A 'shall we put the club up for sale' referendum in 2015

[Alan Crockford]

While I'm in favour of supporter ownership of Exeter City, maybe, 12 years into our period of supporter ownership, we could do with a test in 2015 of whether the majority of Trust members are still in favour of this. Or would the membership rather sell most of its majority shareholding to a new owner, continuing (as at Swansea) as a small shareholder?

It might focus minds on finally making the system work, so it seems to be a good discipline to focus minds.

Incidentally, despite our current embarrassment, it should be noted that a Football League club with average crowds of 3,500 to 5,500, a decent youth academy, large FL (if we stay there) payments and debts of around £2m (I'd guess) to largely friendly creditors is a reasonable proposition. There's no guarantee of a buyer, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was interest.

Does anyone have views on whether this would be a useful exercise, or insight into how easy it would be for the Trust to put its shareholding up for sale if that was the wish of the majority of Trust members?

 

[Shabba]

It all depends on who would be interested, it has been said before 'better the devil' For instance I wouldn't be happy if it the buyers were part of a Tagg consortium. And I'm not sure having Ray Kelvin as owner, would be any better........

 

[feverpitch]

A takeover by anyone currently involved would be unpalatable.

Swansea are certainly one example of Trust and private ownership working. The Swans Trust owns 20% of the club. But there are other examples, perhaps with more in common with ourselves, like Notts County. Privately owned, they went into administration in 2002 for 534 days, the longest ever period. The Trust and a consortium took over. Later a shareholder gave them more shares, so they had majority control. Infighting in the Trust led to them listening to a takeover offer from Bahrain. The were promised investment. 93% of their members voted for selling up. There turned out to be no money. They then came close to administration again in 2009 and the Bahrain group was forced to sell to another businessman, who took on the legacy of debts of millions.

There is no easy answer. We must be careful not to sell our club short because of trying circumstances.

Currently reading this book on the subject http://www.pitchpublishing.co.uk/shop/punk-football

 

[citydrinker]

I sincerely hope I am wrong, but the time for a referendum has passed. It is all too late.

 

[LOG]

Whilst i agree it may be helpful to gauge current feeling, i'm not sure there could be a test vote on selling up because the answer that comes back might be a resounding yes.

 

[richard_portland]

I think I could only give a fair answer if I knew who was interested. however I would definitely be in favour of considering any offer.

 

[Oli]

Let's just put 2 and 2 together and make 5.

Let's suppose (and I'm not saying this is true) that the club board have grown bored of the Trust, a lack of leadership, direction and financial backing for capital and day to day running. It wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that being on the club board is a thankless task and I'd have some sympathy with them. What would I do? I'd start the line that the ownership model was a challenge, unique and funding was difficult. This gives the idea that the Trust cannot financially support the club. The club may have found some additional investment, but the BOS were not comfortable with the terms in which that investment would come. Therefore what do you need to do? Weaken the leadership of the Trust so the members are disillusioned with it all. How better to do this than by taking a very public last line of funding, from the PFA? You could take a bridging loan from the bank, probably higher rates but if you paid it back within 3 months it'd probably not appear on any accounts so who would know? I don't buy that a bank wouldn't give us funding against a guaranteed TV income payment. Could we also have not got an advance from the football league, I understand this is not too uncommon. So why go to the PFA which is so public and comes with a transfer embargo? Who does that serve?

In the meantime this place explodes with angst against the BOS and the club in terms of running the show. The BOS for showing weak leadership and poor governance, things which we know have been inherent for years within the Trust. People cancelling subscriptions etc just leads to that weakening, the mass resignations from both boards would serve no purpose to anyone, but a phased, controlled transition would more than meet with my approval. The BOS needs to have much (or some!) governance and control over the club. That however may not have prevented the 100k issue since if they all agreed the gate estimates then that is done. Due to all this the BOS/Trust are weaker, does this improve the chances of a partial sale or full sale of the club? Yes, I suspect it does. Is this someones agenda? No idea, this is purely idle speculation.

The club getting the budget wrong by 100k, I'm not too fussed about that. That amount of money does not concern me, it is a cash flow item where we have a guaranteed income to fund it in a fixed period of time. Club budgets are done on an annual basis so I can understand not being able to trim that too much once into the year if we cannot sell players or if players don't want to leave. The concern is that it is funded by next years budget which essentially implies a weaker team and a potential downward spiral, which relies on youth and the manager to reverse (trying to keep the manager part out of this part of the debate). The 100k will be covered, but assume we take 150k off the budget for next season in addition, then we are 250k down on player budget for next season, probably 4 senior players.

So what do we do now? Well the Trust doesn't have a pot to **** in. With the greatest of respect nor does the pitchfork fund, nor the fighting fund. If anything it proves that the Trust is not a viable vehicle to fund either capital project or day to day running financial support to the club. The Trust has proven itself not to be a viable governance vehicle either, which is **** because that part should have been simple. The people who have been on the BOS for the past few years have not done enough of a good job, collective failure over many years. If we remain Trust run then the Trust needs an overhaul and strong leadership to regain it's reputation, they do simply not have enough governance. The idea of selling up isn't a great one either. But let's face it, Trust run clubs are hardly plentiful and successful are they? Perhaps we say we tried, gave it 10 years or so and did OK. I don't think it failed, I think it has proven where it ends unless something radical happens.

 

[Anonymous]

I would vote against private ownership. Simples.

Community club run for and run by the community.

 

[LOG]

And the funny, if that's the right word, thing is that anyone who leaves the trust because they no longer believe in it wouldn't get to vote yes to selling it off.

 

[motorservices]

im very close to ending my trust subs, but this is what im thinking, id hate to throw away my chance to have a say in the future of my club

ATM id defo vote yes if there was money to be put into the club