Dibbles old paperboy

It is not an article about the sale of St Mirren... a general article of the state of SPL finances where the reporter tries to pick out the bad financial news on as many clubs as possible: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/football/spl/2011/12/15/spl-chief-neil-doncaster-rules-out-a-winter-shutdown-as-crowds-dwindle-ahead-of-christmas-86908-23636623/ Here are a few paragraphs including the sentence on St Mirren: "Former First Minister Henry McLeish, the author of the SFA commissioned report into the state of Scottish football, said last week there was a "fear factor" among clubs when it came to finance. Since then Hearts have gone into even deeper conflict with unpaid players waiting with baited breath to find out if their wages will be paid in full, or at all, this morning. r*ngers live on a daily basis with the fear of at a x investigation going against them and edging the club towards the possibility of administration. Kilmarnock's latest figures show the Ayrshire club in debt to the tune of over £9million. St Mirren have had to abandon talks over the sale of the club to a buyer who couldn't raise the money to take them over after looking for funding for over a year. Dundee United's Stephen Thompson last night confirmed the club are up to date with the money due on David Goodwillie's transfer to Blackburn. But the Tannadice side are 18 per cent down on season-ticket sales and the chairman knows it's time to come up with some good ideas on the future." I'm sure Killie's board would be putting a different spin on their financial results from last year: i.e. they made a big reduction in the debt due to posting a healthy profit from transfers, higher attendances and got more prize money from finishing in the top 6 instead of the relegation zone again.

http://www.paisleydailyexpress.co.uk/renfrewshire-sport/renfrewshire-football/renfrewshire-football-st-mirren/2011/12/07/atkinson-i-m-happy-to-do-deal-with-mcgeoch-87085-29906773/

Will the flier also be available as a PDF... if people can't make the match on Saturday they could email it to some of their Saints supporting friends who don't use B&WA and haven't signed up for the DDs yet

yet you still won't provide any quote where RA called himself the "saviour of St Mirren" as you claimed he had or provide any evidence that he is they 'shyster' that you keep saying he is. Your alternative to the CIC going through was GLS buying the club off the consortium even though GLS didn't want to meet their valuation and has now invested his money in property and wouldn't have the money to buy the club outright, and yet you say you deal in fact, not fiction!

£1.3m of debt that rests with the CIC and not St Mirren FC... and if SMISA do vote to support the CIC and add their 50k to Richard's 50k then that is £1.4m raised before you add in the 10 (?) corporate members ready to pledge £10k per year which could the total up to £1.5m more or less raised before you add in community members and ordinary members pledges.

I have a funny feeling that due to his beliefs the last thing RA would proclaim himself to be would the the saviour of anything... have you got any direct quotes of RA claiming to be St Mirren's saviour or any evidence of him being a shyster?

Richard Atkinson is not putting in £50k in order to get to own SMFC in return for his £50k. I wasn't at the meeting tonight due to be at a work conference but from the live feeds tonight, RA has taken 2 years out of his work at Maxi to spend time putting the CIC bid together, so that is a sacrifice he has made for the good of the club. People have been moaning that he hasn't put a penny in to the club or the CIC, but he's already paid legal fees for the CIC, and is now stumping up £50k from his own pocket which is the same amount of money the fans group SMISA are talking about investing... do you want to knock them too for 'only' stumping up £50k if they vote in favour of being part of the CIC?

The fans' man has invested his money in property after his bid to buy St Mirren wasn't accepted. Why would 1 rich guy buying the club for £2m be better for the fans' posse than the fans themselves buying the club via the CIC method... at least with the CIC method you would have fans involved in some of the boards?

Here's a link to some CIC's that were wound up due to fraud and did become insolvent... probably has no relevance to how 10,000 Hours would be running as a CIC looking after St Mirren FC: https://nds.coi.gov.uk/Content/detail.aspx?NewsAreaId=2&ReleaseID=422022&SubjectId=5

Did the CIC in Kensington in Liverpool actually ever become insolvent? The story from 6 months ago is based on a local councillor saying that if Liverpool City Council pulled the funding it had agreed to pay the CIC each year then the CIC could become insolvent. It would seem that Liverpool City Council had agreed to pay the CIC £200k a year and had not kept to their side of the bargain... all of which is very different to 10,000 Hours being given the funding to buy the 52% shareholding and then later struggling to meet the repayment deadlines to the funders over 10 years.

Any ideas on what percentage of CIC's become insolvent?

In the history of CIC's how many have been made insolvent by social funders chasing up late payments?

... so the whole CIC venture is a scam devised by RA to secure a new home for the Life Church at St Mirren FC's expense... even though i don't think RA is a member of that congregation? I think RA has said on record at public meetings what would happen if the CIC got into financial trouble and was unable to meet its payment schedule to the funders; i.e., 1) Social funders don't lend on the same basis as banks or commercial lenders and it is very unlikely they would push the CIC into administration and 2) if the funders were demanding repayment and the CIC was unable to meet the payments the worst case scenario is the CIC's 52% shareholding in St Mirren FC would be put up for sale with the starting price being whatever the outstanding debts to the funders were (meaning it would be lower than the current £2m asking price).

Romanov is said to want £50m to sell Hearts! Maybe £2m for St Mirren isn't as unreasonable after all.

Official staement from SG on the official website: http://www.saintmirren.net/pages/?p=7800

Rick I think your posts have been good. It is probably only fair to say that the mudslinging about the CIC is cutting both ways at the minute and it isn't only the pro CIC brigade who are being unfair to those who see things differently to themselves. Someone recently summarised the CIC proposals by going on about Glasgow Ladies doing the laundry at Greenhill Road while people applauded religious nuts like David Icke or something like that and complained those behind the CIC haven't delivered a fraction of what they've promised etc and then when it was pointed out they had raised more funds to date than any other bidder for the club so far that was poopooed too. RA and the guy from Kibble also seem to be lampooned regularly on the 10,000 Hours discussion board.

It could well be the remaining 700k is still being worked on, or the plan B option for the CIC.... the £1.3m figure was also mentioned in the PDE shortly after the last CIC meeting I think. ETA: I am guessing the CIC hasn't progressed with £1.3m in place because that may be a similar amount to previous bids which were rejected? RA was asked if most of the money was in place would the consortium not accept that as a down payment or deposit but said he was confident the CIC would secure the £2m they had agreed with the consortium and it would be up to the consortium to decide if they were happy to start off by settling for less than was agreed.

At the last CIC meeting RA did say that a new social funder had offered money that hadn't been applied for by 10,000 Hours and they could look at that. RA also said that if the final piece in the jigsaw to complete the deal didn't materialise there was a plan B route that 10,000 Hours could look at... he did say something to the effect that he didn't even want to contemplate the plan B at that time as they were so close to completing the deal under plan A and had put so much time and energy into plan A that he didn't want to begin thinking about plan B unless it became necessary.

When you say that RA has been "unable to deliver a fraction of what was promised" is it not the case that as of the last CIC meeting £1.3m was ready to drawn down to pay the consortium, but there was no point drawing down the money until the £2m was reached and the deal was ready to complete. As of a few months ago, two thirds of the money to buy the 52% was there.

As of the last CIC meeting £1.3m was if i remember correctly ready to draw down?

With the exception of reborn saint and lochwinnoch saint (?) i think most people who signed up for direct debits for the CIC seem fairly comfortable at the moment... yes ideally, we'd all like to know if the CIC is going to proceed or not and most of us probably wish there was some kind of email since it has been a few months since the previous meeting which was followed up a week or two later by SG saying the deal was expected to conclude within a fortnight. It is not like we are currently paying out our £10 a month with no communication from the CIC. I'm guessing most people who gave their direct debit details were positive or had goodwill towards the CIC and those leading the bid and many of us still hope it can proceed and are willing to cut RA some slack if it is still being worked on behind the scenes.

The Evening Times article quoted doesn't have the exact figures on what Tesco ended up paying, or the size of the new stadium or the amount of debt the club were carrying: "The deal thought to be worth£18m will see the club move to a new 10,000 seater stadium in Greenhill Road..." "St Mirren chairman Stewart Gilmour said: "It's a long way from being completed, but we have an agreement in principle. There are still some planning conditions to be ironed out." The deal would wipe out the club's liabilities, thought to be as much as £5m, pay for the new stadium and leave Saints with a cash surplus."

Oh the irony of Yul slagging off 'the Stranger'...

... getting their loans to the club repaid when Love Street was sold is surely something different from the board cashing in big / profiting / getting a nice return from the sale. It is hardly surprising the money they were owed by the club was settled at the same time as the bank debts and other debts when it was widely publicised that the reason for selling Love Street was to deal with the club's debts.

Original quotes on the subject of the board and the profits from the sale of Love Street were in these paragraphs from somner9: "The selling consortium are ultimately responsible for dragging the club and support through all this. They should have realised if something looks too good to be true (getting £2m for half smfc) then it almost cetainly is too good to be true. Now the sellers have snookered themselves, as 10000 hours can't complete and they have tied themselves up in companies and allsorts with them. i don't feel any sympathy towarsd the sellers they saw the chance to cash in big again (Don't forget they will have seen a nice return on the sale of Love street) and were blinded to the obvious downsides of association with a group of amateurs who honestly believed they could go about the process in reverse". That post suggests that the board "cashed in big" when they sold Love Street for £10m or £12m depending which figure you go with, and that some of Tescos millions went to the board members personally rather than repaying the bank debt or meeting the costs of 1) building the new ground at Greenhill Road, 2) demolishing the ground at Love Street 3) paying some of the costs of building the new training ground and 4) meeting some of the debts from the clubs running costs since the sale of Love Street. (SG said the money from the semi final and final cup runs, sale of McGinn etc went on finishing off the training ground and making up for the financial losses in the 2008/9, and 2009/10 seasons and said the idea that the club was still sitting on unspent millions left over from the Tesco deal was a fallacy). Somner9 has yet to provide any evidence the board received any money from the sale of Love Street or profited from the sale on a personal level.