Latest BWFC Accounts - Year ended 30th June, 2020

Bolton news take on the accounts here:

Bolton Wanderers owners reveal £3.5m losses after 'turbulent' pandemic

WANDERERS’ owners Football Ventures have produced their first set of accounts, which highlight the financial challenges still being faced by the club.

Chairman Sharon Brittan has underlined FV’s funding commitment but conceded that the pandemic has brought “extraordinarily turbulent times”.

The figures, which reflect parent company Football Ventures Whites Ltd’s financial position for the year ending June 30, 2020, show a £3.5million operating loss.

Turnover for the company was £9.3million and wage costs amounted to £7.3m.

Accountants Cowgills were able to report a clean audit – which had not been the case in the club’s last set of financial figures under previous ownership.

The report also detailed Wanderers’ financial commitments, which include around £3.7million in creditors who were due to be paid by this summer.

The majority of that total is likely to be unsecured creditors which were inherited from the administration process, and who must be satisfied to the EFL’s liking in order for the club to avoid any penalties. Football Ventures have already gone on record to say they are on track to accomplish this.

A clearer picture has also emerged of debts and loans at the club. A £4.6m loan note from FVWL directors and shareholders is due to be repaid by August 2022, and 50 per cent of a £5.5m loan assumed as part of the takeover - and understood to be owed to the family of late owner, Eddie Davies, has now been repaid.

The remaining 50% of that loan arrangement with Davies's trust will now only become payable in the event that success on the pitch is delivered through promotions. A payment of £250,000 was triggered after promotion to League One last season.

A £5.5m loan from Prescot Business Park Ltd agreed in January 2016 is now worth £6.8m with interest – but all extra fees would be wiped off if the loan is repaid by August 2022.

Another £2.5m secured loan, understood to be owed to former vice-chairman Brett Warburton, is also outstanding.

Added to this, the report shows that Wanderers took out a £5m ‘convertible’ loan from a combination of members of the FV consortium and UK FF Nominees Ltd, under a scheme that aims to support companies during the Coronavirus outbreak. The loan is due for repayment in August 2023 and has an interest rate of 8% but would be converted into shares if not repaid.

Shareholders also provided a £3m unsecured loan facility in February 2021, payable in 2023, although it is not yet known if the club has had to draw down on it at this stage.

Technically, Wanderers have around £30m of debt on the books - but the structure of the loans, and the identity of those providing the money put the club into a much more comfortable position than many around them.

It remains to be seen what effect a season without fans has had, or to what extent excellent season ticket sales have helped to bridge the gap.

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So, here's how I see [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s financial obligations.
Some of the spots seem manageable, others will be more of a challenge for FV. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

— Marc Iles (@MarcIles) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Ok.  I've put up Iles report and tweet in BTID's post above.

Below are some of the things that have caught my eye from the accounts.

The first thing to keep in mind is that these accounts only go up to the end of last season, so for most of it, it was a normal season in so far as people could attend the match (match day sales etc) from August to March when lockdown kicked in.

I guess the first thing to note is a £1m government grant (which I guess was used to furlough staff?)(Operating loss p24).  We don't have to refund grants unless of course we want to.

Next a fixed asset is shown of £6m for 'goodwill'.

Now I know what goodwill is/means in this context but I don't know how a value is arrived at?

Did FV pay more for the club than the assets they got by £6m?

And if so it doesn't mean whoever buys it from them will give them £6m more than the assets they buy does it?

Anyway on the books and in addition to £10m shown for players value (???) a sum of £16m is shown as Fixed Assets (intangible) (p29).

Next that catches my eye is that £8.5m of creditors fall due within the next year - £3.7m unsecured debtors we know about, £1.5m trade creditors, £1m taxman and £1.2m accruals and deferred income (money we should have already paid or taken in advance of what we should have done). there is also another £670k deferred income shown separately. (p32)

So the net assets (fixed and current) less the amount we have still to pay (Creditors) in the next 12 months, shows a balance of £20.7m (remember £16m of that is goodwill and players values - would we get £10m for Santos and Doyle etc?  Maybe?).

Anyway where I'm going with this is that from this £20.7m we owe creditors (who need to be settled longer than in the next 12 months) £22m!!!

The big one is 'other creditors' which are basically the three we know about Prescott Business Park (think Mike James) for £5.5m plus interest which combined is £6.8m, Eddies Trust £5.5m and Brett Warburton £2.5m.

Note 18 on p29 explains that PBP will waive the £1.3m on payment of the £5.5m loan and Note 23 on p35 explains that with Eddie's £5.5m loan, the club 'bought out' the loan if you will, (after the period of these accounts - Sept 2020, for £2.75m and the remainder will only be paid on promotions.  A further £250k being made to Eddie's estate for the promotion we've just achieved.

Fair play to Eddie's family and his legacy to the club.

There is also shown a £4.5m loan note which I assume (please correct me if I'm wrong Bob) is what Sharon has drawn down from the £20m credit line she set up (or alternatively from Luckock's one?).

NOTE this £4.5m is due in August of this year!!!

The next bit to talk about is really not an area I know much about but Note 21 p30 states that 500,000 UNPAID were surrendered back to the club in June 2020 and a further 250,000 UNPAID surrendered in August 2020, which I believe to be from Sharon and Thomas.  I assume they simply sit there and can be used to 'give' to creditors in lieu of outstanding debt repayments?

The next thing to note is that after these accounts were made up to - that in August 2020 (see my last para and my assumption?) a FURTHER 'convertible' loan of £5m was obtained (p35) repayable in 3 YEARS.

It seems to be made up from existing shareholders and the government bank - UK FF Nominees Ltd

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In Feb 2021 a FURTHER £3m unsecured loan ARRANGEMENT was put in by the shareholders (Sharon, Mike James and Luckock) (p35).  The way I read the reason for this is to settle the government bank's £3m loan (but I'm not totally certain that I have got this exactly right?).

That's about it for now, maybe some things will dawn on me over the next day or so but the bottom line I guess is that the club is still spending more than it is getting in but thanks to the assets Eddie basically paid for, the owners have borrowed against these and have so far up to now kept the club going and hopefully will continue to do until it makes a profit.

As far as I can fathom, there is no business strategy other for the club (and hotel) to perform better than they have done in recent years - see p5 Strategic Report.

Fingers crossed they do and soon!

I did have another thought that occurred to me since my post above and it relates to the Fixed asset value of £10m shown for players value.

Now I can understand if we had bought say Sancho for £73m and others, and their sums of their transfers added up to say £100m - and arrived at a total that way, or even had a player that clubs had wanted to buy off us for £10m - but in reality we had neither at that time in the accounting period as shown.

If you think back, at the start of the period we only had a few players on our books (the rest were the kids) and the only player we had bought in the last few years was before that (not including the Doidge/FGR affair!) was £200k Josh Magennis!

We didn't have the likes of Doyle or Santos, just the random signings Hill brought in - and virtually all the first team players before last season under Phoenix/Evatt have since left and apart from the young lad who went to Celtic, Luca Connell for £350k, we got no money from them - so it seems to make a mockery of why a value of £10m was shown in the accounts.

Surely no one really believed we had £10m worth of player talent on our books when Sharon took over did they???

So I can't understand why the accounts are showing a fixed asset valuation of £10m?

Seems to me something isn't as solid as it should be there?

Sluffy wrote:I did have another thought that occurred to me since my post above and it relates to the Fixed asset value of £10m shown for players value.

Now I can understand if we had bought say Sancho for £73m and others, and their sums of their transfers added up to say £100m - and arrived at a total that way, or even had a player that clubs had wanted to buy off us for £10m - but in reality we had neither at that time in the accounting period as shown.

If you think back, at the start of the period we only had a few players on our books (the rest were the kids) and the only player we had bought in the last few years was before that (not including the Doidge/FGR affair!) was £200k Josh Magennis!

We didn't have the likes of Doyle or Santos, just the random signings Hill brought in - and virtually all the first team players before last season under Phoenix/Evatt have since left and apart from the young lad who went to Celtic, Luca Connell for £350k, we got no money from them - so it seems to make a mockery of why a value of £10m was shown in the accounts.

Surely no one really believed we had £10m worth of player talent on our books when Sharon took over did they???

So I can't understand why the accounts are showing a fixed asset valuation of £10m?

Seems to me something isn't as solid as it should be there?

Some of these figures look decidedly odd, Sluffy. The stadium and academy, £3million (including the hotel), £6million for goodwill and another £10million for intellectual property? I don't think this last one is player contracts but what is it exactly?

There's nowt sensible on WW. What's new? The Wanderer's invariably better (it could hardly be worse) but there's not much comment there yet

FVWL Football Ltd accounts are still marked as overdue at Companies House and FVWL Hotel accounts are also overdue but not marked as such.

Its going to take a bit of time to figure all this out and I do have a few other things to do.

Do you think the ST will be shining their forensic light on all of this and provide the levels of transparency and accountability we all need? Have you btw figured out who they sent to the Parliamentary Review? Nuff said.

Thanks Bob.

A few more bits and pieces from me.

Goodwill - FV DID pay £5,936,337 more than the fair value of net assets acquired - see the auditors definition for what goodwill is, contained in the accounts p20 para 1.6

Which leads to me to ask who received that £6m?

I understand the Administrators job is to recover as much as it can for the unsecured creditors, so did FV pay more than the value of the assets in order to put enough money into the pot so that they had enough to meet the 35p in the £ requirement for unsecured creditors as set by the EFL?

If so how can that be that the clubs assets were over leveraged?

I still can't understand how Anderson tried to secure the BluMarble settlement money from Eddie against the hotel BEFORE the BluMarble debt was settled as there was no asset free of a charge of that size at the time?

The alternative way of my thinking is that this was some private deal between FV and Anderson, outside of the Admin process?

If so who stumped up the money and how do they ever get it back???

And if it was a private deal - why is the amount shown of FV accounts???

Moving on, you are correct about the £10m being for intellectual property and NOT player contracts (I had misread the headings on page 29) but as you say what is worth £10m - certainly not the names and addresses of the ST holders, what else is there that the club holds???

And you are right again to query the Fixed Asset amount for the stadium, etc, something doesn't seem clear - a sum of £3m for the stadium and the academy but there is a further £8m for freehold and BUILDINGS???

I'm just guessing now but could the stadium/academy/hotel be in two parts now, as in part of the freehold for the stadium/academy has been sold off (and being leased back) but the hotel is still under freehold perhaps?

That would explain why the hotel was not specifically mentioned I suppose?

The next thing is that I'm trying to remember how much FV paid for the club - and separately for the hotel?

There's probably a more definitive answer than this which I quickly found from a google search -

The group will pay around £10m for the club side of the deal and a further £7.4m for the hotel.

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So how is it that if they paid £17.5m for the assets that their first accounts (p13) are showing total assets of £27.5m?

I can only assume this £10m for intellectual property has been added during FV's ownership and not before?

That being so it would also suggest the £6m for goodwill isn't part of the purchase from the Administrators but has somehow appeared on the accounts as part of the £27m of assets on the books?

I'm not understanding what as happened here???

Was the actual purchase price more than were thought or has my logic gone badly awry somewhere or other?


As for The Wanderer forum, there is only 'Worthy' who is an accountant and he was so anti-Anderson as to suggest to me that his prejudice got in front of his professionalism, so I tend to lump him in with those accountants who similarly hate Anderson rather than dispassionately look at the books, over on WW.

I will look at all this again, Sluffy, but not before the weekend. Too much on.

The main point though is that FV have delayed publishing all this until the last minute or, to be more exact, beyond the last minute so far as FVWL Football Ltd is concerned.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:I will look at all this again, Sluffy, but not before the weekend. Too much on.

The main point though is that FV have delayed publishing all this until the last minute or, to be more exact, beyond the last minute so far as FVWL Football Ltd is concerned.

Thanks Bob.

There's no need to rush on my behalf, and hope you enjoy whatever it is you've got on your plate to do already.

I don't expect to see anyone else lucidly commenting on the accounts so I'm more than happy to wait for your opinions whenever it is convenient to yourself.

I shall be out for most of the day but have checked on the CH website and FVWL Football Ltd accounts have still not been filed. That's BWFC without the hotel btw. I want to get a complete picture and it isn't there yet. 

FV are the only show in town but I think Sharon is playing to the gallery. Its not unknown for chairpersons to do that to a degree but its concerning when it seems like its over-cooked.

The reported loss btw doesn't include the interest. You might want to have a look at how the interest charges stack up. You may remember me saying 4% wasn't enough.

You might also be wondering why Sue Davies, having already written off £12million during admin, was willing to settle for half of the remainder (subject to promotion additions).

Its worth remembering that Sue would be in the super-wealthy class if Andy Gartside's dad hadn't talked Eddie into spending most of his fortune on BWFC.

Thanks Bob.

I too am waiting for the club and hotel accounts to see if they help make things a little clearer and to be fair to the club it does take CH a number of days to do the filings so they may have indeed submitted all the accounts on the 30th June.

I do remember you mentioning about the interest previously but I'm completely out of my depth as to the subtly and nuances of such - they are outside my field of professional expertise and as I only have a general understanding of them in the same way as everyone else does.

I did wonder why Eddie's estate did what it did with their secured creditor status over FV assets (I had even wondered if they had written the whole amount off until reading these accounts) and the two obvious thoughts I have had was that either they now required some liquidity or that they wanted to wash their hands of the whole thing finally - neither of which seem convincing to myself?

I'm not sure if you are implying something deeper with your last paragraph - but yes things did go very pear shaped in respect of Eddie's personal wealth, under Gartside Snr's watch at BWFC.

Good morning Sluffy. There's a lot to look at yet but lets just deal with accounts filing first. One of last season's League 2 clubs filed their accounts on 29 June and iirc were available to see the following day.
Another two filed their accounts on their deadline day 30 June and they are available to see.

So far 15 clubs have filed in time with 8 in default. Mansfield have a December year end and consequently have until September to file theirs, The 8 in default, in order of league position last season are:

Bolton Wanderers Newport Forest Green Rovers Salford City Carlisle United Port Vale Harrogate Town Southend United

Out of the 15 clubs that have filed their accounts, 10 lost money the largest being £2.3million recorded by Leyton Orient. I expect that Bolton's will exceed this when the split between football and hotel is known.

The largest profit was £1.16million by Bradford City. No details have been provided but its probable that all those reporting profits were reliant on player sales or some other exceptional item.

Bradford City is the only club to have failed to disclose the average number of its
employees. Its accounts are unaudited as are the accounts of another 7 clubs.

An accountant at work.

Going through FV's recent accounts seems like treading through treacle and I can't help wondering if I'm losing my mojo.

Maybe I'm not alone. We haven't seen any analysis from Worthy yet on The Wanderer. BWFC Insane is impressed by Sharon's statement. He means well but he's a bit too easily impressed, if you ask me.

I'm still treading through treacle and trying to get my head around the changes between the balance sheet of BL in 2017 and the balance sheet of FV in 2020 when, for some reason, St Winifred's School Choir came to mind.

Shazza, we love you
Shazza, we do
Though you may be far away
We think of you


There's no one quite like Shazza
And I know you will agree
That she always is a friend to you
And she's a friend to me

There's no one quite like Shazza
She's there in times of need
Before it's bedtime, on her knee
To us a book she'll read


Shazza, we love you
Shazza, we do
Though you may be far away
We think of you

Ok my interest had me look back on the previous accounts to see if there was any intellectual property shown - which comes under the intangible fixed assets in the new 2020 accounts.

The 2017 accounts shows that carried forward from the 2016 accounts under the heading of intangible fixed assets was a sum of £1.4m.

It also goes on to show an acquisition and disposal of £10m in that accounting period.

I can't seem to find in the accounts or auditors notes anything about this disposal?

Is it just a coincidence that £10m appeared and disappeared off the 2017 accounts and £10m suddenly seemed to have appeared on the 2020 accounts, under the same heading?

I don't know.

I don't remember anybody commenting on this £10m purchase and disposal of on the 2017 accounts at the time?

Fwiw Madine was sold in January 2018, so it can't be that money.

That £10.7million was the cost of player acquisitions, Sluffy, with an amortised book value of £1.4m.

We are talking about a different beast with 'intellectual property'. I've never seen 'intellectual property' in football club accounts before, so I am surprised.

Ten Bobsworth wrote:That £10.7million was the cost of player acquisitions, Sluffy, with an amortised book value of £1.4m.

We are talking about a different beast with 'intellectual property'. I've never seen 'intellectual property' in football club accounts before, so I am surprised.

Ah ok, thanks Bob.

Just underlines that I lack the knowledge or expertise to look too deeply into accounts and appreciate your understanding and sharing of them with us all.

Sluffy wrote:

Ah ok, thanks Bob.

Just underlines that I lack the knowledge or expertise to look too deeply into accounts and appreciate your understanding and sharing of them with us all.

There aren't many that can figure it all out, Sluffy and there aren't many that want to know the facts or the truth. That's been the case for years and it's never changed much at all.

We also don't actually know whether this £10million 'intellectual property' attaches to the hotel or the football club because, so far, we haven't seen the accounts of either.

We'll turn in due course to the property valuations. Therein lie some other surprising features.