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Charles Bannerman

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Everything posted by Charles Bannerman

  1. One of the problems of being a “Small Company” is that the accounts aren’t very detailed. In fact when they eventually materialised last year, I don’t recollect any statement of turnover so we don’t really know, year on year, what’s happening with earnings. We also don’t know what the losses are as a percentage of turnover so we just have to speculate as to what the relative magnitude of that £835K loss was.
  2. I agree with a certain amount of what you say but there are other criticisms that were also made of the previous board and also of boards before that, and indeed are made by football fans throughout the game. The basic truth is that there is no obligation on anyone to put themselves in the firing line and spend their personal funds running a fundamentally non-viable business using a fundamentally non-viable business model - which is common throughout the game. It’s been clear from the start that there isn’t enough demand, neither actual nor (probably) potential, for a product involving around 30 full time front line employees with several more in backup roles, to make that business anything other than regularly loss making. Over time, something in the ballpark of £10 million of other people’s money has gone into keeping this business going and it always runs into the same problem because of its fundamentally loss making nature. Far too often in football there seems to be this expectation that it’s someone else’s responsibility to fund this loss making process and failure then leads to calls for the removal of those who have used their own money to try and their replacement by others prepared to expose themselves to the same routine.
  3. And if you did that - cast aside people who have been bailing out a fundamentally loss making position with their own money for years - who would you expect to take over the running of the club and to cover its ongoing financial shortcomings, knowing that this could happen to them as well? The community doesn’t owe football a living - especially if football chooses to live beyond its means and expects other people to pick up the tab for that.
  4. Has anyone chanting for the Board to be sacked managed to work out how much in loans would be recalled for immediate repayment as a result?
  5. It would probably sink into the deep mud that was clearly afflicting the penalty spot there yesterday morning.
  6. The original decision was taken by the South Planning Committee comprising councillors from south of the Kessock Bridge. Some of these failed to attend the site visit so were disqualified, some declared an interest and it’s said some couldn’t be @rsed, leaving 5 as against a quorum of 3. The decision was then referred to the full council, also including members from 100+ miles away from Inverness and that attracted an attendance of 56, with no apparent concern about declaring interests or not having done a site visit.
  7. In 1995 Inverness District Council voted for a £900,000 grant to the club, of existential significance, to make the stadium project viable. On the strength of that, construction contracts were let - and then a cabal of councillors and council officials managed to find a technicality which they used to create a rearguard action against payment. The eventual outcome of a chaotic scenario was that, under threat of legal action, the cash was paid from the Common Good Fund. Fast forward to 2024 and Highland Council’s planning process made a decision to allow a battery farm, again of existential significance, worth £3.4 million to the club, but now another huge spanner has been thrown in these works in the form of another rearguard action by councillors (and possibly council officials as well) who don’t like this decision and are again intent on reversing it amid rumblings of legal action. Our local councils don’t seem to learn much from previous episodes of chaos that they’ve created.
  8. I think what the breakdown shows is that the ownership of the club is extremely diffuse, with no single group holding an especially large holding. The biggest is clearly the Muirfield Mills syndicate where a block of around half a dozen people own around 900K shares but even that is less than 20%, with the Trust block coming in at less than 15% and the Savage, McGilvray and Sutherland holdings all less than 10%. I’m also not sure what the personal relations are like among these biggest players. It’s also worth noting that those involved are almost all over 70 years old and may not be in a position or have the inclination to do much.
  9. Thanks for doing that very interesting leg work at Companies House, hislop. It’s also possible to group the holdings you list into the various “interest groups” that have been involved with the club over the last 25 years or so. I believe the still quite fragmented breakdown is as follows - David Sutherland, family and Dornoch Investments - 300,250. McGilvray Family - 466,983. (Includes some more of what Sandy Catto donated to the Hospice and which I believe Sandy originally bought from Ian Fraser who invested over £300K in the 1996 share issue) Alan Savage/Orion - 466,506 (See note above) Muirfield Mills - 873,500 (I believe that at least one other MM investment of less than £50K would take this above 900,000.) ICT Charitable Trust - 729,500. This is Tulloch’s holding which was donated to the Trust. The Thistle FC and the Caledonian FC blocks are “A” shares while the others are ordinary shares. I’m not sure what the voting arrangements are there or, if they have voting rights, who would exercise these. EDIT - while I was writing, Highland Exile made a post that reminded me of the A share arrangement. Thanks HE!) Note that David Cameron, Roddy Ross and Gordon Munro also have £50K+ Ordinary holdings and will also doubtless have internal political alignments. Many of these shares were bought to keep the wolf from the door - most notably the large Muirfield Mills conglomerate which is money that’s long gone covering losses. I’m also not sure how much is outstanding in loans that may have been made, but with no shares in return, and are still outstanding.
  10. Unfortunately, in many respects this IS the backup plan…. after the collapse of the Concert Company.
  11. Another thought. What if the Scottish Government overrides today’s decision and gives the scheme the go ahead…. but so much fear and alarm has by now been spread by local residents that house prices in the surrounding area take a nosedive?
  12. As was the massive area at Holm Mills, now circumscribed by the West Link…. and where hundreds of houses are now being built. It would have been an ideal site for a public park.
  13. I think that the club’s prospects of acceptance were on a dicky wicket once safety issues came into the equation. It’s easy to argue between the loss of 2% of a large green area by taking the Inner Moray Firth plan as the letter of the law on the one hand, and on the other a green initiative that will yield £125K per annum for the Council and hugely help one of Inverness’s highest profile organisations. However Elfin Safety seems to trump everything. Also, it’s easy for people in our position to highlight the benefit to the club but the ordinary person on the street or councillor in the chamber often has no partisan interest and could validly argue (Devil’s Advocate kite alert!) that the self-inflicted financial failings of a football club, notwithstanding its good PR etc for Inverness, cannot be taken into consideration in the course of deciding a planning application.
  14. Unfortunately this is the second non-football money making project that has been floated as a panacea, with no potential pitfalls initially flagged up…. until they suddenly emerged from left field. There was no indication that the Concert Company could encounter any difficulties…. until it went bust at great cost to the club’s local reputation. And now there’s the Battery Farm that suddenly ran into planning difficulties and we are where we are now. One of my concerns is that very little was revealed about the BF until the club meeting held the other week in response to the sudden public emergence of planning issues. Now that we know what the planning issues were - and irrespective of anyone’s viewpoint on them - was it not clear from the start that this was a project that could attract planning concerns, so at least came with some uncertainties? And if so why were we told so little about this project until a very late stage? So now… around two years on from the birth of the Concert Company… the club’s financial security continues to proceed ever deeper into a black hole.
  15. They appeared also to be aware that there were potentially rich pickings from a large crowd at the Half Marathon and were booking people there - including, apparently, in the Archive Centre car park.
  16. Is an English translation of this available? I’ve lost my Gibberish - English Dictionary.
  17. For another day indeed - but it’s still one that needs to be had at some point.
  18. I think that the club also needs to remember that this debate/campaign is being held in a very public arena, so overly aggressive communications with Councillors are also being seen by the whole community, and this is bound also to influence the perception of the club by that public. Here we also have to consider that public perception of ICT took a considerable knock after the collapse of the concert company and I fear that further damage could be done here. It’s unfortunate that the dire finances also exclude the employment of some advice on PR.
  19. I said at the meeting that I didn’t think it was a good idea to antagonise the Council in the run up to this vote. God knows, Highland Council is a complete mess and in far more respects than this, but I reckon you need to be pragmatic so it’s not a good idea to tell them that under the current circumstances.
  20. Based on the information given to us at the meeting, I think STFU has hit the nail on the head with the “loss of green space v net zero contribution” summary, although if these councillors were to be pragmatic, they would also take into account (without necessarily admitting it!) the extra £125K in business rates - even if they don’t give a toss about the future of club that has brought the Highlands untold public attention through winning the Scottish Cup and playing in Europe. (Indeed, how valuable to the Highlands was “going ballistic” alone? It’s difficult to quantify the “green energy dividend”, even with the numbers provided by the club, but it does appear to be significant. However, I think that the real power (no pun intended!) behind the argument in favour is the statistic we were given that the installation would only occupy 4% of the green area on that site, leaving 96% still untouched. I might also add that a hell of a lot of potential green space at places like the West Link and Craig Dunain seems to be yielded up by the Council to house builders without a hair being turned - and there are doubtless other similar instances. One further point. What would it look like if Councillors from over 100 miles away were seen to turn out mob handed and overturn a decision taken by an admittedly small but perfectly legal group of their colleagues representing areas much closer to the installation in question.
  21. The thought of administration appals, but can’t be ignored even as a remote possibility. We don’t know exactly how much is owed to various people who have been chipping in to keep the club going, so we do have to wonder how much money, given in benevolent gestures to plug holes, might be at stake. Also, with all this spotlight on the club’s finances, how willing might local traders be to do business with it if they perceive some danger of bills not being paid, or only paid in small part? Unfortunately, I have to add that the demise of the concert company will already have done nothing to ease any such concerns. And if the administration horror show did materialise, how unwilling might future benefactors and suppliers be after the club emerged from it? There’s a huge amount riding on the next few weeks…. and minimal room for manoeuvre.
  22. I don’t believe that valuation emerged as an issue at all.
  23. Thank you for your observation, OCG, and also to Willsy. That was totally resolved after the meeting when I had a good chat with the Chairman. He’s clearly under a lot of pressure and perhaps my use of the term “sales pitch” in relation to the start of his statement wasn’t the best choice when I was just trying to suggest that there was no urgent need to “sell” the benefits of a battery farm to the people who were there. I was more concerned about finding out how much money was involved, what the implications for the club were if this is delayed or refused, what the club’s precise role is and what the mechanics of the whole project were. I think we are now a fair bit further on in understanding what we had previously perceived to be “Caley Thistle’s battery farm worth a ‘seven figure sum’ to the club.”
  24. I have to say that I feel a good deal more positive about the whole business, now that some vital information is in the public domain following tonight’s meeting. The absolute game changer is that the sum involved is £3.4M or, as the Chairman put it “seven Ryan Christies”. However that figure could in part be a little vulnerable, especially if planning is delayed. And we were also told that there’s going to be some kind of “Caley Thistle Battery Farm Company” that will sell interests to concerns on the industry and these deals. The club has a 40 year lease on the land, which appears to be owned by Messrs Cameron and Sutherland. There was a lot of stuff making the point about how beneficial battery farms are and how low planning risk this is. I’m not sure what value that approach is so late in the day but I gather that everyone on the club’s mailing list will be getting an email with Councillors’ addresses for lobbying purposes. As far as I can see, the situation is that if it goes through in the 14th, then the £3.4M is pretty well in the bag. And if it doesn’t, all is not necessarily lost because there’s optimism that an appeal to the Scottish Government would be successful, but at some cost. Specifically, that could take 6-9 months, a perhaps modest slice of the £3.4M might be lost, there would be significant cash flow challenges and the accounts, which have been delayed until the end of May, would be expected to show a less favourable “going concern” status from the auditor. However I also note that, with echoes of the £900K of 1995/96, KCs now seem to be mobilised so I suppose disappearance into the legal morass can’t be discounted. I did venture to suggest that if the Council tie themselves in knots… they could always pay the £3.4M from the Commob Good Fund.
  25. I’m not “in and around” nearly as much as I used to be in years gone by, but I seem to be detecting a degree of unhappiness and anger about the club’s current status. It’s not the same kind of issue as in 1993/94, but are you suggesting that levels of discontent are in that ballpark?
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