Admin by Oct 16th - It's here now!

[+snorbens_caleyman]

3 minutes ago, DoofersDad said:

Would administration be worse?  It would be brutal at first with redundancies coming quicker, but presumably it would allow recovery to start quicker and make the club a more attractive proposition for more appropriate buyers?

It cannot be said often enough that there is no guarantee that the club would survive administration. 

Yes, the administrators would try to prevent the club from going under.  But if they can't come to a deal with its creditors, or find a buyer, then if the club can't pay its debts it gets liquidated.  We know that without £200K by the 16th, the club will be in that situation exactly, i.e. insolvent. 

Given the sums of money - the debts - that have been mentioned over the last few weeks , together with fact that the club appears to have very few assets which could be sold, then liquidation must be a very real possibility.

[Charles Bannerman]

24 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

Given the sums of money - the debts - that have been mentioned over the last few weeks , together with fact that the club appears to have very few assets which could be sold, then liquidation must be a very real possibility.

In other words, a certain amount of the family silver has already been flogged - and the thin end of the wedge there was selling off the Social Club building some years ago to Grassa’s pension fund. 
That, of course, was a perfectly legitimate transaction, but it also marked the start of the Faustian process which now sees administration as a very real prospect.

[Doofer]

I am only 1 person with a very limited reach of social media but I've tweeted/messaged various people/radio stations to see if they are going to talk about the plight of ICT and give the go fund me page some coverage. If others can do that as well it can only help our cause. I doubt anyone on the board are trying to spread word far and wide to all the media outlets to get word out there so I fear it's down to us fans to spread the word

[Charles Bannerman]

1 hour ago, Doofer said:

I am only 1 person with a very limited reach of social media but I've tweeted/messaged various people/radio stations to see if they are going to talk about the plight of ICT and give the go fund me page some coverage. If others can do that as well it can only help our cause. I doubt anyone on the board are trying to spread word far and wide to all the media outlets to get word out there so I fear it's down to us fans to spread the word

Good luck with that laudable initiative… but did you not know that both Rangers and Celtic lost heavily in Europe midweek - causing the national media to be totally engaged in collective pant wetting.

Edited October 4 by Charles Bannerman

[Yngwie]

56 minutes ago, Doofer said:

I am only 1 person with a very limited reach of social media but I've tweeted/messaged various people/radio stations to see if they are going to talk about the plight of ICT and give the go fund me page some coverage. If others can do that as well it can only help our cause. I doubt anyone on the board are trying to spread word far and wide to all the media outlets to get word out there so I fear it's down to us fans to spread the word

Well done. There is a big opportunity to reach out to the wider football community, where there are a lot of people who don’t want to see any club go under, and who might have a soft spot for us. Fans of Everton/BigDunc for example. Hearts fans also seem grateful to us for being one of the only clubs to argue against their relegation. And then if you can reach North Americans whose ancestry can be traced back to the Highlands, we’ll be rich!

[buckett]

40 minutes ago, Yngwie said:

 who might have a soft spot for us. Fans of Everton/BigDunc for example. 

At long last Big Dunc is proving his worth.

A quick scan down the GoFundMe thing reveals quite a few donations from Everton fans (Thank you Everton fans!) thanks to Ferguson's previous association with the club.

Just wish he could coax a win out of a team of fairly decent players though.

Nevertheless, his very presence here is, for once, pulling in more pounds than he's costing the club!

[big cherly]

3 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

The meeting needs to be about looking forward.  In order to do that properly we need to understand the process and consequences of Administration and of struggling on to try and avoid Administration.  How, for example, would the administrators deal the outstanding loan debt?  What I am sure we would all agree on is that we do not want the club to be liquidated.  I certainly don't like the idea of Administration either, but other clubs have been through the process and have fully recovered within a few years.  I wonder therefore whether desperate efforts to avoid administration will only delay the inevitable and could do more harm than good.

I worry that in order to avoid administration, the Board could look to sell the Club off to some unscrupulous buyer whose long term aim has nothing to do with football but everything to do with the potential development value of the site.  Sadly, I have more confidence in the Administrators to sell the club to an appropriate buyer than I do in our own Board.

If we raise the £200,000 what happens. next month?  To reduce the difference between income and expenditure, the Board would need to make some of the cuts the administrators would do in any case.  We would still need to find significant sums in donations every month until we could be in a position where there was a balance between income and expenditure.  It would be hard and none of that touches the massive debt the club has.  How long could we survive like that unless former Directors write off their loans?

Would administration be worse?  It would be brutal at first with redundancies coming quicker, but presumably it would allow recovery to start quicker and make the club a more attractive proposition for more appropriate buyers?

 

 

Facing and taking the pain now will enable the club (in whatever shape, form or league) to move on more quickly (and from personal experience), cheaper and get in place a structure that most fans would understand and get behind.

Time for a new direction!!!

Edited October 4 by big cherly

[+DoofersDad]

3 hours ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

It cannot be said often enough that there is no guarantee that the club would survive administration. 

Yes, the administrators would try to prevent the club from going under.  But if they can't come to a deal with its creditors, or find a buyer, then if the club can't pay its debts it gets liquidated.  We know that without £200K by the 16th, the club will be in that situation exactly, i.e. insolvent. 

Given the sums of money - the debts - that have been mentioned over the last few weeks , together with fact that the club appears to have very few assets which could be sold, then liquidation must be a very real possibility.

Thanks for the helpful response.  The key thing here is that the vast majority of the debt is owed to 3 men who, until very recently, were Directors of the club and who, we have always been told, have been fans of the club since it was founded.  The club has little in the way of cash or assets, so if the club does go into administration, there is no way they are going to get their money back except in the very unlikely event of a buyer coming in who is prepared to pay off the loans.  If we get liquidated then they get nothing.  On the face of it, they should accept  that reality and, in the interests of the club they claim to support, write off the loans and free up the club from that debt

Where it gets interesting is the assets they have control of.  The three of them own the shares in ICT Battery Storage Ltd with Morrison and Cameron being the Directors.  That would suggest that potential proceeds from the BESS are protected from the administrator or a 3rd party buyer and could be fed back into the club at the discretion of the 3 of them at some point in the future.  However, the Companies House records list the Club as a "person with significant control" with the right to remove or appoint directors, to have 75%+ voting right and to have 75%+ of shares.  So if we go into administration, I wonder if the administrators would have the power to take back control and effectively include the Battery company as an asset of the club?

Morrison and Munro are also the sole Directors of Inverness Caledonian Thistle Properties Ltd.   This owns the leases for the ground around the stadium.  There is no club control noted for this and therefore this land is presumably completely outwith the reach of the administrators.

In addition, Morrison holds a charge against the Club at Companies House, which involves "Floating charge over all its property, undertaking, assets (including uncalled capital) and rights owned now or in the future."  There is also a 2nd charge involving Munro as well.  So, what are the implications of this?  If administration looms, does this mean Morrison can say he wants his loan repaid now, and when the club says it can't pay, he enforces the charge and all the assets of the club pass to him?  He and his 2 colleagues then write off the loans, pay off Gardiner and the club is debt free but Morrison, Cameron and Munro own everything between them.  

It seems to me that Morrison has the power both to completely asset strip the club for his own future profit or to protect the club from the administrators and the assets being sold on the cheap to a third party.  If the intention of Morrison, Munro and Cameron is to protect the club from the administrators, then surely the time to write off all or most of the debt is now!  If most of the debt was cleared, then the focus of the club going forward could concentrate on the steps required to balance the books and we would be a far more attractive proposition for any potential credible buyer.

This is all speculation on my part, but I do think it is important that we can get an expert opinion of how the complications of Morrison's Charges and the two related companies impact on the Club's current situation and on the situation should we go into administration.  Clarity would help people make a decision on whether they want to contribute to crowdfunding, and if so, how much they want to contribute.

 

[Jack Waddington]

Fair play to the fella who dropped £20k into the kitty. Heard it was Ryan Christie, but not sure how true that rumour is

[+snorbens_caleyman]

54 minutes ago, DoofersDad said:

It seems to me that Morrison has the power both to completely asset strip the club for his own future profit or to protect the club from the administrators and the assets being sold on the cheap to a third party.

Indeed.  So how should we interpret the news that it was Morrison who re-introduced Makanwa into the mix this week?

[+DoofersDad]

8 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

Indeed.  So how should we interpret the news that it was Morrison who re-introduced Makanwa into the mix this week?

There's a lot of things that appear quite contradictory.  Lots of questions but very few answers.  

At the moment there would appear to be an obvious way to wipe out most of the debt but no solution to how we attract new money to invest in going forward.  Maybe Morrison has been informed than Makwana now has proof of a significant source of funding?  For all his faults and poor decision making, I do think Morrison genuinely wants the club to  thrive.  Morrison is not on the Board now, so shouldn't be involved in any of the negotiations involving Makwana.

[IcyT]

50 minutes ago, DoofersDad said:

In addition, Morrison holds a charge against the Club at Companies House, which involves "Floating charge over all its property, undertaking, assets (including uncalled capital) and rights owned now or in the future."  There is also a 2nd charge involving Munro as well.  So, what are the implications of this?  If administration looms, does this mean Morrison can say he wants his loan repaid now, and when the club says it can't pay, he enforces the charge and all the assets of the club pass to him?  He and his 2 colleagues then write off the loans, pay off Gardiner and the club is debt free but Morrison, Cameron and Munro own everything between them.  

Under section 245 of the Insolvency Act, a floating charge granted by the chargor (company) in favour of a “connected person” (a director of the company) is invalid to the extent that (i) it is granted where no consideration for it is received at the time or subsequently and (ii) the company is the subject of insolvency proceedings in the following two years. So, if Morrison had already loaned sums to Caley and only subsequently took security via this floating charge in December 2023, it would be invalid to that extent.

if, however, he did legitimately lend a sum to Caley and Caley granted security at the same time, then it would be valid. Or if he granted security first and then advanced sums.

If not repaid, Morrison could look to enforce charge, and administrator would check its validity.

Of course there does seem to be conflicts of interest all over these transactions. Were the directors acting for the benefit of the shareholders as a whole, per their statutory duty?  If not, then such transactions could be challenged on that basis.

[Kind of Blue]

1 hour ago, Jack Waddington said:

Fair play to the fella who dropped £20k into the kitty. Heard it was Ryan Christie, but not sure how true that rumour is

That’s some donation there Jack, top man!

[+jagster]

For those that are planning going to the meeting on Monday. An email Has dropped in saying it’s tickets only Free obviously but you would need to get it from the eticketing site as they have a limited amount of seats and are expecting many people .

 

(limited to two per application)

[+Naelifts]

Is this meeting going to be streamed?

[+TheCaleyOne]

12 minutes ago, Naelifts said:

Is this meeting going to be streamed?

I think i read it will be recorded and put online later

[Jack Waddington]

Ach well. The dozen or so of us who managed to get one will have fun watching them squirm. Unfortunately the Rangers Das are still a bit twitchy about 2012...

[big cherly]

3 hours ago, Jack Waddington said:

Fair play to the fella who dropped £20k into the kitty. Heard it was Ryan Christie, but not sure how true that rumour is

Would make sense, his dad still works there. Has skin in the game so to speak! 

[+DoofersDad]

9 minutes ago, Jack Waddington said:

Ach well. The dozen or so of us who managed to get one will have fun watching them squirm. Unfortunately the Rangers Das are still a bit twitchy about 2012...

Well, if you can't get a ticket, you can always watch from the bridge!

[Duke of Inverness]

1 hour ago, Jack Waddington said:

Ach well. The dozen or so of us who managed to get one will have fun watching them squirm. Unfortunately the Rangers Das are still a bit twitchy about 2012...

What a loser that plonker is. Hope he chokes on his Buckfast. 

Edited October 4 by Duke of Inverness

[robbo1985]

Looks like the tickets are all gone already ... No priority for season ticket holders or anything, how disappointing.

[buckett]

2 hours ago, Jack Waddington said:

Ach well. The dozen or so of us who managed to get one will have fun watching them squirm. Unfortunately the Rangers Das are still a bit twitchy about 2012...

Hmm - tickets seem to be sold out now, or should I say, given out.

I would hope there was some system to prevent buckie-swillers like the above from snapping them up, e.g tickets only available to supporters with a connection to ICT (season ticket holders, share holders, match ticket purchaser database for example)

[Downinthedumps]

You’ve got to laugh 

[robbo1985]

6 minutes ago, buckett said:

Hmm - tickets seem to be sold out now, or should I say, given out.

I would hope there was some system to prevent buckie-swillers like the above from snapping them up, e.g tickets only available to supporters with a connection to ICT (season ticket holders, share holders, match ticket purchaser database for example)

Yes it's so disappointing that there seems to have been no priority given to those in the categories you listed and no doubt many true fans will miss out, potentially because of those who are clearly trying to make it a non event.

[+DoofersDad]

I hope somebody from the Supporters Trust has got a ticket because they've got all the questions!

I'm sure they will get in regardless, but seriously, if people who want to go aren't able to, please make sure you get your questions into the Trust ASAP to give them time to collate them before the meeting.  I won't be there due to a prior commitment but I have submitted some questions to the Trust.