Charles Bannerman

Scarlet - sorry if I have to appear nitpicking, but I have to understand exactly what you mean by your first sentence, including the unfortunate oxymoron "then current debt". I suspect you mean the recent £300k + dished out to last season's Premiership clubs as a result of Celtic's progress in Europe (now there's another oxymoron for you ) rather than the £373,000 of European Objective 1 money given towards the stadium away back in the mid 90s. As far as I can see there has not for some years been any significant debt at all for a variety of reasons, prominent among which being that there's no significant asset to secure it against. Until recently, the standard financial M.O. has been to drift from year to year in the hope that windfalls will keep the books pretty well balanced despite increasingly unrealistic payments to players. This came spectacularly unstuck to the extent of £422,000 in 2016-17. This was a fair slice of the reason for going to sympathetic individuals and asking for donations totalling £450,000 in exchange for 450,000 shares. It's pretty clear that the current board's strategy is to reduce spending considerably and to increase earned income to make the books balance in more realistic sense than before. This would reduce the dependence on unpredictable windfalls and presumably on having to put round the hat to benevolent individuals as well. As for club shares, the entire shareholding, now around £3.9M, is effectively a huge donation with no return expected by way of dividend (not a chance !) or meaningful resale. In terms of significant resales, back in around 2001 the late Ian Fraser sold over 300,000 shares to Sandy Catto at what is believed to be no more than 50p each. These were among the 500k+ shares that the Catto family later donated to the Hospice and which were subsequently sold (at an unknown price per share although this may emerge in the next Hospice accounts) to the McGilvrays and Alan Savage. This last transaction, in terms of shares numbers, not in cash terms, can be seen by changes in the latest Confirmation Statement.

That's my reading of it as well. The 28th February confirmation statement makes somewhat different reading from the one 12 months previously. And I'm sure these conspiracy theories will continue to flow.

Caman, please accept my apologies in advance if the top line of your statement is intended to be taken at face value as opposed to the irony which I have interpreted. But, in the latter event, it's you who needs to get real because that would betray little concept of the realities and demands of upper level competitive sport. After 90 minutes of football, or indeed after most sporting activities, even those of short duration, the need for recovery must take a high priority and needs to be managed very carefully. By the time you get to the end of a 40+ week season even playing once a week, the issue of cumulative fatigue is a consideration and concern, which is why adding in this that and another into some players' schedules is a worry. When you go to extended periods of playing competitively twice a week then that cumulative fatigue is an hugely bigger concern - and that's before you even start to think about injury risk and management. What we're talking about here is a bit more than kick and rush at the Bught in the the Welfare League before going back to the Gelluns for a pint.

OK... so the mystery and the astonishment deepen. I now come to realise that this is a LIMITED COMPANY that has failed to hold a General Meeting of its members for a considerable time and is being run by a self-appointed board who have been reluctant even to identify themselves and say they don't want to call a General Meeting because they are speculating that not enough people might turn up. Has any legal advice been taken about how well this scenario conforms with Company Law and what the possible implications may be? This actually sounds very serious indeed.

I've heard that suggested before but if so, how did the relatively recent creation of CJT get a hold of it? And even if that was the case, there must be something the club cab do to ensure that a supporters' group has a 10% voting right.

It strikes me that the whole thing has been allowed to get into such an irretrievable mess that the only way forward is to start again from scratch and reconstitute the society. Nobody seems even to know who the membership are nor which set of rules the thing is operating under. Indeed as I have been writing, Caley D has posted suggesting that some change with respect to the rules took place on January 8th of this year. How could this be the case if the Society hasn't, as I understand it, held a General Meeting since 2015? Meanwhile a group of six calling itself "The Board" seems in the interim to have appointed itself and, having only reluctantly revealed who the individuals are, appears to be avoiding situations where its status could be challenged such as a General Meeting, which is long, long overdue. Look, folks, this has all the signs of an irredeemable shambles, the upshot of which is that the football club continues to have a completely dysfunctional supporters' organisation at a time when it never had greater need of an active one. Meanwhile the very title "Caley Jags Together" simply acquires a more and more ironic reek! Any sense of togetherness is long gone. The best way forward might be for a completely new body to be formed with a properly constituted board elected by a properly identified membership and operating under properly defined rules... and with a completely fresh title. Then a General Meeting of CJT needs to be called with two items of business on the agenda. 1) To invest all CJT's rights and assets in the newly constituted body and 2) To wind up CJT. Before you dismiss this as fanciful, please remember that this is, in effect, how this football club came into being in 1994.

This is complete nonsense. As Davie says, the holding of a General Meeting isn't something that can be rejected by a self-appointed body, arguably motivated by self interest/preservation, simply based on convenient speculation that enough people MIGHT not turn up. It's a constitutional necessity for goodness sake and, according to Davie's post, apparently a legal one as well! What is being suggested is, incredibly, that a self-appointed body should be allowed to continue to operate by way of deliberately withholding the members' right to elect a constitutional one. What decides the validity of a General Meeting is whether a quorum turns up, not claims from the members of a self-appointed body that this potential challenge to their current status is a waste of time. If, at such a meeting, it did emerge that "nobody" was "prepared to take on the roles required", then if the 10% voting power was the absolute priority that has been stated, there are ways and means of preserving it. My first thought would be pre-specified agenda item for a constitutional amendment to allow trusteeship of the 10% vote to be invested in a small group appointed by the meeting. My interest in this CJT issue was sparked several months ago by the ongoing lapse in CJT's important activities as a supporters' organisation. Unfortunately subsequent events - or lack of them - have caused my previously neutral viewpoint to evolve into something rather different. I now find myself completely dismayed at what looks like an ongoing strategy of silence and of the exclusion of the membership, alongside ambiguous and misleading statements apparently aimed at keeping a self-appointed board of directors in control of such affairs as still exist. That sort of approach, I would prefer to leave to Putin.

It's maybe also worth observing that, at time of writing, all league games, run by the SPFL, are off while a few yards along the corridor, all four Scottish Cup ties, with their attendant TV money and run by the SFA, are still on. On the other hand maybe it's simply a case of the SFA not having noticed that it's been snowing because they are still looking for the "Morton ball".

I suspect that the SPFL's take on it will largely coincide with the generic Scottish one - whatever the situation is within peeing distance of George Square gets applied to the whole country. Similarly, before Christmas, we had Ian Blair's complete inability to conceive of the effects of an accident on the A9 on a 250 mile trip to Dumfries. Observed on a sign beside a black A9 to Dingwall on a glorious morning yesterday - AVOID ROAD TRAVEL. Full stop. Complete generalisation.

It has been announced that ex-Provost Allan Sellar died yesterday at the age of 93. Clearly , as Provost for 12 years from 1980-92, Allan's overall contribution to public life was considerable but on this forum, I think it's important to acknowledge what he did for Inverness Caledonian Thistle, especially in the early days. He had been succeeded as Provost by Bill Fraser by the time the ICT formation process even started, but he was hugely supportive of the campaign to have an Inverness team playing in the SFL. This was so much so that he was chosen by the club to kick the first ceremonial ball at the official opening of the Caledonian Stadium in 1996 (a wonderful lob towards the goal at the North end which even Barry Wilson - I think - had some difficulty taming!) A few years later, in 2001, he became one of the founding trustees of the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Charitable Trust which saw the club out of its extreme financial difficulties at that time.

I don't think the comparison with Gretna is completely accurate for one or two reasons. Firstly, I would give Roy MacGregor credit for a lot more savvy than Brooks Mileson and, although I agree that if Roy's assistance were suddenly to disappear, County would be in serious trouble. On the other hand Gretna was a total house of cards which rapidly expanded from nothing at the instigation of a guy who was clearly completely bizarre, surviving on 60 a day, chips and Lucozade, but who, for some reason, managed to con the media wholesale into believing in him. I also think that Ross County have a lot more fundamental substance as a football club than Gretna ever had. If Stuart Kettlewell does get the job, then this would create an interesting parallel with the Rangers situation. The thought of Yogi is an interesting one, given that this would then become a combination of a manager who has a track record for wheedling money out of chairmen for less than convincing signings and a chairman renowned for his capacity to sustain twice yearly signing bonanzas. One other option may be what County did in 2011 on the departure of Willie McStay - the interim appointment of a well paid safe pair of hands (in that instance Jimmy Calderwood) to achieve safety before making a permanent appointment for the next season (in that instance Derek Adams). It's currently about three weeks later in the season than the corresponding time in 2011.

Absolutely! That is actually what should have been done instead of the procedure adopted earlier this week. An EGM is priority number one and indeed what I find most astonishing about this whole unfortunate saga has been the apparent long term reluctance by those apparent self-appointees to engage directly with the body itself - ie the membership. It looks to me as if CJT has been allowed to go through a period of total inactivity and then, without any recourse whatsoever to the membership, a "board" has declared itself to have been appointed by itself. Presumably one of the agenda items on any requisition for a meeting would need to read something along the lines of: "To hold such votes among members as are necessary to appoint a board, by confirmation in whole or in part of the body which self-declared on 27th February 2018, or by other constitutional means determined by the membership at the meeting."

Tulloch Castle? Maybe, in a previous era, they should have called the Caledonian Stadium that. 'Twould have caused all manner of confusion in Dingwall!

Ok, so now we know who the six individuals are, we can move on to the next questions: In what appears (correct me if I am wrong) to be the absence for some time of a fully concluded AGM or General Meeting of any kind, what was the process by which the six board members were appointed? Which of them hold board positions and offices still active since the last properly concluded and transacted General Meeting of the Society? Which of them have been coopted, and what are the Board's powers of cooption under the Society's Constitution/ Articles of Association? By which, if any, other means have any of them been appointed to the Board or to their offices? How much input has the Society's membership had into the formation of this board? Hence, to what extent have the Board's actions carried a mandate from the membership? And indeed, has the Society's membership even been properly defined?

So let me get this straight - what we now have is an anonymous claim that a (so far - BUMP!) anonymous group of six people has apparently, and in the absence for some time of a General Meeting of the Society, appointed itself to run the said society (if it still legally exists) and hence control 10% of the voting rights (one of the biggest single allocations) of a company with a turnover of several million pounds per annum. Presumably applications for the remaining four positions should be lodged with the Society's secretary - Mr D Trotter, Nelson Mandela House, Peckham, or the Chairperson Mr A Daley, c/o The Winchester Club, East London.

Lots of people down the Ferry. The Aidensfield Arms was inspired by the Thornbush Inn.

I think it's quite important to supporters to know who the six board members are?

I can understand Scotty's apprehension. By all accounts the Thornbush was even more dangerous than Heartbeat's "Aidensfield Arms" which regularly seemed to accommodate most of the armed robbers and murderers in North Yorkshire! I wonder if local car treasure hunt organisers were ever imaginative enough to send competitors down there to order a sweet sherry, a Babycham and a Pimms Number 1?

I can't really say that the titles and details of lesser central belt Scottish football grounds, especially in this Toni Macaroni era, looms especially large on my list of priorities.

Is Dumbarton's ground still on the site formerly known as "Boghead"?

I don't want to drag this thread off course but feel compelled to observe that if there had been an iota of justice in the world, every asset held by the previous Rangers company, long since defunct, would have been sold to ensure that a galaxy of businesses, large and small, were compensated for the millions they were owed. I'm sure Asda would have been interested in converting Ibrox into a supermarket, suitably liveried in Asda colours. That is all.... now back to ICT.

I am not an accountant, but Page 8 of the most recent accounts to last May appears to come closest to giving an indication. It states net current liabilities of 147,190 and net assets of 166,918. The club is, of course, several months' trading and also significant donations of capital on from that situation, but I find it difficult to see how a "debt" as such could have accumulated since then, given the lack of assets to secure it against. Difficulties in cash flow may be another matter, though.

I would imagine not a lot. When you have no significant assets as security and lack the means to service a debt in any case, that tends to be the situation. "Gentlemanly" loans may have been made by well disposed individuals but I think much of the inter-season shortfall may have been met by the £450K discussed earlier. What cash flow is like may or may not be another issue.

Most likely a case of he who pays the piper calls the tune. I didn't include bank interest because I regarded the debt at having, in effect, been written off by Tullochs at the start. Also, one of the sources of the figure of £6M is Tullochs themselves, so that may well be part of this number. How Tullochs disposed of ICT's debt has never been entirely clear, but it may indeed be worth including an interest factor - which will simply push the subsidy involved ever Northwards.

Caleyboy, there has always been a considerable degree of smoke and mirrors since the debt was removed over the precise mechanics of that removal but yes, it was nominally to the Trust that the debt was transferred. However, in effect it appears to have been reconciled with the Bank of Scotland in some shape or form by Tullochs. I have to say that it was only when Tullochs' offer to donate the stadium fabric back to the club emerged in December 2016 that I began to see more clearly the full extent of the overlap between Tullochs and the Trust. The way I see it is that the ICT Charitable Trust was set up as a tax efficient means of allowing Tullochs to remove the debt. Conspiracy theorists may at the one extreme suggest that the Trust was simply a vehicle for cynical asset stripping, and at the other that it allowed benefactors to retain a degree of anonymity. However, in the former case, a couple of observations need to be made. Firstly, almost 20 years on, the only contentious issue is long term use of the car parks by the club, and indeed a number of reassurances have been offered in that respect. And secondly, if there is an asset stripping conspiracy agenda then, as Trustees, public figures such as ex-Provost Allan Sellar and David Stewart MSP must have been complicit in it - along with the members of the Muirfield Mills consortium who now control the Trust, along with the 730,000 shares donated to it by Tullochs. It's also worth observing that when the Inverness Caledonian Thistle Charitable Trust was set up, the legal conditions - as a quid pro quo for the tax concessions - included the requirement that all local sporting organisations should be among its potential beneficiaries. However I am not aware of anyone other than Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC having benefited at all from its activities. To me, it's quite clear that the club, as a company, became debt free because that debt, of around £2.6M, was taken away by some unspecified arrangement between Tullochs and the main creditor the Bank of Scotland. In return, ownership of the stadium and its lease was transferred to the Trust rather than to Tullochs as discussed above. In terms of "dues", in order to work out what Tullochs have put in, you need to add up the £2.6M removed debt, £0.73M in cash in return for shares subsequently donated back to the Trust, the provision of the North and South stands, innumerable other, smaller "drip feed" contributions such as the provision of staff and, most recently, the write off of £300,000 of outstanding rent.... all of that also alongside the donation back of the stadium fabric. This has been estimated as having a gross value of around £6 million. As for rent paid in return, the only concrete figure we have is the current £205,000 pa. We don't know how much this was from the start of the 7500 capacity era and how it may ultimately have increased to that figure, nor do we know what it was for the pre-North and South stand period. However, I don't think that something in the ballpark of a net £3.5M, after deduction of rent paid, is an unreasonable estimate of what Tullochs have given to the club since around 2000. I find it difficult to reconcile that figure with the notion that "we have more than paid our dues". (As an aside, I have always been a bit bemused by the view that the club should have been allowed to exist rent free in premises which it was obliged to give up because it vastly outspent its earning capacity.) I also find it difficult to see what, by way of keeping the club in existence, the alternatives back in the early 2000s would have been to the arrangements described above. On the other hand if a "free lunch" extending to £3.5 with the only down side the title to the car parks over which significant assurances have been given is considered a bad deal......