St. Sid

poz you know fine well why it failed. Stop trying to cause trouble for the guys who are still running the club. 10000 hrs failed. Time to move on. No one forced anyone to work on the bid. They rolled the dice and the bid was f"k'd when they failed to secure the initial £750K of funding. That is when the gig was up and the bandwagon should have packed up and left town at that point. Instead they tried every scumbag tactic from scaremongering about job losses to trying to convince fans we should save the newco. You knew there was a shortfall and question marks over the cashflow but you continued campaigning on behalf of the project. Trying to pretend that the selling consortium are somehow in the wrong is pish poor Bud. Accept the decision and move on. The club was saved today and you know it.

Heard a bit on Radio Scotland earlier....they are also making accusations about SPL clubs having influential people trying to do the newco as much damage as possible. Sounds like another trip to the SFA is on the cards.

It is very negative div....probably more so than anything we've seen in relation to 10000 hrs. You appear to be writing off SMiSA without the slightest consideration after supporting 10000 hrs for months after it was clear they couldn't sustain the club. SMiSA with a £10,000 per month income becomes a very different prospect. They may not own the club, but then again the fans were never going to own the club under 10000 hrs either. Within 6 months fans could fit out the supporters bar with the profits going directly to the club. Why pish all over that?

10000 hrs and they are now officially experts in failure...is there much call for failure consultancy these days.

Comparing 10000 hrs to SMiSA is comparing apples to pears. SMiSA is genuinely run by fans. Zero debt is involved in SMiSA. SMiSA don't cliam to be taking control of the club just looking for fans to have a say in the club by investing money directly into it. We saw a lot of effort from the 10000 hrs online marketing team to promote their high risk strategy. Why the instant negativity and lack of willingness to even consider what might be achieved via a strongly supported SMiSA?

Another "john" post. It was the problem with it all along Tsu.....initially there was actually some information to hang your hope on. Once the silance kicked in we should all have run screaming in the other direction. The desire for fan ownership was implanted though and we all ran with it. Plan B was shite...Plan C was insanity.

Yay...another "John" post. I never threw my toys out the pram Tsu...sounds like you are now though. I listened to SMiSA raise concerns at a poorly attended public meeting - I attended every public meeting. I watched 10000 hrs struggle to respond to the fairly open questions. I actually supported REA on the night and later online. However, the unanswered questions were of concern coupled with information coming from the original funders - I did my homework. I asked for information and it wasn't provided. I asked for information to be provided at the final public meeting...the opted to slabber a lot of shite about other bids - which according to the statement from SG today do not exist. Some fans including me knew about the shortfall and cashflow issues. I tried my best to get 10000 hrs to own up to it. They refused to and the first time it was fessed up in public was when the information was released in the PDE this morning. I didn't throw my toys out of the pram Tsu.....I just knew that the bid has declined into a bag of shite. 10000 hrs were trying to pressure the selling consortium into accepting a bid that would put the club at risk. Thankfully the selling consortium have done us all proud yet again....despite the best efforts of some fans to sate their own starving egos by playing Mr St Mirren. I watched post after post towards guys like somner9 about how they were going to be boaking when 10000 hrs took control. In reality, a lot of sane St Mirren fans are breathing a huge sigh of relief. There's no goading TsuMirren...just relief that the club is still in safe hands and the egomaniacs prepared to take control of the club at all costs have been shown the door. SMiSA were very brave in questioning 10000 hrs finances and business plan whilst a lot of dopey f'k'rs cheered on REA as he tried to discredit their stance at the last public meeting. Our club was saved today and we should all be grateful for it. However I'm sure you won't be the last to spit their 10000 hrs dummy out.

B&WArmy is a force for the good of St Mirren and its supporters. We've seen some great times even when the football was shit and the club was on its last legs. And yet here we all are squabbling and bickering during the most successful period we've had in many of our lifetimes. A few egos got out of control as they whored themselves in the court of would be King Richard. They will take a wee while to realise their errors and will probably never openly admit to some of the naughtiness they have been guilty of. Personal ambition being placed before respect for your fellow supporters was an error of judgement. Ralston upgringings and old grammarian bumbrainedness was clearly at play in this sorry saga. Then we had the attacks on the selling consortium from the usual suspects using 10000 hrs as a vehicles for their score settling. I would be quite happy if the 10000 hrs Boards were deleted for good. They are a sully on our otherwise excellent supporters resource.

There was no fan ownership, no fan empowerment, no other bids, no armageddon, no cash, no 1877 club members........the fans were getting bullshitted. Just glad the nonsense is all over.

With 10000 hrs now out of the way the fans should look to SMiSA as the vehicle for fan ownership. If we all start donating £10-a-month to SMiSA within three years they will be sitting on around £410,000 (including their existing £50K). 10000 hrs f"k'd up by not starting to collect the donations as soon as it was launched. They wound up short of capital. Switch your direct debits to SMiSA and fans will be in a great position to at a minimum negotiate influence on the new owners should that come to pass. If not then we at least have significant funds available to invest in ventures like a supporters bar. 10000 hrs legacy should be momentum towards fan involvement in the club. The correct next move for fans is to join SMiSA.

After eons of silence we finally get an article that contains some information regarding the bid. Good to see SG recognised the high gearing issues that I have been posting about. Essentially the debt to capital investment is miles off accepted levels of risk for any business venture. The guarantees made by 10000 hrs effectively put to bed any notion that the club will be owned / controlled by the fans. Effectively the interim BoD will become guarantors for the club and will be immovable until the debt is cleared. So long as there's debt or cashflow concerns there is no fan ownership. If this had all come out months ago when it was already known it might have been pallatable. However, they withheld this information from the fans whilst asking for their money and continuing to peddle the fan ownership bollox. http://www.paisleydailyexpress.co.uk/renfrewshire-sport/renfrewshire-football/renfrewshire-football-st-mirren/2012/09/08/bid-bosses-vow-to-cough-up-for-saints-shortfall-87085-31789957/

Quite even in the 80s beer was still under 50p a pint.

I don't think you have though Stu and you ignore the crucial point. Increasing the commercial and community profitability of SMFC is what St Mirren fans want. What is on offer is innovation to pay off a debt that 10000 hrs can't afford based on the cash it has raised to date. All the effort of the "new blood" will be on trying to service the debt, not on growing SMFC. The BoDs will effectively be trying to run two businesses. One currently surviving from month to month with specualtion that next season is going to be tougher than this with the fallout from newco and potential reconstruction. The other business appearing to be significantly underfunded to service a £1Million+ debt. That's a pretty tough platespinning exercise. Running SMFC under normal conditions looks challenging enough at the moment.

That doesn't make any sense at all Stu. The people coming into the club are SMFC customers not CIC customers. SMFC needs to grow, not the CIC. You appear to be saying that we rob SMFC to pay off the debt of the CIC. The commercial and community profitability of SMFC should be made more profitable for the club, not to service an unecessary debt.

Beating what drum DOP? I've been posting my concerns about the finances. There's people from Paisley who are St Mirren fans involved in this. It doesn't make the finances any better. I actually quite like REA...don't know much about Chris other than he has got great secretary legs. Brian Caldwell appears to be getting the blame from SMFC for the ripping off of our disabled fans...if that is the case then I wouldn't rate him much as a human being at this point in time. £750K was a big gap to fill and I haven't seen any evidence that has happened. My view is that they should have packed up and shipped out after that. Instead we have wasted a lot of time and effort on a lot of madness, not least of all the 10000 hrs / SMFC meltdown over the newco situation. Hopefully the quiet man from the US will save us all in true Hollywood / Brynner style and we can all have a laugh about it in the Champions League Finals.

Yes.....I raided his drinks cabinet whilst he shagged you. You're a top Bud...always prepared to take one for the troops.

Wee change fae Gary Blues burd.

Low fat pies for everybody in the front row of M3.

I think the first time I heard about the £600K was at the poorly attended public meeting where SMiSA raised it. 10000 hrs haven't been shouting about how they are funding the £1.25M bid. There is £1.25M required. I reckon the 87 club and 1877 club may just about scrape together over £125K. That will be the only capital investment. There will be £500K coming from Bii in the form of debt with an annual 8% interest rate. So that leaves over £600K investment that is still to be found. The blah, blah at the public meeting was that the 87 club and 1877 club capital would be higher. So far the only explanation of the shortfall in capital being met is from Div who reckon they can trade off some of the direct debits into capital. Not sure what mechanism they are using however that generally requires factoring, which also attracts interest rates - generally higher than traditional loans....similar bollox to using future season ticket sales to raise capital...was KMG not pilloried for that in attempting to broker a similar deal with Ticketus. If we are turning direct debits into capital that reduces the number of direct debits available to serice the increasing number of debts. Let's not forget that the selling consortium are deferring payment already as 10000 hrs original (3rd plan) offer couldn't deliver the required payment up front. This was a poorly funded plan even on the basis of the 87 clubs and 1877 clubs had hit their targets. It would be useful if 10000 hrs could provide a detailed breakdown of how this is all being financed and what the charges on the CIC and ultimately control of the club actually are. So far we have a bullet point on a presentation slide talking about Bii's conditions being saving scumgers, and then some etc's....there's clearly more conditions that aren't being shared with the people investing and ultimately gambling with the future of our club from a position of almost complete ignorance. And that's before we get started on there being zero information on the process that we're also not meant to talk about as it is nothing for us fans to worry about. I was bemused at some of the responses to SMiSA at that public meeting when they asked questions about the funding and the business plan. The response was along the lines of there being no business plan beyond raising enough cash for a bid to be accepted. That started the alarm bells ringing for me. We managed to tease out a little more information at the next meeting and in FAQs....however that seemed to be written on the fly, and the meeting was all about who else might buy the club if 10000 hrs didn't take control. The problem with that is.....10000 hrs appear to be stringing together a desperate bid that Angelo Massone or Craig Whyte would be ashamed to put his name to. The smoke and mirrors being that it is all about the fans getting control of the club - only the fans don't. The debtors will be in control of the club, just as Lloyds were in control of the sell off of scumgers. Just as Venture Capitalists have a heavy steering hand in the running of a business they invest in. Shite funding and no business plan is a disaster waiting to happen irrespective of the people in control of it. Step away from the fan ownership and think of this scheme as if Angelo Massone was fronting it and you would run 10000 miles in the opposite direction.

The brutally obvious point is that you have to ask the question Stu. We haven't been told. There have been comments that it will be over 6 years, further comments that it will be over 10 years. Critical information like that is skimmed over amongst the odd bullet point in sales pitch presentations. Fans aren't meant to worry about detail like that and have effectively been banned from discussing the process. We have just to keep the faith, donate our cash and let 10000 hrs worry about the details. I buy into the SEN to help develop the club and its place in the community. What is now being proposed is that the clubs survival becomes dependent on social funding that 10000 hrs may or may not be able to secure. They haven't been overly successful so far. Do we end up in a situation where the CIC ends up taking out more loans at the fans expense and ultimately delaying any eventual direct benefit to the club. Meantime any downturn in revenues for SMFC and the already in debt, overstretched and skint CIC is supposed to bail the club out with initiatives we know nothing about that are going to fund the shortfall in debt repayments. Currently we are told that the club makes heehaw cash out of its current community undertakings. Suddently we are going to be able to raise over £600K in profits from social enterprise - not revenue Stu...£600K + profit that will then be used to fund the shortfall in debt repayments. Why are we not being presented with the numbers? Everyone appears to have concerns about the CIC and how it will be funded, as well as its ability to service the debt and what the implications are in terms of the CIC becoming insolvent. No information is in the public domain and no one without a vested interest has been prepared to come forward and validate the business plan. The fans should have been allowed an independent and capable third party to review the business plan on their behalf. All we have to go on is the long line of social funders that have rejected the business plan.

It is only to be spent if 10000 hrs is successful in its outrageously shite bid for the club.

The sad reality is that the club shelved plans to develop the void as 10000 hrs tabled an alternative approach. The area might well have been developed by now. The Invitation to Bid from the selling consortium states requires the bids to be fan / community focussed. I'm comfortable that any alternative bids real or made up by 10000 hrs will have fan empowerment schemes within them. Schemes that will be properly defined to the extent that fans will actually understand what they are getting for their investment. The issue with 10000 hrs scheme ALL lies around how it is funded. Basically it isn't. Firstly the financing of the takeover is based on an exceptionally high gearing model. From what little we know the capital to debt ratio is well above the accepted norms. Even acceptable high gearing ratios should be avoided in high righ economic situations such as a credit crunch. On that basis alone it has insolvency written all over it. There appears to be an avoidance of stating how much additional revenue is required from CIC initiatives. The numbers being bandied around at the last public meeting before the 1877 and 87 club capital evaporated was £600K. What hasn't been explained is where the capital investment to generate a £600K profit to service the shortfall in capital / membership payments. I haven't seen any evidence of the innovation in the last three years that would suggest that 10000 hrs can raise an additional £600K in additional revenue, never mind additional profit. With the £750K grant funding the gearing would just about have been pallatable as it was backed by SROI loans and low interest rates. The story was also that it would open the flood gates for additional social funding to pay for further initiatives that would benefit the CIC / SMFC. Now it all just smacks of desperation, smoke and mirrors, trying to get away with it and catastrophic outcomes.

My good friend and fellow Juve supporter Angelo Massone.

The word "sold" is an interesting one reborn. It looks like 10000 hours only have £500K capital to invest (all of which is debt to Bii). That would mean that there would be an outstanding £750K debt to the selling consortium making them the biggest debtors. Who actually owns the club is an interesting question. I don't think the word "sold" is appropriate when talking about 10000 hrs. We have still to see how the bid is being funded.

At the last public meeting I was still swithering. Itwas 10000 hrs big chance to outline exactly how they were going to fanance the deal and support and grow SMFC moving forward. They chose not to. Instead all they chose to focus on scaremongering. However, it was a belter of a response after the meeting that nailed it for me. I commented that the deal was underfunded......the response from a would be interim board member was along the lines of....."when your buying a house you don't worry about how you are going to pay the mortgage, you just go ahead and buy it then figure out how to make it work later." Now from a business perspective that isn't actually a bad philosophy if you are starting from scratch...building a new business and the initial investment is low and the risk is high. For a sustainable business model on which to run a football club that is an important part of the lives of many good people (and kendo ) we need something a bit more than a pair o' bawbags over inflated egos. This isn't a suck it and see situation for a cunning business plan that might pay big dividends. There is zero sign of any big dividends from 10000 hrs and that is openly admitted by them. Instead it is a high risk venture with zero upside. They've repeatedly been challenged to provide the finacial details and a business plan and have repeatedly hidden behind commercial confidentiality. Div's "nutshell" post earlier demonstrates quite clearly to me that he doesn't have the information either, or if he does he doesn't understand it. I have yet to see a fan with no vested interest stand up and say that they have seen the financials and they are okay with them. Instead we have mindless cheerleaders trying to railroad fans into supporting a business plan they haven't seen and don't even understand the bare bones of. We were told the business plan was vetted by the £750K grant funder......er okay....where's the money stoopit? What happened to the rest of the funders who had also approved the business plan - in principle. The last press release stated that they were having to go back to Bii yet again...but were continuing with the bid even though the £500K loan isn't even in place. The entire scheme is now based on wing and a prayer blind hope from what is a minority of our support. The numbers don't add up. No cnut has seen the business plan or the breakdown of the £1.25M bid. No update has been provided on the 87 club or 1877 club memberships....the 1877 club memberships supposedly making up for the shortfall from all the social funders rejecting 10000 hrs application for funding / loans. As nutshells go....pish!