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Pompey Takeover Saga


Fitzhugh Fella

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No expert but could this cash only be in case their Bank ( do they still have one ? ) freezes

their accounts as can happen according to that article posted by Saint Si so they

have some cash to finally pay the charities and debts less than 2500 Pounds?? YEA RITE !!!

 

On a side note it's a pity they are not registered in Scotland - much harsher conditions up there.:lol:

Edited by Saint in Paradise
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This time HMRC are by far the main creditors I take it which should make their hand stronger?
certainly will. They can decide to accept or not any offer put on front of them and unless its the whole 100% poopey will get short shrift
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It's interesting how AA refers to Portsmouth as "we" still, yet is meant to be representing CSI.

 

Although, I think his comments basically mean that he has given up the ghost and it's time for the blue few to steel themselves for the inevitable. It's the first time he has spoken like this.

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Great find! This would rather complicate things...

 

http://www.companyrescue.co.uk/compa...ng-up-petition

 

What can I do if we receive a winding up petition? What should I do?

Once the company receives a petition there are now fewer options available;

 

Oh dear!

 

And note the typical contradictions in the article...

 

The club is not in administration, the club is still running under the steam of the board

 

Umm, so how come you can say...

 

in general terms we are looking to lower the average wage bill.

 

If you're not running the club, then it isn't yours to lower!

 

 

(and the bit from company rescue i meant to include)

 

You CANNOT sell the company and you cannot sell the assets, as this sale may be reversed by the Court

 

Bit of a problem perhaps?

 

 

If the club has been issued a WUP then this is a very serious issue for them. As saint si has alluded to and as mentioned in the link he has posted (above) a company issued with a WUP CANNOT be put into creditors voluntary liquidation and (most relevant) the company and any assets CANNOT be sold, as this sale may be reversed by the Court.

 

So unless CSI (not the club) is sold to another investor, unless Chinny pumps more money into them, or unless they are put into Voluntary Administration (which can be done even though a wup hangs over them, but will ensure a massive points deduction by the FL and probably will relegate them), P****y are f***ed. The can't sell any assets (I assume this also includes players) to help pay the debts and the sh177y little excuse for a football club itself cannot be sold until the winding up petition has been heard by the high court.

 

I'm looking forward to the next few weeks!!! :D

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If the club has been issued a WUP then this is a very serious issue for them. As saint si has alluded to and as mentioned in the link he has posted (above) a company issued with a WUP CANNOT be put into creditors voluntary liquidation and (most relevant) the company and any assets CANNOT be sold, as this sale may be reversed by the Court.

 

So unless CSI (not the club) is sold to another investor, unless Chinny pumps more money into them, or unless they are put into Voluntary Administration (which can be done even though a wup hangs over them, but will ensure a massive points deduction by the FL and probably will relegate them), P****y are f***ed. The can't sell any assets (I assume this also includes players) to help pay the debts and the sh177y little excuse for a football club itself cannot be sold until the winding up petition has been heard by the high court.

 

Lampitt, Appleton and AA all seem to think they can sell players/assets. Even if they can, it will be the buying club in the strong negotiating position and rock bottom prices.

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Some time back the football league made a fuss about clubs who did not pay their taxes, and how they would be punished. Perhaps they were trying to head off the football creditors case. Either way, I am sure those with good web research skills (there are lots on this board) will be able to find the relevant articles. My search on the FL site came up with the following:

 

1) A link to the regulations (not enough time at the moment to search all that)

 

2) That referee Kevin Wright works for HMRC, so I presume he cannot be appointed to PFC matches for conflict of interest reasons.

 

3) An interview from December 2009 between the FL and supporters groups with Malcolm Clarke and Dave Boyle, "Clarke is the elected Chair of the Football Supporters Federation (FSF) whilst Boyle is the Chief Executive of Supporters Direct (SD) and both men are well known within the corridors of football's highest powers acting as crucial links between the terraces and the boardrooms"

 

Which includes this quote "Last season (2008/09) there were massive points deductions for some clubs in The Football League which was needed at the time to prevent another situation like that at Leicester City but we welcome the measures of The Football League to get clubs to give assurances about payment of tax bills before entering financial difficulty, not after. The Football League is moving on, there is now much greater regulation at the front end which is stopping clubs from living beyond their means. We hope and believe that this will result in clubs paying their tax bills and the arrangement that HMRC can notify the League of defaulters is very healthy."

 

Well that does not seem to have worked then!

 

Time to cultivate the link I have with a member of the senior management team of the football league.

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Time to cultivate the link I have with a member of the senior management team of the football league.

 

Make the point that Lampitt and AA are walking around basically telling everyone they are trading whilst insolvent - so when are the FL going to pull their heads out of their Rses and do something?

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I feel sorry for Michael Appleton, as although he does look like he who shall not be named is actually a great bloke and someone who I think is an excellent coach and a one to watch as a manager.

 

Next I feel sorry for us saints fans as I actually don't think they will make it to the end of Feb (or even Jan) which means we will never get to play them at home, have them endure the "bubble" and stuff them by 6 or more goals.

 

Then I also feel we will miss them as well who is there, Brighton, Bournemouth no thanks. We would have to wait almost 20 years for the next club to come along.

 

However something that did make me chuckle. If all goes well we will be in the prem by the end of the season and build from there. Which means we will be the closest prem club to Portsmouth, which means give it a couple of years and their kids will then start to want to follow us, Imaging. Now thats funny.

 

Sorry Poopey, times up, the futures bright, the futures RED & WHITE.

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Right so I think I understand wot has been said, can I just confirm.

 

As HMRC have issued the winding up petition

 

1. PFC cannot be sold to anyone, the only way they can gain extra revenue is by one of the current investers / owners chucking em another wedge.

2. They cannot sell any assets or players? untill the hearing.

3. Only CSI are able to be sold as the WUP is not against them and then the new owner of CSI could prop up PFC.

4.There bank accounts are frozen explaing why the next game is gonna be cash only in order to pay the players this month and prob avoid more tax.

 

I think I understand but judging by his comments i dont think AA does.

 

I cannot see how the FL cant justify a points deduction this time, it should have happened before xmas. Their **** weak.

 

A different country and a diff sport i know but a couple of years back in the Aussie Rugby League, Melbourne Storm were found guilty of running two sets of account books in order to avoid the salary cap which is in place so they could cheat and recruit the best players.

When the NRL board found out they were punished by.

1. They were stripped of 2 (i think) premiership titles.

2. Fined heavily

3. Forced to play out there remaining fixtures without accruing any points regardless of result. ( they won most of their remaining games)

4. Lost all their points that season so finished bottom ( no relegation in that league)

5. Started the next season minus 10 points (i think)

 

Now thats a deterant, why is the FL such a soft touch, unless your a small club, with little support, no money etc.

 

The FL should throw the book at em, after all they did the same just 2 years ago FFS.

 

I will only be satisfied if they are wound up and any clubs that have been affected during this shambles get there points back.

Edited by Brizzie Saints
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Just a little snippet from the HMRC web site.

The consequences of winding-up a company

 

Following a winding-up order all trade must cease.

The company director(s) will be required to attend the Official Receiver’s or liquidator’s

office to

• hand over the company’s books and records

• provide the details of the company’s finances, assets and creditors

• explain the reasons why the business failed.

HM Revenue & Customs may request that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) investigate instances where the company has

• deliberately withheld payments to the Crown

• failed to operate a PAYE scheme

• participated in wrongful trading

• reused the company name

• made transactions at undervalue.

This could result in the directors being disqualified from running a company for a

period of between 2 and 15 years.

If directors have traded with the same or a similar company name without the court’s

permission, all debts incurred may become their personal liability.

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Question to you guys with access to Credit Check Web Sites.

 

Why did they NOT show a WUP from HMRC? Has that only happened in the past day or so?

 

To those running UK companies.

 

What date in the month is HMRC Tax & NI normally due?

 

It just seems a very odd way for this to have come out on a Saturday. What did AA have to gain from keeping quiet during the week?

 

Or was this what his 48 hours statements was all about?

 

He knew it was coming.

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Question to you guys with access to Credit Check Web Sites.

 

Why did they NOT show a WUP from HMRC? Has that only happened in the past day or so?

 

To those running UK companies.

 

What date in the month is HMRC Tax & NI normally due?

 

It just seems a very odd way for this to have come out on a Saturday. What did AA have to gain from keeping quiet during the week?

 

Or was this what his 48 hours statements was all about?

 

He knew it was coming.

 

Perhaps it was issued late friday, and he didnt admit it till late saturday, sneaky f*cker, I'M JUST HAPPY THEY GOT ONE :D

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What date in the month is HMRC Tax & NI normally due?

 

Well according to the HMRC website (unless I am reading the wrong part) Electronically its the 22nd of the month following the end of the tax month or quarter to which it relates, if choosen to make a postal payment, you must ensure your cheque reaches HMRC no later than the 19th of the month following the end of the tax month or quarter to which it relates.....which would be this weekend I guess ;)

Edited by skintsaint
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Question to you guys with access to Credit Check Web Sites.

 

Why did they NOT show a WUP from HMRC? Has that only happened in the past day or so?

 

To those running UK companies.

 

What date in the month is HMRC Tax & NI normally due?

 

It just seems a very odd way for this to have come out on a Saturday. What did AA have to gain from keeping quiet during the week?

 

Or was this what his 48 hours statements was all about?

 

He knew it was coming.

The WUP is only listed against the Company on Credit Check sites, after it has been advertised in the London Gazette. This is where credit agencies pick it up. I imagine this will be in tomorrow's edition.
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Perhaps it was issued late friday, and he didnt admit it till late saturday, sneaky f*cker, I'M JUST HAPPY THEY GOT ONE :D

 

Well according to the HMRC website (unless I am reading the wrong part) Electronically its the 22nd of the month following the end of the tax month or quarter to which it relates, if choosen to make a postal payment, you must ensure your cheque reaches HMRC no later than the 19th of the month following the end of the tax month or quarter to which it relates.....which would be this weekend I guess ;)

 

The WUP is only listed against the Company on Credit Check sites, after it has been advertised in the London Gazette. This is where credit agencies pick it up. I imagine this will be in tomorrow's edition.

 

OK now this starts to make sense.

 

Chris Akers left on (I Think) 12th Jan, so he probably knew what was coming if they only had 5 days left to get 1.6mil out the door to HMRC.

 

So again, this could make Lumpitts position more difficult. PCFC are NOT in admin, even though he talks as if it is. (Clearly they ARE in De Facto Admin, just that this is a poor excuse at a cover up to stop from getting the points penalty). So a Director leaves, they cannot pay a major bill, yet it takes 10 more days for that news to filter out of the club.

 

I'd wager a guess that they have been technically insolvent since a couple of days before Akers departed.

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Lampitt, Appleton and AA all seem to think they can sell players/assets. Even if they can, it will be the buying club in the strong negotiating position and rock bottom prices.

 

The bigger problem with selling players will be the size / length of contracts. Apparently 8 players are on £1.1m a month, so £140k a month each....c. £35k a week each. Nobody will pay them anything like that, so Pompey will have to pay up contracts, either in full (they haven't asked for a move), or in part to cover the drop in wages to a new club. If they manage to get themselves a deal at £20k a week elsewhere, even making up the shortfall will cost Pompey £750k for every year of their contract. They're in a unique position where they'd be worse off selling players than keeping them.

 

I do find it staggering that AA says they can pay players this month, but not HMRC. They'll obviously be deducting tax and NI from the players pay......just won't be passing it on.

 

It's an absolute disgrace that they can be so brazen about it.

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the shrewdest guys are Appleton for not believing the hype and Akers for abandoning ship before he loses his house.

They have escaped from tight corners before so nothing would surprise me, but this looks worse than it has ever been.

 

And they still worry about a game at Cardiff that was completely irrelevant to their future.

 

 

WAKEY WAKEY! - the elephant in the room just had triplets, and they'll all pregnant.

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The WUP is only listed against the Company on Credit Check sites, after it has been advertised in the London Gazette. This is where credit agencies pick it up. I imagine this will be in tomorrow's edition.

 

Last time the WUP was applied for on 23 December 2009

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enquiries@football-league.co.uk

 

I've just drafted the below email to send to the above address, is there anything you think should be added?

 

To whoever it may concern,

 

I should be grateful for your comments on the below:

 

1. Portsmouth Football Club ("the Club") are paying their players ahead of paying their tax. ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/21/portsmouth-tax-michael-appleton?newsfeed=true )

2. Andrew Andronikou, the administrator for the Club's parent company, Convers Sports Initiatives ("CSI"), is clearly acting for club in equal measure. He continually refers to the Club as "we", as evidenced by the above Guardian article.

3. The Club's Chief Executive, David Lampitt, has admitted that the Club cannot continue to trade solvently now the backing of CSI has been withdrawn - does this not mean the Club and CSI are "inextricably linked as one economic entity"? ( http://audioboo.fm/boos/632962-part-1-with-portsmouth-chief-exec-david-lampitt-following-latest-off-the-pitch-speculation#t=0m43s http://audioboo.fm/boos/633257-part-2-with-portsmouth-chief-exec-david-lampitt-talking-about-the-club-s-ownership )

 

I look forward to a response shortly,

 

Kind regards

 

I've deliberately not referenced the Football League rules re administration, they should already be aware of these! I also attempted to go for the less is more approach!

 

Feel free to edit, maybe we could get a generic email to bombard that enquiry address with - more people are likely to email when they don't have to draft a message themselves!

Edited by saintmatt
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/21/portsmouth-tax-michael-appleton?newsfeed=true

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

"Oh yes you have!" and I thought Panto season was over. How can you with one breath say you owe HMRC 1.6 million and then in the next claim you don't have millions in liabilities?

 

This page in the Gaurdian gives links to the previous WUP episode.

Do you remember Mrs Registrar Derrett,

"I am very concerned about the financial status of this company. It seems to me there's a very real risk that this company is undoubtedly trading while it is insolvent.

 

"I'm obviously conscious that, by making a winding-up order, it would have very severe consequences not only for the company as a business but for the supporters themselves, but that's not a consideration that I strictly take into account."

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And it's inextricably linked as one economic entity. Not sure if it applied though since that wasn't the case when csi went into admin.

 

I'm not sure the fact P*mpey can survive on their own for around a month without CSI's backing should mean they are not considered inextricably linked at the time of CSI's admin. I hope that makes sense :/

Edited by saintmatt
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Has a list of CSI's creditors been published? I think that this is the major sticking point.

 

CSI Debts - Chanrai - c. £20m

CSI Assets - PFC, North One, Loan to PFC c. £11m

 

Before CSI bought Portsmouth Chinny had a charge over Nottarf to secure his debt, but this was debt owed by PFC. It occurs to me that the takeover was a vendor-financed purchase (this practice doesn't have a very good reputation in the financial world). So, without evidence and speaking entirely hypothetically, Chinny lends CSI the money to make the purchase of PFC, with a floating charge over all of the assets of CSI and its subsidiaries with a condition that they use the money to repay the original loan. This would suit Chinny because he would now have more collateral to cover the debt. As it turns out all of the other collateral turns out to be as worthless as Poopey.

 

So, if Chanrai is the sole creditor to CSI he could take over the whole of CSI, write off the loan of c.£11m to Portsmouth without needing to part with any cash and he's back where he was before CSI. If there are other creditors, eg the Lithuanian government, then this wouldn't work. If Chinny takes PFC as the security for his loan, the other CSI creditors or the equity holder (Antonov or the Lithuanians) can say to Portsmouth, "We'll have our money, please". In this case Chinny has to put his hand in his pocket for an additional £11m.

 

So Chinny has a problem. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03/25/the-sunk-cost-fallacy/ . Does he throw good money after bad to recoup his loan? How much value would there actually be in liquidation? As a creditor of CSI he should be requesting that they pursue repayment of the £10.8m loan they made to Portsmouth as it is a significant 'asset' of the company. However, if he did pursue this debt, Portsmouth would be bankrupt, as they can't repay it. He has funded the last 4 purchases of the club. Should he fund a fifth?

 

When I saw the story yesterday about PFC owing the taxman £1.6m I thought that all of the arguments about -10 points would be irrelevant if HMRC started to get aggressive. Now with the reports of them issuing a Winding Up Petition the club will be in admin the day before the Winding Up order is enacted, unless they find a new owner beforehand, or unless they can raise enough money from player sales to fund the company to the end of the season.

 

When it comes to player sales, it won't be TBH who goes, it'll be the players that people actually want: Henderson, Ward, Pearce. These sales wouldn't reduce the wage bill by much and firesales never raise decent prices. The figures being bandied about for the club to survive to the end of the season were c. £5m. Do they have players that other clubs will pay a combined £5m + the cost of paying up the contracts for, with the cash being paid upfront?

 

Also, on the cash only policy for tickets, here's another unproven speculation: what if the bank have withdrawn overdraft facilities? In this case, any money paid into the bank would go direct to repaying the overdraft and the club wouldn't have access to it, but they would have access to cash paid. Expect to see the staff getting paid with brown envelopes stuffed with notes. I hope Ben Haim has a wheelbarrow.

 

weimar-wheelbarrow.jpg

Edited by dvaughanwilliams
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