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Charles Bannerman

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Everything posted by Charles Bannerman

  1. So should they have given the Rose Street Hall a stay of execution to host this meeting, OCG? Could have saved a lot of demolition costs.
  2. Looks as if the locals haven’t taken too well to the visit of Duncan and the lads!
  3. Don’t even mention it! Last spring, when I was still writing a column for the Courier, I did one on what I’ve been saying here - that I don’t think the immediate local area can support two sizeable clubs and, that in a normal business scenario, a merger would make sense BUT (very large but) football is NOT normal business so the idea was inconceivable. However they published this online with a headline claiming I was calling for a merger and, with most people unable to go behind the paywall, I got serially slaughtered for something I didn’t say… and even rejected. In a football environment, it’s a total non-starter.
  4. I can’t see that it would directly do so but (and this is only a guess on my part) if planning permission were to be granted on March 14th, then might that positively influence any “Going Concern” statement within any accounts issued after that date? Perhaps, as an Edit, I should add that the club’s “Going Concern” status has been a significant issue at at least one recent AGM.
  5. I have tried for years to be optimistic as I can about the financial future and, while several factors have been operating, I think there is one huge and probably unavoidable fundamental - the Inner Moray Firth plus some hinterland is an insufficient base for two “sizeable” football clubs. It was fine at the start in the Third Division with an added novelty factor, but as Caley Thistle and Ross County both grew and moved up the leagues, that progress was only made possible by £5M from Tullochs and some very good club and football management in the case of ICT and repeated subsidy of Ross County by Roy MacGregor. In County’s case, their latest loss of £579K has been announced today and that has been written off, as it tends to be annually, by their “holding company”. And even that level of ongoing subsidy is JUST keeping the club in the Premiership. In the case of ICT, the factors I mentioned there worked through the system some years ago and since about 2018 the club has been substantially loss making and dependent on ad hoc emergency handouts as it now clings to second tier status. There have also been other factors and members of the business community tell me that Inverness Caledonian Thistle is not flavour of the month in many quarters - especially since the collapse of the Concert Company where the club netted a large stadium rent before the company went bankrupt, leaving local traders out of pocket. The bottom line (personal view) is that the local area is unable to sustain these two clubs ant current levels and, should Roy MacGregor’s support of County end, the deficit would be even greater. However, in a football environment there is NO way out of a situation where two companies are fundamentally loss making in the same marketplace, unless one shrinks massively. It would appear that the battery farm might well be another short term fix, and a big one, but here there is a dilemma. Much as we would love to see this latest income source realised, the Councillors who will be making the decision are obliged to do so solely on the merits/demerits, practicability, safety, environmental implications etc. That the football club has a substantial financial interest cannot be a consideration in a completely isolated planning situation.
  6. Around 4pm today, which should have been deadline day for the club’s accounts, a notification appeared on Companies House that IT and C’s accounting period had been shortened by a day to May 30th 2023. This apparently entitles a company to an extension of their deadline for publishing accounts by three months, and is apparently an established device for achieving this.
  7. As I recollect, the Articles of Association say that there must be an AGM in each calendar year and that there must never be more than 15 months between them. The last one was 19 months after its predecessor and there was no AGM at all in 2022.
  8. Maybe… but he’s also probably already been out to buy his lederhosen and long white socks.
  9. The last AGM was on 26th April 2023, and it was more than four months in default of the deadline stated in the company’s Articles of Association. This also means that there is no obligation to hold another one before 26th July 2024, and even that may be subject to further delay if there is another default.
  10. Some posters on here here need to get their facts right… so I’m correcting you because you are very wrong! In 1995/96 - by which time the merger had been done and dusted several months previously - Inverness District Council voted to award the club £900,000 from the council budget towards the approach road to the stadium - a road which has now paid for itself many times over by opening up the entire Harbour area. However the Council - note the Council - got itself into the most terrible mess because a group of councillors and officials tried to stop payment, hence putting the entire stadium project in danger. With time running out before IDC went out of existence in favour of Highland Council on 1st April 1996, it looked as if the grant couldn’t physically be paid, making court action apparently unavoidable, until HC CEO Arthur McCourt managed to have the money paid from the Inverness Common Good Fund. The reality here is that Inverness District Council were most definitely the “bad guys” back then when they almost secured the demise of the club because a stadium was an SFL membership condition, and when a solution was eventually found, the spin off for the entire city was enormous. Best to check what really happened when you are intent on stirring
  11. Thank you for these responses and any others would be welcome in an attempt to clarify exactly what is going on here. I am more than prepared to be corrected on this, but it is, however, beginning to look likely that this is far from “Caley Thistle’s battery farm” and more like the club being used as a vehicle for ILI to gain access to suburban site for an industrial installation. Whether there is also an element of using the club’s position as a prominent local sporting entity as a lever to realise this objective is perhaps also worth considering. As an ITandC shareholder (very minor!), I’m a bit disappointed that more clarity has not been provided to those who actually own the club. When the BF was mentioned at the last AGM, it didn’t appear to be at an advanced enough stage for detail to be sought, and in any case everyone was still smarting from the demise of the Concert Company. The BF issue will certainly need to be pursued at the next AGM although, remembering that the date of the last one breached the requirements of the company’s Articles of Association by several months, it’s not clear when that might take place. One further observation - for how long would the “seven figure sum” or whatever other benefit is expected here keep the ever present financial wolf from the door, given that there may be loans to pay off (?) and also the fundamentally large loss making football operation?
  12. I’m beginning to lose the thread of this Battery Farm issue and there are one or two fundamentals I would like to be able to establish - fundamentals with which, as a club shareholder, I should probably have been made more familiar. In particular, what exactly is the football club’s role in this BF project? Council minutes state that the planning application is in the name of ILI, but yet this is frequently referred to as “Caley Thistle’s battery farm”. Why should ILI want or need the football club to be involved? If they want to be benefactors or sponsors, why don’t they just give the club some cash? Or is there some fundamental benefit for ILI to have a completely unrelated football club associated with an industrial project that’s a million miles away from football? I’m also curious to know what direct involvement the club would have with the running of the farm if it gets the go ahead? If the answer is “none” then that simply revives the question above - “then why be involved at all ?” If the answer is otherwise then, especially remembering the reputationally damaging demise of the Concert Company, we need to know whether there are any other companies, directly involved or arm’s length, that are being formed here and what are the possible implications for the club? In particular, if the BF were to fail, or to blow up or something, would the club, of which many of us are shareholders, be liable in any way? The way it currently looks to me is - “ILI, which has commercial relationship with club, want to build battery farm on land owned by individuals with club connections and, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, club stands to benefit big time. However club immediately appears to be up to its neck in the planning process for a scheme that seems to be the only financial messiah in town - to the extent that ICT seem to be fronting this industrial project that’s a million miles away from its core business and for reasons that are far from clear.” What am I missing?
  13. I’m not convinced that the quite aggressive approach taken by the Chairman on the front page of today’s Courier is the best way to win friends and influence people when there’s another, much bigger, Council vote to be negotiated next month.
  14. There will doubtless be a few other old buffers on here who will remember the ghastly, clusterboorach that the Council got itself into on a previous occasion when it was involved in a decision that had existential implications for Caley Thistle - namely the £900K grant towards the stadium road in 1995-96. There’s no need to detail the Town Hall obstructiveness,, QCs’ opinions, scandalous rearguard action by Council officials and nitpicking about Dave Stewart’s use of the word “payable” in a motion to the Council that eventually saw IDC go out of existence under an ignominious cloud before the money was paid from the Common Good Fund… but it was desperate stuff. Unfortunately, we now already have a bid to contest a quorate planning decision - which the club manager yesterday, deploying delightful metaphor, eloquently described as trying to keep replaying the game until they get the result they want - and that rearguard action already looks ominous. But what really worries me is that if we thought that the Council back in the 90s was bad…. the current local governance of Inverness is a whole lot worse. History is making me very uneasy about this one.
  15. Could anyone fill in exactly how this Battery Farm plan will operate? Who will manage and operate the facility on a day to day basis? Who will physically oversee construction? Who will ensure that there is a market? Where is the set-up capital coming from? In practical terms, what is the nature of the link between the football club and ILI? What’s in it for ILI? When would funds be expected to arrive with the club? What does the club have to do in order to qualify for revenue from this facility? What are the projected profits? What’s the level of risk? If there are losses, who is liable and what would the implications be for the football club? These are not hostile questions in any way. It’s just that, as a shareholder in ITandCFC, developments over the last week have led me to realise that I know very little about this project, which it’s hoped will revolutionise the football club’s finances.
  16. Everyone will just have to hope that these difficulties are not “terminal”.
  17. So where would this leave the club if the Battery Farm, like the Concert Company, were to go bust? In the case of the Concert Company, the technically separate football club took a large sum for stadium rent before the CC went bust, leaving local traders out of pocket. There is therefore also the concern that the CC’s demise left a lot of bad feeling among the Inverness business community. So what’s the situation in the event of the collapse of the Battery Farm? Also, how much vehicular traffic would a Battery Farm create, and might this, on the already extremely congested SDR, have been a consideration when planning permission was refused?
  18. Apart from the standard resolutions, there was probably as much said about the current, positive football situation as about finances. The manager, among many other things, revealed that, in the light of last season’s glut of May games and this season’s injuries, he has already taken steps to lighten training in anticipation of what might potentially be an even bigger concentration this year. He also revealed that the consensus among the squad was not to visit Hampden the day before the semi, and that a meeting had been held in advance of what will be the team’s VAR debut. Oh, and approval has been given to wear the HOME strip. As regards finances, the Chairman and CEO were both keen to emphasise the Freeport/ Battery farm etc initiatives for future funding, but this appears still to be some time in the future. The Chairman gave what perhaps wasn’t the clearest of indications that, especially given the demise of the Concert Company, they have - unsurprisingly - been depending on benefactors to maintain cash flow. However the CEO did volunteer, when it was suggested that the concerts had been financially unsuccessful, that the football club did receive from the Concert Company, in advance, payment for stadium hire and booking fees… and in full as opposed to the reduced payout, reported at the time as 65%, received by at least some other creditors. The Scottish Cup pay out will not be made until participation is at an end.
  19. ROLLOX!! That’s what they want to call themselves…. Rollox FC. The establishment is best known as the St Rollox locomotive works (my grandfather worked there during WW1) and to me, the “Caledonian” bit is incidental, originating from the works making engines for the former Caledonian Railway (for which my other grandfather worked). If they don’t like Rollox FC and are all that concerned about having a name relating to their red and yellow badge then I suggest that they should call themselves Partick Thistle FC… and create some employment for the renowned PTFC posse of QCs with whom we in Inverness became more than familiar in days gone by. But in any case, SFA Articles of Association would appear to suggest that they are on a hiding to nothing anyway… so ROLLOX TO THEM!!
  20. What a ghastly, negative video with at least two thirds of it harking back almost 30 years to the least appealing aspects of a 2-3 year process that so far has yielded 12 seasons in the SPL/Premiership, a place in its top six, European football and a Scottish Cup win… not to mention lower league and Challenge Cup wins. I was also at all of these tense episodes shown here, and a good deal more… also as a BBC reporter. Many on this thread will also have seen the tale unfold live. I see no case whatsoever for a video of this length, most of which attempts to portray the formation of this club in an unduly negative manner.
  21. Spot on Johndo. When I wrote my Courier column …. dismissing a merger as “inconceivable”…. the commitment on March 1st that this AGM would take place this coming Tuesday (28th March) or very soon after was still alive. I don’t have the legal background (Companies Act etc) on Articles of Association but intuitively I find it difficult to see how a delay of four months can be permissible. I’m also not clear why they have failed to deliver on their commitment to 28th March. Maybe it’s simply that they failed to note that Scotland are playing that night but in that case a slightly amended date should have been named long ago. I would feel a lot easier if I could think of an alternative explanation that’s free from the quite sinister implications that this ongoing delay is simply inviting speculation about.
  22. I did that on December 21st, AGM deadline day, by writing as a shareholder to the CEO. There has been no reply. I also made the same query the following day as a journalist through the media department who acknowledged my email and said they would pass it on. There has been no reply.
  23. That is also my reading of the situation. Para 55 of the Articles of Association (which I accessed through Companies House) states that an AGM must be held within each year and that no more than 15 months must elapse between AGMs. This made the deadline 21st December last year - three months ago. If Para 55 of these Articles were not to be binding on the Board, then that would presumably also render the entire document redundant, which I would find difficult to believe. Perhaps there needs to be some recognition of the fact that the shareholders actually own the club and they appoint a board to run it on their behalf, which includes making appointments such as of the CEO and the football manager. At the risk of being repetitive, I find it astonishing that the board still has to acknowledge any of the content of a worrying set of accounts published by a completely external party three weeks ago and has, without explanation, failed to hold an AGM on a stated date of March 28th. Failure to meet this latter commitment can only raise concerns and speculation as to why….or is it simply because they noticed that this was the date of a Scotland game?
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