Charles Bannerman

That’s an absolutely vital consideration. There are two issues here. Sure, Gardiner has been a complete shitshow in every conceivable facet of his involvement with this club, but he would never have been in a position to wreak any of that havoc if he had been properly supervised and controlled (as any employee should be) by the Board, and in particular the Chairmen he worked under. Given the extent of that havoc, it must surely have been painfully obvious from an early stage, so were there not clear grounds for dismissal on the grounds of incompetence? Neither of the Chairmen who should have been overseeing his activities is still in post, but should at least some still-serving Board members not be accepting corporate responsibility for this mess and considering their positions?

I thought that one of the main reasons for creating a separate Concert Company was to protect the Football Company from any financial misfortune. On that basis, it seems difficult to see how the football club could be liable for money that may have been loaned to the now defunct CC. If Gardiner did lend money to the CC, then I would take a huge drink of schadenfreude at the thought that he has been hoist with his own petard and finds himself in the same position as a list of honest local traders who were out of pocket when a company in which he played a central role failed and collapsed. I trust that any audit will be thorough and forensic in the extreme, because among other things it is absolutely necessary to establish whether there has been any activity that might be judged negligently incompetent or even criminal, and which might therefore become a potential cause for legal proceedings. In that event, perhaps any such proceedings could be held at the Caledonian Stadium where a sell-out crowd - unlike the previous concerts - would generate record profits. That audit could perhaps start by addressing how a company that was meant to be economising could lose over £3 million in three years, including, in 2023-24, a massive £1.7M which means that what it spent in that year was around 75% more than it earned.

So what next? Police Scotland reveal that they have impounded a £100,000 campervan parked in Gardiner’s mother’s driveway? On a more serious note, in this morning’s PandJ report, Alan Savage reveals that turnover (which doesn’t have to be disclosed in the accounts of a small company) as being in the region of £2-2.25M. Now I’m not sure if losses have been £1.7M as announced by Savage last week or the £1.5-1.6M he refers to in today’s paper, but either way, these losses are a phenomenal percentage of turnover. The other question is how can a club that has allegedly been under a stringent economy regime for some years whilst playing in the championship managed to spend in a year something in the region of £3.5-4M which isn’t far, even index linked, from what it was spending in the Premiership? And the final question, which is fundamental, familiar and recurring - what level of control has the Board been exercising over the club in general and Scot Gardiner in particular across the years that this financial catastrophe has been visibly been building up?

It was a pure coincidence that this evening’s announcement from the club that a solution had been found happened to drop on social media around five minutes after the BBC report on the crisis announcement went out on Reporting Scotland, and there must just have been time to squeeze a quick line in before the programme went off air at 7pm. Alan Savage’s “six days from administration” statement this morning seems to have had a dramatic effect on those it was targeted at. One other thought … AS hasn’t exactly been backward at coming forward with criticism of Gardiner. I actually wonder how devastated or otherwise AS would be if the allegedly litigious SG felt minded to raise a defamation action…. which of course would mean that five years of goings on at Caley Thistle would emerge in detail in a very public forum indeed.

I am simply highlighting a relatively cost effective manner in which Alan Savage could gain a majority stake, if that is what he is seeking.

This is pure conjecture but… if creditors supporting the £3M “relief” were substantially to opt for shares rather than a complete write off and if Alan Savage were then able to acquire enough of these shares at a reduced price then, since he already has almost half a million shares, he might be in a position to get 50% control maybe for a (big ballpark) £2 million…. while Morrison et al at least get something back.

I’m surprised that The Sun haven’t come up with that headline!

That is the absolutely central question. Totally without any benefit of hindsight, it was clear to a great number of people as early as 2018-19 that there was a severe problem when £1 million of new shares were needed to keep the ship afloat. The best take on it that I can make is that the problem was ignored for far too long and then naive faith was placed on a series of four money making wheezes, all of which collapsed spectacularly. Of these, the Concert Company was also hugely damaging to the club’s reputation and I wonder if there would have been grounds for sacking Gardiner on the strength of that alone? Then there seemed to be this blind faith that nothing could possibly go wrong with the Battery Farm and I wonder how much was spent and committed on the blind assumption that it would produce the goods? And in similar vein, it appears that this naive faith continued to the bitter end, since I believe that new signings were made on the say-so of “new owner” Ketan Makwana. As for the club’s reputation… recent years have seen this utterly trashed due to the manner in which it went about its business. However I think the manner now of its renaissance, especially off the back of Gardiner’s absurdly belated but hugely welcome departure, stands every chance of its steady restoration.

It’s interesting that we are now celebrating something around half a dozen benefactors having dispensed in some way or another with loans of values which are unclear. In other words we just don’t know how much debt the club has been in - and nor obviously did Alan Savage until he kept uncovering more and more liabilities during last week. We also need to remember that, even though the 2022-23 accounts were belatedly published in June, even they only run to 30.5.23. so are almost 15 months behind the curve, so goodness knows how much worse the numbers to May 2024 will be…. albeit now partly resolved. One other revelation was that there are now serious steps being taken to pay creditors - DandE Coches and Red Pepper were among those mentioned - and it was confirmed that the Puma situation has been resolved…. which seems to be an issue on its own!

If that’s the case, then it would totally revamp the shareholding structure. Would RM’s stake come to as much as 2.1M share? I thought he was owed around £1.4M and I don’t think he has a massive current stake. It’s not been made clear who have opted for a write-off and who for a conversion to equity, but I can’t see anyone acquiring a massively influential “Makwanaesque” holding in what is currently a fairly diffuse 4 million total, which might (?) go up to something like 6 million depending on who has opted for what.

There was a press conference at the stadium this afternoon where, among other things, it was revealed that a number of people - including Ross Morrison - to whom money was owed have agreed to convert the debt to equity in the club or to write it off completely. This follows a meeting this morning and is worth millions. I wasn’t there myself, but I’ve heard the press conference audio and this, to me, is pretty major. This is my BBC colleague Iain MacInnes’s online report. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/clyw88kx84xo And it emerges that Alan Savage has also received a goodwill phone call from Sir Alex Ferguson!

Another feature of what’s happened this week is that ICT can return to being a football club as opposed to some kind of vehicle for land speculation.

One nagging concern that I have is that, since this Forensic Audit has been uncovering Black Holes of constantly increasing magnitude, it may ultimately stumble across something so large that it may not be possible to deal with it. We just need to hope not. As for the apparently very large number of strips - might it not be possible to contact the person within Puma through whom the order was made and come to some constructive arrangement?

Published online by the Courier around 6pm.

That’s one of the core issues about Makwana - he always seemed to “give the impression” that he was doing things whereas in effect he was doing nothing. He gave the impression that he was constructing a deal to become the majority shareholders and that he was facilitating new signings and that he was some big shot businessman opening a branch of his company in the UAE…. and then that he was in the process of repelling the return of Alan Savage. Meanwhile, the reality was that he did absolutely nothing and was simply indulging in various fantasies - which he very probably also believed himself. In the case of the board membership question, it’s clear he saw the Companies House entries - where there was always very likely to be some innocuous explanation - and converted this into a scenario where he thought that Providence had intervened on his behalf. I remain utterly astonished that the Board - albeit possibly led into the scenario by Scot Gardiner - could have unanimously have swallowed a heap of obvious that pretty well everybody else instantly saw through the moment the story broke last month.