Investment

[ictchris]

[+Northern_jaggie]

Don’t worry folks, the final takeover bid will be £5m….

 

 

[+Fraz]

1 hour ago, ictchris said:

#MCGA 

[Yngwie]

What do we want the club’s new name to be - Loch Ness Monsters or Highland Bravehearts FC?

[bdu98196]

47 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

What do we want the club’s new name to be - Loch Ness Monsters or Highland Bravehearts FC?

First obviously then we can walk out to 'the family ness' theme tune please

[bishbashbosh]

19 hours ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

What if he was a convicted felon whose surname rhymed with chump, hump and stump? 

At last we would have someone in the team who can take a shot.

[Scotty]

1 hour ago, Yngwie said:

What do we want the club’s new name to be - Loch Ness Monsters or Highland Bravehearts FC?

Don't think we could have Loch Ness Monsters ... wasn't that the American Football team in Inverness at some point.

Kind of with @Charles Bannerman on this one though. It would be complicated to have a 'takeover' or 'new owners' given the current ownership structure. No-one, not even the craziest or richest American is going to pay £20m for a complete buyout and control of the festering mess that is ICT right now and the current board cannot agree to 'sell' the club as its not theirs to sell. 

Will be interested to hear the proposals as and when they are available. Tulloch had control of the board for a few years and started by restructuring and getting rid of our debt, then put fiscally responsible processes in place to try and ensure we didn't reach that chasm again. Love them or hate them, and there are folks in both camps, and that's a whole other discussion, but that's what they did. It was only after they departed that we did once again, over the ensuing 7 or 8 years reach that precipice yet again.

If by "takeover" or "new owners" we are talking about a group who have 'control' without ownership and they have a plan to emulate what Tulloch's did, then I personally am broadly in favour of it, cannot really say more than that until we know more details, but as has been the habit for our club, there are no details and no communication to shareholders. 

What concerns me - if we are talking about £2m as reported - is that this may not be enough. We have reportedly lost out on at least £5.1m on just the battery farm and Park-n-Ride schemes and even that would not see us as a going concern for years to come, it would paper the cracks and maybe give us two or three years to try and get back to the Championship, then the Premiership but what then? We were a Premiership side for many years, and if we get back we are realistically always going to be relegation candidates on any given year if we don't get recruitment or tactics right, and even in the Premiership we need cup runs to make ends meet. Add this to the reputational damage we have taken in how we have treated our players and staff over the last 2-3 years and this is a very hard mess to get out of. Does any incoming investor have the stomach for this? 

 

[STFU]

Rumours of it being Jeff Macdonald (brother of Kevin) that the club are trying to get interested.  It's been reported twice before (2006 & 2011) that he might be interested and nothing came of it.

[Charles Bannerman]

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

No-one, not even the craziest or richest American is going to pay £20m for a complete buyout and control of the festering mess that is ICT right now and the current board cannot agree to 'sell' the club as its not theirs to sell. 

What concerns me - if we are talking about £2m as reported - is that this may not be enough. 

Does any incoming investor have the stomach for this? 

 

At the risk of allegations of mutual back scratching, I think Scotty is pretty well spot on here. This club is so far gone that £2 million really doesn’t seem much in relation to the magnitude of the problem. For instance £2M is around two thirds of what is currently owed…. or equivalent to just over three years’ recent losses… or enough to purchase just 30% of the voting rights in the absence of a drastic restructuring of current share holdings. Theoretically, for £2M to gain even 50% voting power, the existing shareholders would have to accept a 60% devaluation of their current holdings.

I think the key term there is “so far gone”. After the Tulloch interest ended, and despite the stadium being gifted back to the club, it has been allowed to drift on for far too long into a worsening, fundamentally loss making mire. Their only answer has been an ongoing search for well-heeled Little Dutch Boys to stick their fingers into holes in a rapidly disintegrating dam, rather than bite the bullet and call in a company of civil engineers. To migrate to a different metaphor, they have also kept twisting with a series of four money making gambles, all of which have failed, leaving the situation “bust” with the safety of “21” a distant memory. What has also not been addressed is that fundamentally loss making scenario, since there’s little point in launching an expensive rescue if the same situation is going to be arrived at again in a few years’ time. (qv Einstein’s definition of insanity). I also fear that, with another club 15 miles up the road that has been benefiting long term from reliable £1M+ annual subsidies (observation…. not criticism), it’s going to be very difficult for any other club of much substance to survive comfortably.

As regards Tullochs… I appreciate the Marmite aspect here, but my own view is that from 2000, the money they put in and the business expertise they provided not only saved the club from what might have been a crisis at least as great as the current one, but also set it up for the series of successes that culminated in the 2015 Cup win.

David Sutherland, George Fraser et al might well say: “Apres nous, le deluge”.

[+snorbens_caleyman]

2 hours ago, STFU said:

Rumours of it being Jeff Macdonald (brother of Kevin) that the club are trying to get interested. 

He was in town last week 

[Scotty]

27 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

the business expertise they provided

The importance of this is often overlooked, as is the unheralded/unadvertised provision of staff, infrastructure and even office supplies while things were really rough.  

[Charles Bannerman]

44 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

He was in town last week 

Remember when Pele left and Grassa had everybody believing that it was going to be Kevin MacDonald before Craig Brewster arrived?

[Satan]

1 hour ago, Scotty said:

The importance of this is often overlooked, as is the unheralded/unadvertised provision of staff, infrastructure and even office supplies while things were really rough.  

Sounds like our neighbours up the road, only about a dozen staff on County's books - everyone and everything else is funnelled via GEG.

Football clubs are rich men's playthings and it was only a matter of time before Tullochs and the regime they installed got tired of the losses.

No one up here can realistically compete with Roy and his annual write-offs.

[Robert]

5 hours ago, STFU said:

Rumours of it being Jeff Macdonald (brother of Kevin) that the club are trying to get interested.  It's been reported twice before (2006 & 2011) that he might be interested and nothing came of it.

Is that a credible rumour?

Does he have any American links and does anyone know much about him?

At least he has a local connection. 

[Satan]

4 minutes ago, Robert said:

Is that a credible rumour?

Does he have any American links and does anyone know much about him?

At least he has a local connection. 

Sounds a bit Muirfield Mills.

[Charles Bannerman]

2 hours ago, Satan said:

Sounds like our neighbours up the road, only about a dozen staff on County's books - everyone and everything else is funnelled via GEG.

Football clubs are rich men's playthings and it was only a matter of time before Tullochs and the regime they installed got tired of the losses.

No one up here can realistically compete with Roy and his annual write-offs.

I think we need to be brutally honest and acknowledge that we are looking here at a situation football has got itself into through the manner in which it pays players. There has for some time been a culture within the game of paying players at levels well above their true market value in terms of the earned income that clubs can generate. This has led to a widespread reliance on wealthy individuals effectively gifting money to clubs to allow them to continue to operate in a fundamentally loss making manner. In fact this has become so commonplace that it has generated unrealistic expectations that people should simply be there to provide these subsidies to football clubs.

Ross County has been in the fortunate position of having a major benefactor in the long term which has given the club the means to rise up the leagues and (just) stay there. At a rough estimate I believe this assistance, across time, to be in the ballpark of £20 million. Should that source of funding suddenly disappear, I imagine that major problems would arise very quickly. However Caley Thistle has also had benefactors whose overall contributions I would very roughly estimate to have totalled around £10 million. At least £5 million of this came from Tullochs, who didn’t have to bother but, critics of Tullochs should note, without their assistance, ICT might well have gone out of business around 2001. If you then add all the share purchase with no prospect of any return, probable gifts and the loans that comprise the current £3M of liabilities, then it’s not difficult to see how ICT has gone through £10M of other people’s money over the years and now desperately needs millions more. Anyone connected with ICT should therefore be very careful about criticising how County has been funded because it is simply a more successful and more consistent version of what has happened in Inverness.

Football needs to be aware that society doesn’t owe it a living - especially when it insists on continually living beyond its means.

[Ronaldo]

I saw a very nice UAE plane on the runway at Dalcross today. Perhaps we have an offer in from Sheik yer booty?

[IBM]

11 hours ago, Ronaldo said:

I saw a very nice UAE plane on the runway at Dalcross today. Perhaps we have an offer in from Sheik yer booty?

There was a flight came in from Bournemouth yesterday which is unusual. 
But  whatever investors are out there I don’t have any faith in our current custodians at the club managing to get a deal done as their track record speaks for itself. 
I would be happy to be proved wrong though. 

[+DoofersDad]

Was that a Ryan air?  ICT = Inverness Christie Thistle?

[IBM]

17 minutes ago, DoofersDad said:

Was that a Ryan air?  ICT = Inverness Christie Thistle?

No 

[Pele_Is_God]

Is the deadline on Thursday applicable to just the American Investor or is it for any interested parties?

[bishbashbosh]

On 7/15/2024 at 8:33 PM, Robert said:

Is that a credible rumour?

Does he have any American links and does anyone know much about him?

At least he has a local connection. 

Robert, here is an old photo of mine, possibly 50 years old. ( wow) Jeff is on the right next to brucie cameron who took caley A or second team back then looking at photo.

ignore top line second from left that is IHE who was ahead of the curve and invented what is known today as photo bombing.

[buckett]

5 hours ago, bishbashbosh said:

Robert, here is an old photo of mine, possibly 50 years old. ( wow) Jeff is on the right next to brucie cameron who took caley A or second team back then looking at photo.

ignore top line second from left that is IHE who was ahead of the curve and invented what is known today as photo bombing.

A young Billy Urquhart in that photo too, front row, if I'm not mistaken.

Jeff made a fair bit of money in the oil business in Texas, where he now lives. Probably retired now and I'd be surprised if he'd be interested in throwing his pension funds into a football team from which he's got no chance of any return, especially as he's got family to consider.

You never know though, some people who go out into the big bad world and make their fortune feel compelled to "put something back" into their home town. He's already hosted ICT on a pre-season tour to USA some time ago so he has history in that sort of thing.

[Charles Bannerman]

1 hour ago, buckett said:

A young Billy Urquhart in that photo too, front row, if I'm not mistaken.

Jeff made a fair bit of money in the oil business in Texas, where he now lives. Probably retired now and I'd be surprised if he'd be interested in throwing his pension funds into a football team from which he's got no chance of any return, especially as he's got family to consider.

You never know though, some people who go out into the big bad world and make their fortune feel compelled to "put something back" into their home town. He's already hosted ICT on a pre-season tour to USA some time ago so he has history in that sort of thing.

Given the current lack of information, I’d be reluctant to rule anything out, but this Jeff MacDonald theory just doesn’t seem to sit comfortably, largely for the reasons Buckett suggests. It’s also an easy mental step from “there’s an American interest” to “who do we know with money in America and with an Inverness football past?…. It must be them, then.”

I also seem to recollect that at the very start of Muirfield Mills being mooted as possible purchasers of shares, the American Oil angle was also enough to bring Jeff’s name out of the woodwork. And of course when we were all wondering who would succeed Robbo as manager in 2004, Grassa laid a perfect smokescreen of disinformation about Jeff’s brother Kevin before Craig Brewster emerged as the new appointee.

[CELTIC1CALEY3]

Highland club in takeover by Wild Sheep Sports has a better ring about it!! Where are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein when you need penetrating questions and effective journalists?