Leaderboard

28 June 2008. One of my wife's few relatives was getting married, near Falkirk. The wedding was in mid afternoon. The female side of the family were all getting their hair done that morning. Just about the only male relatives were the bride's father and brother, and they weren't allowed out! So what's a man to do? Zoom round to Myreton, of course! (I've also been to East Fortune, but can't seem to find any photographs. I well remember the big Vulcan sitting outside.)

And now back to some classic cars down Ingles Street one similar to my Cortina 2000GT that was my pride and joy when I was 21, I must have a look for a photo. Also another Riley Elf, Bond Bug and pickup based on the Bug owned by an retired BT/Openreach engineer and when he passes my house in the Riley you can smell the oil for about 5 minutes.

We all know why that is

Three planes - how many people? Coming over for the Glorious Twelfth? While you're here, would you like to buy a football club?

A6-RJZ is registered as a Boeing 737-700 BBJ owned by RoyalJet Premium Private Aviation from UAE. They have a fleet size of 8 aircraft and this one first went into service in 2003. If the other jets are the same, then they too might be from the same company. More likely one of our wealthy landowners in the area than an ICt investor.

Now done. Let's see how long it lasts...

There was a time when I used to edit/update some stuff on Wikipedia, but I noticed when looking at this that I am now blocked from editing, for various reasons that they list. My IP address seems to have more red flags than Ketan Makwana does!

Thank you for that insight into what seems to be a legally complex situation! It continues to seem to be that the need otherwise for a General Meeting is fairly central here. (And on the subject of General Meetings, the AGM is now 13 days overdue.) There is possibly an issue of trust here since I don’t think that there is huge supporter confidence in how “up front” the operation of the club has been of late. By the way, Wikipedia is already listing 77 as “Owners” and I have started a new thread on that.

It’s great fun, and join the Prediction League too.

Just joined this now as I had forgotten my password for a few days but my memory came back at the start of the week and I totally forgot about the prediction league . I'm determined to have a good season so beware y'all .

Achfary… you clearly know a lot more than I do about the way companies work. I’ve just been doing some humble number crunching based on far more limited background knowledge, so you may be in a position to clarify whether the premises I’ve used are realistic. I’ve taken it that if Makwana has 50.48% of whatever the eventual voting strength is, then if the ST has a fixed 10%, original shares still held by their original owners will comprise 39.52%. As a result, whatever amount Makwana puts in added to whatever he may acquire from existing shareholders will have to be 50.48/39.52 = 1.277 times what existing shareholders retain. At the moment, 4.002 million ordinary shares are in ownership, so if KM we’re to acquire none of these, he would have to put in £4.002M x 1.277 = £5.1M to gain 50.48%. However, once he starts acquiring existing shares, every one he adds is also one the other side don’t have. The maths behind that are a bit more complicated but, for the £1, 2, 3, 4M examples I quoted for what he might put in, he would also respectively have to acquire 1.803, 1.364, 0.935 and 0.486 million shares from existing holders. Let’s take the example of him putting in £2M (which I personally don’t think would much more than scratch the surface of this huge problem). That would still leave him needing 1.364 million existing shares, either by purchase at whatever rate which would add to his obligation, or gift and that equates to quite a large proportion of the current largest shareholders’ holdings. That then leads me to a question - to what extent might the Charitable Trust be getting leaned on to part with their 729,000 (to a complete stranger) “in order to save the club”? There are two other areas in which my expertise is limited so I need to ask questions. Firstly, if they wanted to achieve their 50.48% by instead selling shares to KM with an enhanced voting power, would that require a General Meeting? I suspect so. Secondly, if they want to sell KM new shares, would they also have to put more on general sale? And thirdly, I believe there may be a limit to how many shares they can sell without asking a General Meeting for permission to extend the current limit. Is this the case? One way or another, as far as I can see, acquiring a 50.48% stake in this club looks likely to be a complex and expensive business, albeit with some scope to save on expense by increasing complexity - and vice versa.

Have just discovered that Seventy7 tried to buy Southend United in late 2022. The deal was fronted by a guy who seems to be a local-lad-made-good, Carl Reader, but money would have come, via Seventy7, from a Monaco-based pension fund. Reader admitted that the investors were interested in the land, the property, and the development potential, and not in the football club. The fans asked the same sort of questions that we have been asking. The deal fell through in early 2023 - it seems that the chairman Ron Martin simply refused to consider it or even talk to Reader & co. If you are interested, there are a couple of discussion on a Southend fan forum - look for responses from the front man "Carl Reader" or "Carl": https://www.shrimperzone.com/forums/threads/carl-reader-seventy7-ventures-want-to-acquire-the-club.111822/ https://www.shrimperzone.com/forums/threads/q-a-with-carl-reader.111823/ Martin finally closed the sale of the club last month - NOT to Seventy7 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cedxldzgyw7o

People are sceptical because nobody, least of all Makwana himself, have come up with any information which suggests he is remotely capable of funding this deal or running a football club. He seems to be basically a one man band. The latest accounts filed with Companies House record Seventy7 Ventures as having an average of just 1 employee - presumably himself. His longer established business of Enterprise Lab Ltd is listed as having 2 employees with him, as the sole director presumably being one of them. So, he probably has someone who gives a bit of admin support and that is his business empire! His businesses all seem to be related to business consultancy, a subject on which he appears to have minimal experience or qualification to provide advice on. On an admittedly brief Google search, I could find no record of him having been in a senior management role in a company. His consultancy work seemed to focus on making videos or participating in conferences in ofter obscure places such as Albania. It would appear that having made a presentation at a conference, he then claims to have provided consultancy services to all the companies that had a member of staff attend. I don't doubt that he has a fair bit of knowledge around business management theory and, in particular, related to change management, but it comes across as more of a hobby than something he has a record of successful delivery in. Has he actually worked with companies on detailed projects of change management and documented how he produced positive change? If he has, I didn't find any evidence of it. If anybody has found any evidence that there is any substance behind the change management buzzwords, please share.

So even if he can't say how much money he will be investing, or where it's coming from - which doesn't instil confidence - surely he can tell us about the other phenomenal developments which (he says) he has been involved in? From the viewpoint of the ordinary fan, I'd say that he has done nothing right either. And that's basically what the Companies House records for all his companies suggest. Nothing really wrong, but nothing right either. An enigma.

I can’t quite agree there. I think that a guy with his “credentials”, which haven’t been difficult to establish, automatically creates scepticism by even embarking on a project like this, and the manner of some of the statements he has already made have only added to that scope for scepticism. That said, the way the club has gone about its business of late has created such a lack of public confidence in it that any agreement it came to short of a large, gold plated financial gift would be treated with some degree of scepticism. This latter consideration isn’t, however, created directly by Mr Makwana.

He hasn’t created scepticism, people have just chosen to be sceptical! He has done nothing wrong.

Gardiner should have been sacked long ago. The Board have created a problem for themselves by trusting Gardiner and allowing him to have far too much control in the running of the club. Gardiner's management style is of the control freak variety. He has never wanted anything done without his say so. There are things which should have been delegated but which he would keep to himself. As a result, I suspect there genuinely are a lot of things which realistically, only he can do. For instance, we are due a club AGM and this had previously been administered by the Company Secretary. We haven't had a Company Secretary since April last year and I would imagine that it has been the CEO who has taken on the Company Secretary roles. There may be nobody else in the building that would know what to do, where to find the relevant files etc. On the other hand, the Board also know there are people who do not trust Gardiner and who will not put a penny into the club until he is finally out of the door. They will be aware that of all the loose ends to be tied up, he is the biggest. I would assume he has at least 3 months notice to work, but if the club is to move forward quickly in a meaningful way, he needs to be away before then. The Board therefore need to identify what "loose ends" there are which Gardiner needs to action and give him a clear timescale to get them sorted. They need to identify who will now carry out his former management roles. They then need to identify what information he has which needs passed to others to allow the club to function, and make sure it is passed to the relevant people. That should not take more than 4 weeks at the most. After that, he should be away on gardening leave for the rest of his notice period. Of course, if Gardiner was even a remotely competent manager, none of this would be necessary because he would have trained his staff properly and kept relevant staff appropriately appraised of issues. This should be routine practice in order that other staff can seamlessly take over the reins in the event of unforeseen absence. There should have been no reason for him to stay in the building beyond the day he resigned.

If put to it, the constant limelight is starting to make me rethink. The sums that CB has put forward for a majority share, (assuming these can't be circumvented), are obviously insurmountable for a company that's never handled more than several thousand quid. Then, it would be very odd for an offshore financier backer to consider funnelling a large chunk of their clients' money through such an unstable company. Let's say there was some reason to do that, they'd surely be keen to avoid this high exposure, high PR, high promise media extravaganza, and want to work a tad more quietly and discreetly. Added to that, there's surely easier ways to get a RoI on £5m (to buy a majority share - if correctly estimated) for their clients than sinking an established football club, dismantling a stadium, trying to convert CGF land -requiring HC buy-in and Sheriff Court permissions - and which 7 months ago just opened a Waste Transfer Station next door. So, I'm wondering if there's now more clarity between the info in that 'cry for help' from ICT in early June and the reality hurdles from the due diligence on the ground (pre-conditions set by S7V/backer) If so, this could be a cul-de-sac that only prolonged the inevitable. Which individuals benefit most from a prolonged, drawn out takeover, as opposed to immediate administration?