014
850
I’ve been trying to think if there are circumstances where a company has appointed an administrator when they have been paying all debts when due. Newco Rangers are, to the best of our knowledge, paying creditors when due and have enough cash to continue to do so until the anticipated arrival of cash receipts from new season ticket sales. They are, therefore, also able to fulfil obligations to current season ticket holders to stage football games.

It may be advantageous to the club to call in the administrators, because we all know how this story ends, but before you ask an administrator to ‘do his thing’, you need to give him a job to do. Right now a Newco Rangers administrator would be able to pay all creditors when due – and would have money left over.

Under these circumstances, an admin would have difficulty breaking the contracts necessary to reduce costs for next season. Before a court would agree to appoint an administrator appropriate justification would need to be found, and I don’t see it, yet. There may be as-yet unpublicised justification, but I suspect it would require a thoroughly creative, creative accountant, to produce it.

Season ticket sales for next season imposes an obligation to stage games all the way through to May 2015. If the club have little or no chance of meeting obligations between now and then, the directors must recognise this fact when it formally becomes apparent, stop accepting season ticket money, and appoint an administrator to protect creditors’ interests, before they start to consume this cash to pay for day-to-day expenses.

This is the point administration would normally be considered.

There has also been a great deal of hot air about trading insolently and illegally. Companies are allowed to trade while insolvent if they have a reasonable belief that they will be able to generate enough cash to pay creditors when due. Right now, for Newco, this means they can continue to trade while season tickets are on sale. Doing so beyond the renewal deadline, even in the face of terrible sales, is legally justifiable.

The same goes for claims of foul play over Graham Wallace’ pronouncements in December that his club had enough money to get to the end of the season. It was simply wrong that Newco had enough money to get to the end of the season, but projections – any projections – are so caveat-dependent there is no way the police will do anything more than take a cursory look at the issue. Whoever reported Wallace either doesn’t know the mechanics of projections or is simply trying to pee in the Bovril. If you’re visiting Ibrox soon, avoid the Bovril.

Flying a kite, in the form of a proposed share issue in the autumn, will legally allow the directors to gobble up season ticket money between now and then. If/when investigated following an insolvency event, directors can point to the £22m share issue in 2012 as an example of what they planned to do once the season ticket cash was gone. In short, they can trade throughout the summer, until whatever money they bring in is spent, without fear of personal rebuke or liability.

I was reminded in an article in The Herald this morning of the critical move, made back in 2012, which brought the club to its knees today. “The Rangers Supporters Trust urges fans not to renew season tickets”.

This stance was adopted in an attempt to force Charles Green to sell out to the Blue Knights group. Green was forced to ditch his sustainable business plan, promise to spend big, reward his manager with a contract worth circa four times as much as the one on offer and slash season ticket prices. The original plan was to pay players no more than £50k p.a., retain the manager on £200k p.a. and ask fans to back the future by buying tickets at full price.

Notwithstanding the limitations of the manager, Newco should have reached the Premiership with money in the bank from the IPO, while the original investors in the club, including Green, could have taken the long view, and avoided the unseemly haste to get their cash out.

They would have been a significant force to be reckoned with, Celtic’s guaranteed ticket to the Champions League qualifiers would have been competed for, for at least a season. If you see Paul Murray, any other Blue Knights, or their performing puppets, thank them for all their work.

Big Picture: Find the lady

Keep an eye on the property assets. The Rangers FC Ltd’s major creditor is also their only shareholder, Rangers International PLC. After an insolvency event RIFC would be entitled to acquire property assets to compensate for their satisfied debt. Once this happens they can jettison TRFC Ltd to its fate. They can sit as landlords for as long as TRFC can pay rent, or use their assets for a mixture of landfill (Ibrox) and housing (Murray Park).

Big Picture: Fundamentals

While considering all these fast-moving events, don’t lose sight of the overarching fundamentals. It costs circa £17m to operate Ibrox and Murray Park as football venues, before you employ a footballer or coach. No one has suggested how any club in Scotland, with this level of infrastructure to support, is viable without regular Champions League income.

There is a working assumption in some places that a Rangers brand can phoenix indefinitely. This is clearly not the case, a newco takes tens of millions of pounds and tens of thousands of people. One of which will almost certainly not be available next time around, the other of which is in some doubt. My money is on Sandy Easdale’s hunch, that this toxic bird will rise from the ashes only once.

[G-MAN]

Think there is too much under estimation of the Championship next season.

They are going to struggle more than you think.

[Florentine_Pogen]

The SMSM (Spiers) print a story they could have read on here about 6 weeks ago :-

King Under Scrutiny

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/opinion/spiers-on-sport-dave-king-dodgy-past-and-all-arrives-with-more-bluster.1398767398?utm_source=www.heraldscotland.com&utm_medium=RSS%20Feed&utm_campaign=Scottish%20Sports%20News

Edited April 29, 2014 by Florentine_Pogen