Investment

[+snorbens_caleyman]

1 hour ago, STFU said:

I fully expect when the official comment does come it will be to add further urgency to our situation and perhaps an indicative timeline for when admin will happen if deals are not done.

Ain't that the truth

[The Long Man]

The forensic audit has been done, and the results posted:

 

https://ictfc.com/club-update-2/

 

it is a sobering read, and if you had any doubt of the dire situation we are in, then this will clarify that we are on the brink of administration. The lifelines are a crowdfunder for £200,00 by Oct 16th, two weeks away,and so far unidentified investment.

 

There is a meeting on Monday 7th for all concerned to discuss the crisis. At least we now know the facts, which have been unclear and muddied for the last two years, and can hope to address them with some clarity. Thanks to Alan Savage for keeping us going in the interim and doing all this necessary work.

[Scotty]

Still no accountability from our board though ... and more worryingly, still an undercurrent of thought that Makwana was a viable investor! 

As I make a personal comment on each of those quotes I highlighted below from the email from Panos this morning I am getting angrier and angrier at how much he is seeking to whitewash the board's role in this and their lack of governance. Whoever wrote this email for him is trying to spin a situation that has already spun out. Utter honesty and admission of failure would have been more appropriate in this instance. 

 

Quote

"By August of this year, it became clear to the Board that the Club’s financial position, which had been precarious for some years in all honesty, had become perilous"

Really? You had no idea before? Thats an admission that you employed ZERO governance on the former CEO. 

 

Quote

Strenuous attempts had been made by the Board to attract an inward investor and we did seriously consider an approach from 77 Ventures (Ketan Makwana), on which there has been much public comment. However, we suspended these discussions when it became clear that the gap between buyer expectations and seller ability to deliver was unlikely ever to be bridged.

Think you have this reversed. What about seller expectations? and buyer ability? 

If you seriously considered this then you are utterly incompetent. 100s of unqualified fans who spent 5 minutes or less googling raised enough red flags in just a few hours that would have kept Mao Tse-Tung happy for decades. Thats more googling than the prospective 'owner ' did by his own accounting. You then spent weeks wooing this serial fantasist and even now the courier articles from back then are cringeworthy at how gullible everyone seemed to be (except the fans, Alan Savage and Duncan Shearer).  

 

Quote

This includes monies due for a contract with the kit supplier, where the club is committed to a spend of £125,000 per season for the next 3 seasons

Did we investigate who gets commission on this deal? At full retail that's 2500 shirts per year for 3 years. Given that we won't pay full retail for these and there is an insane markup of football shirts, that could be as many as 5000 shirts per year or a combo of various merchandise. Seems insanely high and not a deal worked out based on the size of the club fanbase, nor the level of our merchandise sales and therefore quite possibly not to the benefit of the club. Something doesn't smell right in this deal.    

 

Quote

the Board felt it necessary and procedurally correct to open discussions with the SPFL and we did so on Friday 20th September. Unsurprisingly, they had already had some awareness of our difficulties.

No shit Sherlock!

 

Quote

As a club Board, it is incumbent on us to formally report this to you, the shareholders, as we have done above, seek your views and any suggestions to save the club, that may not have come to the fore over the last few months, and then act appropriately, in accordance with our statutory duties as directors.

A little bit f***ing late for all of that now. When asked 5 years ago, many of us presented ideas that were summarily ignored, or perhaps left in unread emails. Hundreds of supporters have reported they have sent emails to the club without response and NOW you ask us for ideas. Where were your statutory duties back in 2019 or 2021 or even 2023? 

 

Quote

What no Balance Sheet or financial analysis recognises, of course, is that the club’s most valuable asset is its fan base. They provide the life blood for the club and we recognised that we should also make further steps through the Supporters Trust and publicly, to appeal to them to help the club to survive.

What condescending sh1te. For the last 5 years the fans have been ignored and looked down upon by the very same people (Alan Savage aside) who are now coming at us with the begging bowl and hailing supporters as lifeblood. Which one is it? You can't have it both ways. The Supporters Trust have been derided publicly by the [former] CEO - who was allowed to do so by the board - and as the main, formally recognised, fan body, ignored by you all until we are now in the last chance saloon. This board really do beggar belief. Hypocrites. 

 

Quote

We need to accept the reality of the situation that with debt by May 2025 likely to be £1.4 – £1.6 million (to cover cash loss, potential claims and back log creditors) and a balance sheet standing at negative £3.8 million by the financial year end in May 2025, finding a credible buyer is highly aspirational.

So -£5 million quid in 5 years and not one of you had a f****** clue that we were in deep financial doo-doo and/or had the balls to call either of our former CEOs who held those purse strings to account? Again, where were your statutory duties when this was occuring?

 

Quote

We propose to have an open meeting of shareholders, fans and stakeholders in the Highlander Suite at the Club, at Stadium Road, to be held at 7.30pm on Monday, 7th October. We encourage as many as can attend to please come along and share your thoughts with us. 

Online broadcast and questions for the diaspora outside of Inverness? Lots of committed fans in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK, and internationally. Probably not then. 

 

Quote

As interim Chairman, please be assured that I will respond frankly to your questions, as will Alan Savage, whose Financial Appraisal has done so much to give clarity to the huge challenges facing us as a Board.

That will be a f****** first. But given that it's unlikely you will make this an online meeting here's a few to be going on with ... I will likely think of many more, as will others on here. 

1. You say Alan Savage gave you clarity... WHY did you not have this before? 
    
2. Given your professional qualifications as a respected orthopaedic surgeon would you care to comment on the treatment dished out to our injured players, specifically the accusation made against you by Aaron Doran, and also in general to the club's treatment of other players who were - based on opinions expressed - 'cast aside' by the club over the last 5 years, in some cases while recovering from injuries.
   
   This may seem like old news but given the success of a crowdfunding request by one of those players cast aside (Sutherland), on behalf of another (Doran), and the sheer speed by which it reached and surpassed its crowdfunding goal, it may be pertinent to clear the air 'frankly' as you seek to use the same platform to crowdfund for the club. 
    
3. Please explain the internal governance methodology employed over the last 5 years that has seen the previous model of fiscal responsibility at the club (which also struggled to make ends meet each year) torn down and replaced with schemes that seem to have generated a shortfall of £5m in 5 years. Was the board aware of this and if they were, why was it allowed to get to this stage. If not aware, why not? 
    
4. Why did we rely on the assumption that one after another pie-in-the-sky schemes would come to fruition rather than work with what we had, taking small positive steps, and view these schemes as a windfall IF they happened. 
    
5. Please explain why you have failed to communicate with fans over the last 5 years. It is not a secret that this has been happening, so saying you did not know is utter BS, but yet the action of not responding, or not taking any action to instruct those who should be responding has been allowed to continue and is therefore condoned. 
    
6. Do you feel that you and the board of directors have behaved in a manner that is always for the good and benefit of the club? If not, why have you remained in place? That would be a question to each and every board member individually not collectively. 

 

Final Thoughts

IF the club fails Panos, you and every single one of your board will forever be seen as 'Neros'. Fiddling while ICT burns. 

So let's see who prefers to be a Hero rather than a Zero. 

 

[+DoofersDad]

Well said Scotty. With regards to the Supporters Trust, Thomas’s words sound to me more like setting up the Trust and the fans to blame if the fundraising falls short. 

[Scotty]

The whole thing just comes across as the board taking no accountability whatsoever for the mess we are in. The former CEO will - quite rightly - be thrown under the bus for his actions, which we will likely only ever scratch the surface of, but each and every one of them is also culpable if they did not question him or raise objections when it was clear we were losing money hand over fist.  And if it is all SG's fault, then what about all the stuff that happened under his predecessor's watch?  I can personally attest to dealings with the former CEO before SG that were downright sleekit and left CTO thousands of pounds out of pocket. 

I will say I do not trust ANY of them right now and any respect I had for any of them is gone. Respect can be earned back, but trust ... thats harder. 

[CaleyCanary]

Scotty, thank you!

Reading the shareholder’s letter this morning I just didn’t know where to begin with a response. I just kept thinking ‘seriously?’ and WTF as I read through it.

Absolutely spot on with voicing my thoughts and feelings far more capably than I ever could have done - cheers

[+snorbens_caleyman]

Scotty - can't you email those questions to the club?

Or would the Supporters' Trust compile a list of questions ahead of the meeting?  If ever the Board needed to listen to the Trust, it's now.

I fear that the meeting may descend into chaos, and that nothing will be achieved.

[Scotty]

I could email to the club, and I may do so, but also happy - as a member - for the Trust to collate a bunch of questions and ask these as a group. The board really do need to be held accountable, and as much as we all loath the former CEO and blame him for everything, the reality is that his predecessor was also terrible and the board themselves have not appeared to do much, if any due diligence when either was at the helm. The buck stops with them and ignorance to the day-to-day running of the club is no excuse or explanation.

I did a quick read of P&B today for the first time in a long time and reading the ICT thread, one of the biggest things that is being mentioned time after time is the ludicrous kit deal ... a minimum spend of £125,000 per year, every year for 3 years is unheard of at this level and many on there are theorising some dodgy dealings or kickbacks or commissions. I have no idea if those comments have any merit or not, but surely a deal of this magnitude must have had to go through the board for approval. If they signed that then what f****** planet are they on? If they weren't aware of it, then why the hell not.

In my day job, I work in software and vendor management and have negotiated and have frequently initiated and/or signed multi-year deals like this, primarily because it offers benefit to my company compared to a single year deal, which is perhaps why I think this deserves more scrutiny. In my case, before any signatures are in place, especially when it reaches 6 or 7 figures (or higher), then it ultimately goes to my CIO to make sure it passes the sniff test, and all is right. It is also an opportunity for me to explain the structure, the risk, the current situation, and the required get-out clauses for both sides that I must build-into any multi-year agreement. It is also an opportunity for other eyes to make sure I have not made any errors or off the scale assumptions. Thats how it should be.       

[Robert]

3 hours ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

Scotty - can't you email those questions to the club?

Or would the Supporters' Trust compile a list of questions ahead of the meeting?  If ever the Board needed to listen to the Trust, it's now.

I fear that the meeting may descend into chaos, and that nothing will be achieved.

In the thread with their statement tonight, the Supporters Trust has advised that they have taken this suggestion on board and are happy to compile a list of questions.

To aid them compiling the list, they’ve asked that questions be sent by e-mail to:

[email protected]. 

[IcyT]

This is nuts. Surely there’s been gross dereliction of duty as directors for years? How could any of them have seen these losses as sustainable. How could there even have been such losses?! All that seems to have gone on are land deals between companies in which directors have an interest while the club went to pieces. Imagine a football club that relied on an ex-player to buy footballs for it?! 

[ScottMacScott]

Playing devil's advocate; and honestly that's all it is.

Cameron and Munro are, amongst other things, old men who i'd respectfully suggest are not as switched on as they were in their younger years. 

Knowing what I know they are also very headstrong and opinionated and sometimes don't heed good advise. I've seen bad decisions being made with their best intentions.  I've also seen one of them being shaperoned so as not to be taken advantaged of I'm a business transaction. 

I do wonder if their input has been financial only - as in, contributing and not being capable or interested enough to have the oversight that the current situation would suggests they've been derelict of. 

As I say devils advocate stuff...  And regardless someone saw fit to appoint them to the board. 

 

 

 

Edited October 2 by ScottMacScott
Dyslexia - and trying to make it read ok! 😅

[big cherly]

12 hours ago, ScottMacScott said:

Playing devil's advocate; and honestly that's all it is.

Cameron and Munro are, amongst other things, old men who i'd respectfully suggest are not as switched on as they were in their younger years. 

Knowing what I know they are also very headstrong and opinionated and sometimes don't heed good advise. I've seen bad decisions being made with their best intentions.  I've also seen one of them being shaperoned so as not to be taken advantaged of I'm a business transaction. 

I do wonder if their input has been financial only - as in, contributing and not being capable or interested enough to have the oversight that the current situation would suggests they've been derelict of. 

As I say devils advocate stuff...  And regardless someone saw fit to appoint them to the board. 

 

 

 

Spot on SMS, 

Like going to a London Gentleman’s club (the old rich git type, not the other one), to rub shoulders with fellow egos and glorify in their position and status. The odd beer and brandy is the limit of their interest on what’s going on around them.  Goodness, they paid the entry fee to get the Chairman and CEO to do the house maintenance. 

[CELTIC1CALEY3]

One key question I have is 'Who authorised Morrison to cast a Standard Security over the Club's future and 'why'? As Chairperson he had no locus in any vote or decision making surely. Then there is the restructuring of the battery farm company - who within the board had the power within the Football Company's Articles and Memorandum to authorise the change? Did these massive decisions not need an EGM without those having an interest to authorise the changes? Has AS seen the minutes or signatures / witness signatures authorising the changes?

[bigterrybutcher]

I think it's very telling that not one former player , manager , assistant manager etc has made any donations to this fund - there is something going on behind the scenes I believe which is stopping these individuals from donating, there was up roar ( quite rightly ) on here and on Twitter recently about Doran having to pay for his own treatment despite the fact he was out of contract however you seen players and former managers pump a few quid into his pot to help him . There is now a situation where the club have the begging bowl out on its knees basically and not one of them are willing to put money in in fact they are literally willing to see the club die than put money in . Very telling ! 

[Robert]

We really can’t assume that.

Mark Ridgers has offered his signed cup final gloves to help raise funds, Ryan Christie has been suggested to be the £20k donor, and some of the anonymous donors may well be players, former players or others associated with the club who understandably don’t want their names to be shown on the list we can see. 

[ICTPaisley]

There’s a few names in there I recognise that could potentially be former players. 

[bdu98196]

On 10/5/2024 at 10:19 PM, bigterrybutcher said:

I think it's very telling that not one former player , manager , assistant manager etc has made any donations to this fund

ridiculous position given the vast number of Anonymous donations - any one of those could be current or former players/staff etc. Just because not everyone wants their names in lights or an ego boost or is the expectation that all our former players should be wealthy ex-footballers dropping 5 or 6 figure sums - which shows how the world of the EPL and telephone number remuneration blinds many

[bdu98196]

Anyone expecting the former board, directors, CEO or even DoF & manager(s) to come out and take ownership of this situation is wasting energy. Unfortunately those most successful in business and even football management are narcissists and will never take accountability only deflect blame everywhere else - we had a club full of them.