Zip It Shrimpy wrote:Tubshrimp mentions that Jason was willing to sell for £5million. I think I heard somewhere it was as much as £20million but I could also believe Tubshrimp's valuation of under £2million.
Let's assume Jason is still looking for £5million for his 80% shareholding, that values the club at £6million so each 1% would cost the Trust £60,000 to buy.
Someone said that the co-Chairmen and other Board members have about 3% so to get a seat on the Board won't cost much when shared amongst some willing Trust members.
I'd recommend using a fractional share model amongst fans to buy fractions of a share in units of £10 each recorded so the fans can sell on their fractions if they need their cash back. I'd be surprised if we can't raise 1% to buy off Jason.
Jason doesn't need 80% shareholding so could be happy to offload a few percent at a favourable rate. He just needs 51% to offer to a potential new owner.
The Trust could have a market stall style of tent near the ticket office on match days to interact with fans and sell fractional shares at £10 each. When there's enough cash collected buy another half or one percent from Jason and so on.
There's a lot of ifs and buts here but this could be the outline of a working model to get the club into fan ownership.
Please critique if you've got experience in this model. Supporters Trust - if this makes sense, please discuss at your next meeting and report back. I'd be happy to attend your meeting if it'd help.
While I am not engaging with the author of the article, I will respond to this Zippy as it is a balanced and thought-out proposal.
Whether we have 420 shares (as we hold now) or 60,000 shares (or in fact, considerably more than that), it does not change a thing for the Trust. We have some shares, so can attend the AGM etc, but we have no further power. This is even the case for the many former Club Board members who hold much larger shareholdings. Our current position is - why would we put that sort of cash into the company and get absolutely nothing back in return, except for “intent”? The Trust has to be here for all eventualities – that £60,000 could go a lot further in a real crisis situation where the Club might be at risk of going out of existence entirely.
The fractional shares idea sounds great but is unworkable. The Trust can’t offer fractional shares – every member of the Trust is a shareholder in the Trust - £1 of the membership is share capital when you first join. We can offer community shares in addition to the ordinary shares to fundraise for things such as buying share capital of the Club – that is a proven model. However, these shares cannot be sold or transferred so there is no option for fans to get their money back other than from the Trust withdrawing the shares itself. It is something we might explore at some point in the future, but for the reasons outlined above, there is no point in increasing our shareholding at this point in time by fractions of a percent or two (and in that decision, giving money to Jason which will never been seen again). We do not have the administrative capability to go down this route at the moment anyway.
A position on the board has zero correlation with shareholding. We could put all of our funds into share capital and it would not guarantee us a place on the Board. Conversely, if the Club wanted us to have representation on the Board, they could give us it immediately now.
In short, and something I said on the night, was that yes fan ownership would be something that could be pursued in the long term, but it is wholly unachievable right now. We were in a position where the Trust itself was about to fold because there was nobody stepping forward to keep it running. So the idea that “the Trust” could run or own the Football Club is complete fantasy at this moment in time. Unlike the article suggests, I did not dismiss the Exeter model I just pointed out that we do not have the set up to support it – and that is not just cash, that is expertise, people and time!
My final comment is that the Trust is a members-based organisation. The output of the Trust will only reflect what its members are able to put in. Each Trustee is a fully paid-up member, just one that has stepped forward and given their time to run the organisation, alongside their full-time jobs and family lives. I wholly understand why most people do not want to get involved – the article above serves to prove exactly why – because it is a thankless task.
