ICT Supporters Trust Statement: Pre-season

[Ronaldo]

Well done to all on this thread, however I'm planning a quantum physics night class for some light relief.....   

[robbo1985]

Meanwhile fans of the other 41 league clubs are getting excited about the start of the 2024-25 campaign....

 

Edited June 26, 2024 by robbo1985

[+snorbens_caleyman]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo said:

Well done to all on this thread, however I'm planning a quantum physics night class for some light relief.....   

Schrodinger's football club - is it alive or dead?  No one knows until we see inside the box...

[givmeaccccc]

How much clout do the Supporters Trust actually have? Could the Trust please let us know how many members they have? If we are talking a couple of hundred then their influence is negligible. To have any real influence in my opinion we would need a membership figure which matches the season ticket numbers.

[+old caley girl]

The clout is in the holding of the voting right. However the more members the more representative? Im sure they've grown considerably through this debacle and will reply with member numbers 

[Charles Bannerman]

11 minutes ago, old caley girl said:

The clout is in the holding of the voting right. However the more members the more representative? Im sure they've grown considerably through this debacle and will reply with member numbers 

The Supporters’ Trust has a fixed 10%, irrespective of how many shares are issued and this isn’t affected by how many members the ST has. This places the ST in around fifth place in a very fragmented pecking order of voting power, top of the list being the Muirfield Mills consortium with around 18%. Historically, the ST rights originate from the original Members’ Club which represented joint Thistle and Caley interests and had a 50% influence, but in order to attract more investors during the 2000s, this was reduced. However, if there was to be some kind of large scale purchase of extra shares in some kind of rescue mission, the ST would still have 10% of a much larger number.

[+old caley girl]

6 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

The Supporters’ Trust has a fixed 10%, irrespective of how many shares are issued and this isn’t affected by how many members the ST has. This places the ST in around fifth place in a very fragmented pecking order of voting power, top of the list being the Muirfield Mills consortium with around 18%. Historically, the ST rights originate from the original Members’ Club which represented joint Thistle and Caley interests and had a 50% influence, but in order to attract more investors during the 2000s, this was reduced. However, if there was to be some kind of large scale purchase of extra shares in some kind of rescue mission, the ST would still have 10% of a much larger number.

Sorry maybe didn't explain well enough in my post. I just meant the more members the more representative of the fanbase? 

[givmeaccccc]

If there were a large number of Trust members willing to transfer their personal share holdings to the Trust then 18%+ could be achievable to at least equal the Muirfield Mills group. Personally I have 1000 shares and my family members have a further 750. Small change I know, but they are of no use to me. When they were purchased many years ago they were no more than an enthusiastic donation to Caley Thistle. There is little or no benefit to holding shares for me as an ordinary fan. I realise that this is exactly what the Trust would like but it would be interesting to know how this is coming along together with membership details. Momentum is only gained when people feel part of a larger group. I was one of the original Members Club and I was not happy that at the time that we gave away such a large chunk of our share holdings and more importantly our say in the development and future of the club.

[Leaky Blinder]

1 hour ago, Charles Bannerman said:

The Supporters’ Trust has a fixed 10%, irrespective of how many shares are issued and this isn’t affected by how many members the ST has. This places the ST in around fifth place in a very fragmented pecking order of voting power, top of the list being the Muirfield Mills consortium with around 18%. Historically, the ST rights originate from the original Members’ Club which represented joint Thistle and Caley interests and had a 50% influence, but in order to attract more investors during the 2000s, this was reduced. However, if there was to be some kind of large scale purchase of extra shares in some kind of rescue mission, the ST would still have 10% of a much larger number.

If there was another share issue would the ST not have to purchase an equivalent number of shares to maintain the status quo? Otherwise surely the % would be diluted !

[Leaky Blinder]

3 minutes ago, Leaky Blinder said:

If there was another share issue would the ST not have to purchase an equivalent number of shares to maintain the status quo? Otherwise surely the % would be diluted !

Ignore I just reread & noticed the important word "fixed" apologies 

[Charles Bannerman]

56 minutes ago, givmeaccccc said:

If there were a large number of Trust members willing to transfer their personal share holdings to the Trust then 18%+ could be achievable to at least equal the Muirfield Mills group. Personally I have 1000 shares and my family members have a further 750. Small change I know, but they are of no use to me. When they were purchased many years ago they were no more than an enthusiastic donation to Caley Thistle. There is little or no benefit to holding shares for me as an ordinary fan. I realise that this is exactly what the Trust would like but it would be interesting to know how this is coming along together with membership details. Momentum is only gained when people feel part of a larger group. I was one of the original Members Club and I was not happy that at the time that we gave away such a large chunk of our share holdings and more importantly our say in the development and future of the club.

ccccc…. don’t take that 18% as tablets of stone because I’m not sure how the ST’s fixed 10% interacts with the purchased shares to give a total, so 18% is sort of a ballpark figure. It’s possibly better to look at numbers of shares, and the biggest group alone - Muirfield Mills - has over 820,000 and, although no investor comes close to having a controlling interest, the seven biggest holdings - all 170,000 or more - come to almost 3.2 million shares, or in the ballpark of 80% of the total. So although there are over 500 shareholders, the majority of these have the basic 250 that many fans took up in the 1996 issue and a few more have maybe up to a thousand or two, but anything the ordinary punters in the street could do, even by acting together, would be pretty well “farting into the wind” in relation to what even some of these seven minority holders could produce. As a result, if you were considering the possibility of the ST achieving control of the club, it couldn’t come close.

That also poses an interesting issue in the event of any new investors coming in as part of some kind of rescue, because if they were to want control (and you need 75% for some purposes) that would be quite expensive and would require either a number of existing shareholders to be persuaded to sell or, if not, then even more expensively, the purchase of enough new shares to outnumber what people have at the moment.

[Charles Bannerman]

4 minutes ago, Leaky Blinder said:

Ignore I just reread & noticed the important word "fixed" apologies 

Yes… it’s a different class of share that the ST has, created notionally back in 1994 to reflect the asset contribution of Thistle and Caley, and this is always worth 10% of the total voting capacity, irrespective of how many ordinary shares have been issued.

[Yngwie]

8 minutes ago, Charles Bannerman said:

ccccc…. don’t take that 18% as tablets of stone because I’m not sure how the ST’s fixed 10% interacts with the purchased shares to give a total, so 18% is sort of a ballpark figure. It’s possibly better to look at numbers of shares, and the biggest group alone - Muirfield Mills - has over 820,000 and, although no investor comes close to having a controlling interest, the seven biggest holdings - all 170,000 or more - come to almost 3.2 million shares, or in the ballpark of 80% of the total. So although there are over 500 shareholders, the majority of these have the basic 250 that many fans took up in the 1996 issue and a few more have maybe up to a thousand or two, but anything the ordinary punters in the street could do, even by acting together, would be pretty well “farting into the wind” in relation to what even some of these seven minority holders could produce. As a result, if you were considering the possibility of the ST achieving control of the club, it couldn’t come close.

That also poses an interesting issue in the event of any new investors coming in as part of some kind of rescue, because if they were to want control (and you need 75% for some purposes) that would be quite expensive and would require either a number of existing shareholders to be persuaded to sell or, if not, then even more expensively, the purchase of enough new shares to outnumber what people have at the moment.

Pretty sure Muirfield Mills disbanded as a consortium about 5 years ago, and should be considered as a number of small individual shareholders - making things even more fragmented than you thought. 

[+DoofersDad]

When the club finally get round to having an AGM or if there is an EGM at some stage, shareholders can nominate the Trust as their proxy if they are unable or don't wish to attend in person.  I will hang on to my shareholding because whilst I would be perfectly happy to have the current leadership of the Trust vote on my behalf, that might not always be the case.

The number of members the Trust has is important regardless of the fact that increased numbers do not increase its shareholding.  Because it is a democratic body, the way the Trust might vote in a meeting can be assumed to be representative of its members.  If the membership numbers are a good percentage of the number of season ticket holders, other shareholders may well be persuaded to vote with the Trust because they will know they are voting with the majority fan view.

Of course, it will be difficult to judge how the Trust's membership compares with the number of Season Ticket holders if the club refuse to say how many ST holders there are!

[Charles Bannerman]

17 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

Pretty sure Muirfield Mills disbanded as a consortium about 5 years ago, and should be considered as a number of small individual shareholders - making things even more fragmented than you thought. 

I see what you are saying and it’s indeed very possible that the consortium no longer exists, but these guys have all been close friends since their teenage years (they are all actually school contemporaries of mine) so, de facto, in the event of any vote, I think would be fairly likely to act cooperatively.

Edited July 2, 2024 by Charles Bannerman