Administration and beyond!

Norpig wrote:It all sounds as if we are going in the right direction and finally seem more stable than at any time in the last 10 years. 

I watched the Wanderers youtube episode 2 the other night and saw Nick Mason in a Wanderers jacket so is he providing finances in the background?

The truth is mate, nobody knows!

Well of course those involved do but nobody like us know.

My best guess is that there must be a financial stability of some sort at FV but you don't see that from the public accounts they've filed (which actually show the club has more debt than assets to pay them off), so the only conclusion I can come up with is that someone with deep pockets is backing the club and it isn't a priority for them to get their money back soon if at all.

Is that person Sharon?

It could be and she has a few pennies to her name but from what we seem to know of her financial position she doesn't seem to be superrich enough to take such a risk of putting millions into the club and not getting her money back.

I've speculated that there is someone behind her - Mr Brittan for instance - if there is one, or perhaps Mason is that person - now he is superrich and not worried about losing a chunk of millions.

If there is someone then they are not putting money in the club via normal means - there's not been new shares issued and bought and in the June 2020 accounts there didn't seem to have been any unexpected new creditors (secured or unsecured) with loans to pay back, so the only money I can see coming into the club is from Sharon's £20m line of credit  - which presumably Mr Brittan, Nick Mason, or whoever it is, is loaning/giving the money to Sharon (rather than the club) who in turn puts the money in the club under her name.

Bob however doesn't believe Sharon's £20m is a line of credit and he's more knowledgeable about accountancy than I'll ever be but I can't come up with a better guess as to how the club is financed - and someone IS paying the bills - than what I've described above.

It's a bit of a mystery to be honest that no, one outside those involved, have been able to figure out.

Another new one in the building - but to be fair he is the replacement for Paul Holliday.

Many thanks for all the good wishes and kind words on my first day at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Exciting time to be involved and looking forward to giving my best. Hopefully see some of you soon.

— Pete Oliver (@peteoliver68) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Ex - Burnley apparently...

Pete Oliver has left the building ... [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

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Sluffy wrote:

The truth is mate, nobody knows!

Well of course those involved do but nobody like us know.

My best guess is that there must be a financial stability of some sort at FV but you don't see that from the public accounts they've filed (which actually show the club has more debt than assets to pay them off), so the only conclusion I can come up with is that someone with deep pockets is backing the club and it isn't a priority for them to get their money back soon if at all.

Is that person Sharon?

It could be and she has a few pennies to her name but from what we seem to know of her financial position she doesn't seem to be superrich enough to take such a risk of putting millions into the club and not getting her money back.

I've speculated that there is someone behind her - Mr Brittan for instance - if there is one, or perhaps Mason is that person - now he is superrich and not worried about losing a chunk of millions.

If there is someone then they are not putting money in the club via normal means - there's not been new shares issued and bought and in the June 2020 accounts there didn't seem to have been any unexpected new creditors (secured or unsecured) with loans to pay back, so the only money I can see coming into the club is from Sharon's £20m line of credit  - which presumably Mr Brittan, Nick Mason, or whoever it is, is loaning/giving the money to Sharon (rather than the club) who in turn puts the money in the club under her name.

Bob however doesn't believe Sharon's £20m is a line of credit and he's more knowledgeable about accountancy than I'll ever be but I can't come up with a better guess as to how the club is financed - and someone IS paying the bills - than what I've described above.

It's a bit of a mystery to be honest that no, one outside those involved, have been able to figure out.

No I don't believe there's a £20m line of credit or anything like it, Sluffy. But it must be transparent because Neil Hart says it is.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:No I don't believe there's a £20m line of credit or anything like it, Sluffy. But it must be transparent because Neil Hart says it is.

It must be very transparent Bob because I don't know of anyone who can 'see' where the money is coming from!

I've not got the accountancy skills that you have but to my simple mind  if the bills are being paid then the money paying them have to be generated by the business through sale of goods and/or services, or through outside investment into the business.

Clearly the club hasn't been able to trade at a profit (let alone doing so during Covid and no crowds) so who has been investing in the business - and how?

There's no room to leverage the assets - they are already fully secured, so the money must either be entering the club as some sort of Director investment/loans, or new share ownership or government Covid loans.

There is no evidence from Companies House that new shares have been issued and we won't know about any increase in unsecured creditors and Covid loans until the filing of the relevant accounts.

The question I ask myself is why would anyone put money into a business that on paper at least has no chance of paying it back?

Whatever Covid loan the club received will need to be repaid at some point and where else is the money being pumped into the club if it isn't from the Directors pockets (or at least via them, if someone else is loaning/giving them the money?).

There could be other ways of paying down the creditors in terms of agreed write offs or indeed some 'sugar daddy' settling debts independently but I think we start to get into deep water about legality and the laws about money laundering (as a small personal example of money laundering regulations, when my daughter was travelling the world just a few years ago I would regularly pay money into her bank account to help her, some months back I tried to do the same but found that was no longer allowed.  I could transfer the money from my account (which was a different bank to the one my daughter uses or I could have done that there and then) to hers, or send the cheque to her to pay it in herself but I could no longer pay it directly into her account myself any more).

My mind therefore keeps coming back then to how are the bills being paid and who are funding them?

It's clearly not from the business' profits.

It doesn't seem to be from new share issues.

It can't be from leverage of known assets (maybe the land in Birmingham was worth millions after all - although I doubt it?).

Government Covid loans might have kept the ship afloat for now but how on earth can they ever be paid back?

If we are ruling out Sharron's £20m are we ruling out the matching £20m from Nick Luckock too?

If we aren't, why then are we ruling out Sharron's £20m?

It all stumps me!

Maybe we might glimmer a bit more when the accounts come around next year, until then I can't 'see' where the money is coming from other than the line of credit amounts which you've ruled out as such - and I accept that to be the case based on your knowledge and expertise in these matters - and my lack of it!

If only we had a business advisor on the site who could explain these things to us...

I can help you out there although I only managed teams of business advisers for a few years whilst I was doing my MBA at MBS (I needed a cards-in 9 to 5 so I could find time to study)


1. Nobody apart from those involved know where the funding is coming from
2. The published accounts won't tell you anything that you can be confident about in this regard
3. Your speculation is for your own benefit and serves no other purpose

Clear now?

wanderlust wrote:I can help you out there although I only managed teams of business advisers for a few years whilst I was doing my MBA at MBS (I needed a cards-in 9 to 5 so I could find time to study)


1. Nobody apart from those involved know where the funding is coming from
2. The published accounts won't tell you anything that you can be confident about in this regard
3. Your speculation is for your own benefit and serves no other purpose

Clear now?

Yes, abundantly clear thank you.

Abundantly clear you know nothing that is!!!

Don’t you think it’s a possibility that some or all of the investors are doing this for fun?  I would have thought that, if you’re rich enough, investing money to own a sports team might just be a great way of enjoying it. 
In any case, as the club progresses - and surely we all think we’re capable of reaching at least the Championship either this season or, if not, soon afterwards - the value will increase and maybe an investor can have fun now and make their money back later.

Hi Barry and welcome to the site, you may want to change your name though as you might get some unwanted messages and pictures of a sensitive nature (from KP) sent to you 

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] wrote:Don’t you think it’s a possibility that some or all of the investors are doing this for fun?  I would have thought that, if you’re rich enough, investing money to own a sports team might just be a great way of enjoying it. 
In any case, as the club progresses - and surely we all think we’re capable of reaching at least the Championship either this season or, if not, soon afterwards - the value will increase and maybe an investor can have fun now and make their money back later.

Hello and welcome Barry.

I'm sure some seriously wealthy investors may well own football clubs for fun but I'm not sure Sharron's personal wealth puts her in that class - maybe it does?

For Sharon or any other investor to make their money back they would have to sell the club at a profit - agreed?

As it stands now Sharon and the other investors paid MORE than the value of all the assets when they bought the club and since then the club has racked up more debt in trading losses.

There does seem someone always out there to buy a club but as we've seen for ourselves how difficult that can be and Sharron was the last stop before liquidation for us.

It's recently been reported that Mel Morris, the owner of Derby County has lost £200m with his involvement with his club -

"Morris became Derby's sole owner in 2015 but has actively been looking to sell since June 2019 following their Championship play-off final defeat by Aston Villa under Frank Lampard. Morris says the club has lost him "in excess of £200m" to date".

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That may or may not be an exaggeration but Eddie Davies wrote off a similar amount with us.

For what it is worth both Morris and Eddie were local boys to the clubs they bought and did have a personal interested in them as fans themselves - I've never understood the attraction and determination Sharron displayed to buy us, seeing that there appears to be no personal link to our club?  There was certainly sounder financially run clubs far nearer to where she lives that were on the market around the time she bought us.

The thing really what Bob (the poster Ten Bobsworth) and myself have been trying to get our heads around is the mechanics of how whatever money is funding the club is in fact getting there.

It isn't by the club trading at a profit and there's no obvious new investors securing their money against assets so they can get it back if things go wrong, so it does indeed appear to be a vanity project for somebody but who?

Can Sharron happily throw away something like £10m or so to date from her personal wealth just for a bit of fun?

Maybe she can and that's exactly what she is doing - but when the fun stops - like it did for Eddie - what sort of a hole will we be in financially and how many white knights like Sharron will be out there to run to our rescue then?

Norpig wrote:Hi Barry and welcome to the site, you may want to change your name though as you might get some unwanted messages and pictures of a sensitive nature (from KP) sent to you 

You are frightened of missing out on all that attention again. Aren't you?

karlypants wrote:

Norpig wrote:Hi Barry and welcome to the site, you may want to change your name though as you might get some unwanted messages and pictures of a sensitive nature (from KP) sent to you 

You are frightened of missing out on all that attention again. Aren't you?

Stop it you two, you're going to scare Barry away!



Seriously Barry if you do want to change your user name, just post up what handle you'd like to be known by on here and one of us will alter it to that for you.

It's not Big Barry is it?

Thanks for the heads-up about the user name issue. 
Could you please change it to BarrygoestoBolton. 
I do realise the FV paid more for the club, especially when you include the debt, than the fixed assets. But the value of a club isn’t just in its fixed assets. It’s in the club as a whole. Take a club like Arsenal - there was discussion about it being sold to the Spotify owner for a couple of billion. Its fixed assets - ground, training ground and players - aren’t worth that, but the whole franchise (horrible word!) is worth that. Similarly with us, we’re definitely worth more than our fixed assets, or we certainly will be as we work our way back to where we should be.

BarrygoestoBolton wrote:Thanks for the heads-up about the user name issue. 
Could you please change it to BarrygoestoBolton. 
I do realise the FV paid more for the club, especially when you include the debt, than the fixed assets. But the value of a club isn’t just in its fixed assets. It’s in the club as a whole. Take a club like Arsenal - there was discussion about it being sold to the Spotify owner for a couple of billion. Its fixed assets - ground, training ground and players - aren’t worth that, but the whole franchise (horrible word!) is worth that. Similarly with us, we’re definitely worth more than our fixed assets, or we certainly will be as we work our way back to where we should be.

I've done your new user name, nay problem.

Yes some/many companies are worth more than their tangible assets - some however or not.

From the top of my head FV paid somewhere in the region of £8m more than the the hard assets.

They paid around £28m or so for around £20m of assets that are all now leveraged against and roughly half as much again for 'goodwill' and 'intellectual property' that no one can seem to identify what they actually are or came to putting a value on them.

To put that into a bit of context Wigan's new owners paid something less than £4m for everything - although it isn't a like for like comparison but it is indicative what Sharon/FV could have picked a club up for if they had shopped around a while.

Although we had a wonderful spell in the Premier League, the reality is we have to punch beyond our weight if we want to get up their and stay there, and sooner or later clubs our size will fall out the top tier whilst the big clubs more or less are permeant fixtures these days.

Fair enough if you view the things as you do, I just don't think it holds together financially that way myself unless you have someone with very deep pockets who don't mind losing the odd £100m or so if things don't work out according to their plan.

I don't think Sharron has that sort of money to lose herself - and suspect there is probably someone who has, behind her.

As they say though it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive...

Just a brief visit from me to let Bob know that their is something imminent in regards to the clubs finances.

Sharon's and Luckock's charges have been 'settled' and both a Solvency Statement dated 26th October and a Statement by Directors are awaiting filing at Companies House.

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Fwiw I'm well but a long way off being match fit.

Laughing at Wanderlust is keeping me going though!

Keep safe everyone.

Glad to hear you're ok Sluff. Welcome back. Be great if you and Lusty could cut each other some slack. Would be good for the mental health of both of you and would obviously be good for the future of the site.

Sluffy wrote:Just a brief visit from me to let Bob know that their is something imminent in regards to the clubs finances.

Sharon's and Luckock's charges have been 'settled' and both a Solvency Statement dated 26th October and a Statement by Directors are awaiting filing at Companies House.

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Fwiw I'm well but a long way off being match fit.

Laughing at Wanderlust is keeping me going though!

Keep safe everyone.

Thanks Sluffy. Hope you are 'match fit' soon enough. The Solvency Statement seems to be related to the reduction in share capital.

The ST are supposed to be meeting 'the club' this week. They could ask and tell their members if they had a clue about the club finances and the Board wanted to co-operate. Sadly there's a much bigger appetite for bullshit than openness and transparency.

I noticed that there were a few fruitcases calling for the head of  Katherine Birbalsingh last week. KB is Headmistress of the Michaela Community School where Sharon is Vice-Chair

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Hip Priest wrote:Glad to hear you're ok Sluff. Welcome back. Be great if you and Lusty could cut each other some slack. Would be good for the mental health of both of you and would obviously be good for the future of the site.

Nowt wrong with my mental health pal  

Get well soon Sluffy.

It's now confirmed that the share capital (the owners' financial commitment excluding loans) has been reduced from £2.75m to £2.0m.

We knew that anyway from the Confirmation Statement filed on 14 February 2021. The other £750K of unpaid shares had been put in the name of Football Ventures (Whites) Ltd. I really don't know what the point of that was but it looks like it was a temporary measure since those shares now seem to have been cancelled.

I'll come back on the loans situation. There are statements in the 2020 accounts indicating where post-balance sheet money has come from. They seemed to me to be a bit foggy in certain respects. Some of that fog might have just dispersed a tad.

The last two of the five documents filed at CH are now available to see.

What do they tell us? They tell me that behind the saccharine sentiment there's been some hard bargaining going on that has resulted in full effective control of BWFC being in the hands of Sharon despite PBP (and COVID loans) being the major provider of funds.

Is MJ (or Tom Morris) content with that? I really don't know.

Nowt doing on any other forums to speak of. What's new!!!!!

Maybe we should wait to be be illuminated by the esteemed one or the SupportersTrust