Have a read of this;

http://www.scottishsupporters.net/fan-representation/fan-ownership-in-scotland/

Given we don't have a sugar-daddy like County, why do we persist with the current board set up? 

Caley Jags Together seems like a ready-made solution to put forward for this model. Presumably a few fans with the time could take a salary to fund the governance of the thing.

We have a so-called long standing attendance problem due to a disconnect with the Invernesian population and what better way to tackle it. 

It would be interesting to talk to other clubs to see if it works in practical terms.

Where do you find what I reckon would be around £3 million to buy the club's shares?

I think we would need serious backers first supplemented by fans input. 

Fans alone wouldn't be enough unless a few hundred fans want to contribute a few thousand year on year.

CaleyD would probably state the pros and cons as to who could/ should be involved.

 

9 hours ago, 12th Man said:

I think we would need serious backers first supplemented by fans input. 

Fans alone wouldn't be enough unless a few hundred fans want to contribute a few thousand year on year.

CaleyD would probably state the pros and cons as to who could/ should be involved.

Why would CaleyD have anymore idea than the next punter?

Like Caleyjagsforever he seems to disappear from CTO when there's no topics available to happy clap on

Dougal

 

9 hours ago, Charles Bannerman said:

Where do you find what I reckon would be around £3 million to buy the club's shares?

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here. I thought we didn't own the land the stadium is built on as I would see that as the only tangible asset the club owns. If as we are all led to believe we lose money every year it certainly doesn't seem like a great business opportunity for any one to purchase. And I can't imagine any astute businessman offering anything near that to purchase the club. We certainly don't have any players worth selling I can't imagine anything worth £3 million pound could be realised as the value of the club 

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will be along to correct me as When we go down we would be even less of a temptation with no tv revenue etc 

Ownership of a company is achieved by purchasing its shares and the shareholders are hence all part owners of its assets. To my recollection, although I can't currently lay a hand on my copy of the accounts, the club's share capital runs to something like 3 million £1 shares which are owned by the likes of the ICT Charitable Trust, the Muirfield Mills consortium, the Highland Hospice and also much smaller holdings down to £250 by individual fans although this last category doesn't make a large percentage of the total.

£3 million is therefore the kind of money needed to buy the whole lot at face value. A fans' body might want, or indeed would probably want, to settle for less than the full complement, even if the owners were willing to sell them. There's also the possibility that some owners would be prepared to part with their shares at less than £1 each. For instance the late Ian Fraser is said eventually to have parted with over 300,000 shares to Sandy Catto for just a fraction of their face value and these are actually part of what the Catto family then donated to the Highland Hospice. As a result, there are possible ways for a controlling interest to be acquired for a lot less than £3 million, but a lot of money would still have to be raised. The raising of further share capital by way of a share issue would be another opportunity for fans to acquire some interest.

On the other hand, fan ownership also brings with it responsibilities such as the running of a business turning over anything up to £4 million a year and with many employees. Inevitably there's a lot more to that than meets the eye and a supporter led board would have major responsibilities requiring significant expertise and time, as previous boards have had.

Edited April 30, 20179 yr by Charles Bannerman

24 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

Ownership of a company is achieved by purchasing its shares and the shareholders are hence all part owners of its assets. To my recollection, although I can't currently lay a hand on my copy of the accounts, the club's share capital runs to something like 3 million £1 shares which are owned by the likes of the ICT Charitable Trust, the Muirfield Mills consortium, the Highland Hospice and also much smaller holdings down to £250 by individual fans although this last category doesn't make a large percentage of the total.

£3 million is therefore the kind of money needed to buy the whole lot at face value. A fans' body might want, or indeed would probably want, to settle for less than the full complement, even if the owners were willing to sell them. There's also the possibility that some owners would be prepared to part with their shares at less than £1 each. For instance the late Ian Fraser is said eventually to have parted with over 300,000 shares to Sandy Catto for just a fraction of their face value and these are actually part of what the Catto family then donated to the Highland Hospice. As a result, there are possible ways for a controlling interest to be acquired for a lot less than £3 million, but a lot of money would still have to be raised. The raising of further share capital by way of a share issue would be another opportunity for fans to acquire some interest.

On the other hand, fan ownership also brings with it responsibilities such as the running of a business turning over anything up to £4 million a year and with many employees. Inevitably there's a lot more to that than meets the eye and a supporter led board would have major responsibilities requiring significant expertise and time, as previous boards have had.

I agree with much of what you say in terms of likely burdens and responsibilities for fan ownership. However, although there are more than 3 million £1 shares in issue, the balance sheet value of them is effectively less than £600k at the last balance sheet date (31 May 2016) because of accumulated losses of over £3m. I.e. if you added all the profits or losses together from the birth of the legal entity in February 1994 then it is a total loss to the tune of well over £3.4m. These latest accounts to 31 May last year are available for anyone to see at

 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC149117/filing-history

The club is a small company that doesn't need to publicly file a detailed profit and loss account. However the informed reader of even abbreviated versions can readily see that those who invested in these shares did it as a labour of love given they are highly unlikely to ever see a full return.

Charlie Christie spoke on the radio of a day of reckoning / dark days ahead iirc ... It is a minor miracle that we've come as far as we have. It seems that big one-off pay days like McKay, Christie, Scottish Cup merely help to keep us going a bit longer because the true, harsh reality is we run at a significant deficit year in, year out. 

14 minutes ago, cif73 said:

I agree with much of what you say in terms of likely burdens and responsibilities for fan ownership. However, although there are more than 3 million £1 shares in issue, the balance sheet value of them is effectively less than £600k at the last balance sheet date (31 May 2016) because of accumulated losses of over £3m. I.e. if you added all the profits or losses together from the birth of the legal entity in February 1994 then it is a total loss to the tune of well over £3.4m. These latest accounts to 31 May last year are available for anyone to see at

 https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC149117/filing-history

The club is a small company that doesn't need to publicly file a detailed profit and loss account. However the informed reader of even abbreviated versions can readily see that those who invested in these shares did it as a labour of love given they are highly unlikely to ever see a full return.

Charlie Christie spoke on the radio of a day of reckoning / dark days ahead iirc ... It is a minor miracle that we've come as far as we have. It seems that big one-off pay days like McKay, Christie, Scottish Cup merely help to keep us going a bit longer because the true, harsh reality is we run at a significant deficit year in, year out. 

Follow the link quoted and you can see the accounts for the period covering our last visit to the Championship (accounting year to 31 May 2010) ... That year's published actually did show a profit & loss account ... A  stonking loss of over £900k for one year alone. Dark days ahead I fear, hope we've got people at the helm capable of steering us through ... 

cif73's link is very informative. It confirms 3.004M voting shares and the other 900,003 are non voting historical relics of the previous roles played by Thistle, Caley and Inverness and Nairn Enterprise. The nominal share value is £1 but there's already the notable precedent of Ian Fraser's going for much less than that (there was a rumour of as little as 20p in the £) In practice, if shareholders were prepared to sell, control of the club could probably be acquired for considerably less than £3M.

There are a few interesting blasts from the past in the list of shareholdings. Orion still have their 275,000 as a quid pro quo for bankrolling the Marius Niculae deal, the McGilvray family still have over 100,000 and while the half million plus Tulloch shares are now with the Charitable Trust, David Sutherland himself still has 50,000 and Graeme Bennett 28,000. The biggest holding is the 574,000 ex-Catto/Ian Fraser holding of the Highland Hospice.

Pulling the threads together here, if we have another financial year in the Championship like last time (£900k loss), then our balance sheet asset surplus could well be gone and we could be "balance sheet insolvent" before the first season is out. Apart from the fact that shares could then be worth nothing technically, Richie might not need the whole 4 years to bring us to the bottom of Scottish football's pyramid. 

Edited April 30, 20179 yr by cif73

some very informative posts from cif73 here, confirming my deepest fears. What this means is a fire sale of players at the end of the season (or more accurately, expensive players will be asked to trigger clauses or to leave "by mutual consent" (i.e. For free) to keep the club afloat financially. With many of the U20s punted too, we're going to have to put together a team from nothing and on the cheap. Virtually impossible without a decent scouting system. Added to this, there will need to be a contingency in place for the likely scenario of not returning to the prem at the first attempt - that has to be part-time football to match other teams with a support as small as ours.

Did the club sleep-walk into this? Was there so much arrogance at board and management level that we'd finish in the top six? It seems so! I really think Foran's insistence that we were going to finish in the top 6, even when we all could see that avoiding relegation was the real issue, was because he had convinced the board at the outset that we'd finish in the top 6. All the projections will have been worked out on that assumption, which means we'll be hundreds of thousands short for next year before poor ST sales are taken into account. Utterly deluded, the whole lot of them and the football club is set to have some very dark days.

9 minutes ago, PerfICT said:

some very informative posts from cif73 here, confirming my deepest fears. What this means is a fire sale of players at the end of the season (or more accurately, expensive players will be asked to trigger clauses or to leave "by mutual consent" (i.e. For free) to keep the club afloat financially. With many of the U20s punted too, we're going to have to put together a team from nothing and on the cheap. Virtually impossible without a decent scouting system. Added to this, there will need to be a contingency in place for the likely scenario of not returning to the prem at the first attempt - that has to be part-time football to match other teams with a support as small as ours.

Did the club sleep-walk into this? Was there so much arrogance at board and management level that we'd finish in the top six? It seems so! I really think Foran's insistence that we were going to finish in the top 6, even when we all could see that avoiding relegation was the real issue, was because he had convinced the board at the outset that we'd finish in the top 6. All the projections will have been worked out on that assumption, which means we'll be hundreds of thousands short for next year before poor ST sales are taken into account. Utterly deluded, the whole lot of them and the football club is set to have some very dark days.

I would be astonished if the Board budgeted for a top six finish.  They have previously always made prudent budget forecasts and I don't think season will be any different.  Happy to be proved wrong if you have anything solid to back up your assumption.

38 minutes ago, Kind of Blue said:

I would be astonished if the Board budgeted for a top six finish.  They have previously always made prudent budget forecasts and I don't think season will be any different.  Happy to be proved wrong if you have anything solid to back up your assumption.

Nothing to back up my hunch - it is just that. Time will tell. Even if the budget was based on 8th, we're stuffed!

This is a problem that is going to affect all clubs with an average attendance under 5,000 who don't have a sugar daddy as costs rise against a stagnant support base. Scottish football is so poor that European qualification usually costs clubs money as they can't get through the preliminary rounds to the competition proper and can't recoup their costs due to the small supporter base St J being an example. Amongst the solutions would be part time football or hire more local talent at a cheaper cost which probably means playing in the lower leagues, smaller squad sizes, standing areas (at lower cost) and summer football might also help attendances. Clubs like Hamilton (who once had to resign from the league due to debt) have only survived because of their academy and the transfer fees and sell on fees they have collected which is definitely the way to go for smaller clubs to be able to compete. They also take a lot of their players from the lower Scottish leagues. When I started watching ICT we had a team of Scottish players now we have hardly any I also think the team we had in Div 1 was a better side than what we have now. There are far fewer people both playing and watching the game than there were back in the day, the standard has come way down and the cost way up.

I recall a decent Partick side getting over 15,000 at home against Honved in the 70's despite getting knocked out with that crowd they would have made some money. They would be doing well to get half that today.

2 hours ago, wynthank15 said:

This is a problem that is going to affect all clubs with an average attendance under 5,000 who don't have a sugar daddy as costs rise against a stagnant support base. Scottish football is so poor that European qualification usually costs clubs money as they can't get through the preliminary rounds to the competition proper and can't recoup their costs due to the small supporter base St J being an example. Amongst the solutions would be part time football or hire more local talent at a cheaper cost which probably means playing in the lower leagues, smaller squad sizes, standing areas (at lower cost) and summer football might also help attendances. Clubs like Hamilton (who once had to resign from the league due to debt) have only survived because of their academy and the transfer fees and sell on fees they have collected which is definitely the way to go for smaller clubs to be able to compete. They also take a lot of their players from the lower Scottish leagues. When I started watching ICT we had a team of Scottish players now we have hardly any I also think the team we had in Div 1 was a better side than what we have now. There are far fewer people both playing and watching the game than there were back in the day, the standard has come way down and the cost way up.

I recall a decent Partick side getting over 15,000 at home against Honved in the 70's despite getting knocked out with that crowd they would have made some money. They would be doing well to get half that today.

Smaller first team squad supplemented by development players has to be the way forward. Charlie Christie on BBC said we had a first team squad of 26 and Pele operated with one of 18. That additional payroll must come to a tidy sum. Sadly the development squad is another area where County seem to be streets ahead of us. 

So merger with County to pool resources?

 

Either that or they become our feeder club 

2 hours ago, cif73 said:

Either that or they become our feeder club 

As much as it  hurts to say it , I think RC will push on and prosper in our absence. They are already streets ahead of us off the field and lets be honest the attraction for the occasional supporter and hospitality punters to watch RC V Celtic, Hibs or Rangers is a far more attractive proposition than we will be able to offer.

It is often been said that the Highlands is to small an area to sustain two  SPL clubs, but I never thought for a moment we would be playing second fiddle to a village team.

Where the f***k has it all gone so wrong.

Hopefully I am getting ahead of myself and RF will prove us all wrong and lift us to 10th place, but going down while they remain in the SPL is indeed the worst possible scenario.   

While this may be slightly off topic, if/when we get relegated, there is a chance to start afresh with many things next season. Getting back to a more "local or Scottish squad would help and I refuse to believe there are not some players in the Highland League who could step up albeit part time or full time. While I accept that fans may not turn out in the same numbers as this season, the club will really need supporters to back the team. Boycotting the team because RF/The Board haven't resigned next season will only hasten any demise. There is a 1 in 4 opportunity to get promotion either directly or via the play offs which wasn't their previously so better odds than previously to get promotion.

All of this does come with a huge caveat however in that the board/manager must get their planning right in the summer and that is the part which worries me most.

The P&L account would be key to understanding how sustainable the clubs finances are. Is there any reason why these are not made public?

Instead of full fans/community ownership which as suggested by previous posters could cost up to 3 million another option would be to go down the Killie route.  They have just launched the "Trust in Killie" initiative to try and get a fans representative in the board.

They are aiming to raise £100,000 to purchase unallocated shares in the club by asking fans to pay £15 a month.

http://killietrust.killiefc.com/news-detail.php?context=news&show=detail&rss=http://www.blogger.com/feeds/6864949749245332354/posts/default/6163283783693819205

This could then be used as a stepping stop to ultimately go down the route of community ownership.

 

 

16 hours ago, highlandexile said:

Instead of full fans/community ownership which as suggested by previous posters could cost up to 3 million another option would be to go down the Killie route.  They have just launched the "Trust in Killie" initiative to try and get a fans representative in the board.

They are aiming to raise £100,000 to purchase unallocated shares in the club by asking fans to pay £15 a month.

http://killietrust.killiefc.com/news-detail.php?context=news&show=detail&rss=http://www.blogger.com/feeds/6864949749245332354/posts/default/6163283783693819205

This could then be used as a stepping stop to ultimately go down the route of community ownership.

 

 

As a shareholder and co-owner of F.C. United of Manchester, I have seen the benefits of supporters owning or part-owing their own football club first hand. Another example of a perfectly well run community ownership programme, would be the 'Foundation of Hearts' group as well. This thread excites me and I hope once CJT get their house in order, this is something they will pursue in the near future and put a definite motion on the table for us to sink our teeth into.  

I read recently about IPOs assisting in clarity of how clubs are run/governance issues. There is never really a financial or even performance improvement in sides floated on the stock market due to the volatility of football as an investment but this would not be the purpose of the action. Arguably though, an IPO forces clarity on club issues and if there is a problem everyone will know about it. Equally if there isn't a problem, it endorses the good work of those doing a good job. 

I think there are too many uncertainties around club finances (are they good or bad? What liabilities or even benefits are lurking that fans don't know about?) More importantly I doubt ictfc have the fanbase to support even a small fan ownership group just on the basis it would be an even smaller% of fans who would commit money compared to small numbers at our games. And then you still need to find cash to run a club after paying for a right to be involved. It's also difficult to detach the hospice need for support from hard nosed business decisions which means you would expect to pay over the odds for that particular shareholding (or maybe that's why I'm not a millionaire).