pozbaird Posted May 11, 2015 Report Share Posted May 11, 2015 Talk of hotels scares the shite out of me. There's what, two Holiday Inns, the Ramada and the Glynhill serving Paisley International Airport, while the Normandy is also well established as an 'airport hotel'. Simply no need. A hotel near our ground? With all due respect, hardly in the best most attractive location...In winter when the airport is dead? Nurse! Medication! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
conaldo Posted May 11, 2015 Report Share Posted May 11, 2015 Talk of hotels scares the shite out of me. There's what, two Holiday Inns, the Ramada and the Glynhill serving Paisley International Airport, while the Normandy is also well established as an 'airport hotel'. Simply no need. A hotel near our ground? With all due respect, hardly in the best most attractive location...In winter when the airport is dead? Nurse! Medication! Will act as competition for the DHSS market! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnam Posted May 11, 2015 Report Share Posted May 11, 2015 The Open Arms Inn the last chance saloon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seaside Nipper Posted May 11, 2015 Report Share Posted May 11, 2015 Not welcome . Cheeriotaef**k Non St Mirren Supporters. Away tae f**k , season tickets = bar discount Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beyond our ken Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 For those not wanting non-fans in charge, would you not prefer to see a degree of fan ownership/involvement included in the small print? There is no hotel at the airport that has any realistic provision of long stay parking on it's own premises. this deal could also provide the best near-airport conference facilities and would be potentially lucrative. Weddings, celebrations and other events at the ground would also benefit from having some rooms on-site Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rabuddies Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Has anybody considered that the hotel / parking project proposed by the potential bidders may have no tie-in to the club? Perhaps their interest is not the club but access to the facilities they require to complete their project. I don't see these people as benevolent, looking to make money on a hotel / parking business just to plough it into a loss making business like a football club. Any cash benefit to the running of the club will be minimal - or do I mean miniscule? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayrshire Saints Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Not welcome . Cheeriotaef**k Non St Mirren Supporters. Aye and all the real Saints fans with £1m plus stashed under their mattress have been standing by watching us get relegated just waiting for the price to drop before swooping in to buy the club !!! Face facts it's going to be sold to a non fan whether any of us like it or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 (edited) For those not wanting non-fans in charge, would you not prefer to see a degree of fan ownership/involvement included in the small print? There is no hotel at the airport that has any realistic provision of long stay parking on it's own premises. this deal could also provide the best near-airport conference facilities and would be potentially lucrative. Weddings, celebrations and other events at the ground would also benefit from having some rooms on-site The issue is the long term aims. Club owners broadly fall into three categories. The Fan(s) with Cash, putting Club first...e.g current board, or big group in a FO model. The Uber wealthy, has so much cash that a return on investment into the Club is not the issue at least in medium term, say Man City, or Chelsea The Investor, has either money of their own (but not in Uber category) or has borrowed money from somewhere else, and so needs the money they spend on a purchase back possibly with interest, what you could call a leveraged buy out I think it is fair to say that both the Arg and Eng bids recently trailed fall into the 3rd category as far as we can tell. So lets look at what that means. Firstly the 75% of the shares being available is vital in my opinion to any leveraged buy out, 52% just wont cut it in terms of how you can legally move the assets of the company around once you own 75% plus 1 share. So from what we know so far about say the english bid what could happen so that the option 3 (leveraged buy out) type purchase can be made to work. E.g you can afford to buy the Club say for £1.25m but you need an exit strategy to earn that money plus interest back over a period of time say 5 years. So what do we know about Club finances now, we know that at best they break even, though this year there was a cash loss of £70,000 on top of a depreciation loss of over £300K. So it is fairly clear that by just running the Club as well as it is being run just now that you are never going to see your £1.25m back, even if you improved the position so that a cash profit was made of a very nice £100K per annum it would still take over a decade to get your money back and on top of that if you tried to pay it as a dividend you would have to pay all the other Shareholders (though with 75% you could create a new pref share category to get around this) To be Clear making £100K or more per year can be done but it is not easy there are far easier ways to get your money back if you own 75% of the Shares. If it was me, (N.B for the technical amongst you i know i am missing out a number of tax, accounting and legal steps in the this senario) and my sole motivation was to make sure i got my money back then i would be separating the assets out, move the stadium and the land ban the Club owns across the road into a separately trading company, charge the Club to use it but use any increase in revenue on the new stadium company, which would include a nice shiny new hotel to pay a dividend to me as the owner of the Stadium Company to start getting my money back. As time goes by i get my original purchase price back through the trading of the Stadium Company, Hotel and Car park and then once i have all my money back i can sell my 75% in a Company which has a much better balance sheet as it now has a Hotel as an asset for a lot more than £1.25m thus more than doubling my money. That is what i would do and the availablity of 75% and of a good site with Hotel and Parking potential makes it possible. Now none of the above is automatically a bad thing, but fundamentally with more moving parts there is more that can go wrong, What if hotel is not a success? Is and Floating Charge or Security being issued on Club assets in order to fund any of this senario? Who has that Charge or Bond? What happens if the hotel is a success and is returning money to Club buyer but Club is not being succesful? In any event there are plenty of folk around who will shine the light on what is actually going on, it will be upto the fans as to what to do with that information Edited May 12, 2015 by rea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shull Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Aye and all the real Saints fans with £1m plus stashed under their mattress have been standing by watching us get relegated just waiting for the price to drop before swooping in to buy the club !!! Face facts it's going to be sold to a non fan whether any of us like it or not. What a silly first paragraph. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
northendsaint Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 The issue is the long term aims. Club owners broadly fall into three categories. The Fan(s) with Cash, putting Club first...e.g current board, or big group in a FO model. The Uber wealthy, has so much cash that a return on investment into the Club is not the issue at least in medium term, say Man City, or Chelsea The Investor, has either money of their own (but not in Uber category) or has borrowed money from somewhere else, and so needs the money they spend on a purchase back possibly with interest, what you could call a leveraged buy out I think it is fair to say that both the Arg and Eng bids recently trailed fall into the 3rd category as far as we can tell. So lets look at what that means. Firstly the 75% of the shares being available is vital in my opinion to any leveraged buy out, 52% just wont cut it in terms of how you can legally move the assets of the company around once you own 75% plus 1 share. So from what we know so far about say the english bid what could happen so that the option 3 (leveraged buy out) type purchase can be made to work. E.g you can afford to buy the Club say for £1.25m but you need an exit strategy to earn that money plus interest back over a period of time say 5 years. So what do we know about Club finances now, we know that at best they break even, though this year there was a cash loss of £70,000 on top of a depreciation loss of over £300K. So it is fairly clear that by just running the Club as well as it is being run just now that you are never going to see your £1.25m back, even if you improved the position so that a cash profit was made of a very nice £100K per annum it would still take over a decade to get your money back and on top of that if you tried to pay it as a dividend you would have to pay all the other Shareholders (though with 75% you could create a new pref share category to get around this) To be Clear making £100K or more per year can be done but it is not easy there are far easier ways to get your money back if you own 75% of the Shares. If it was me, (N.B for the technical amongst you i know i am missing out a number of tax, accounting and legal steps in the this senario) and my sole motivation was to make sure i got my money back then i would be separating the assets out, move the stadium and the land ban the Club owns across the road into a separately trading company, charge the Club to use it but use any increase in revenue on the new stadium company, which would include a nice shiny new hotel to pay a dividend to me as the owner of the Stadium Company to start getting my money back. As time goes by i get my original purchase price back through the trading of the Stadium Company, Hotel and Car park and then once i have all my money back i can sell my 75% in a Company which has a much better balance sheet as it now has a Hotel as an asset for a lot more than £1.25m thus more than doubling my money. That is what i would do and the availablity of 75% and of a good site with Hotel and Parking potential makes it possible. Now none of the above is automatically a bad thing, but fundamentally with more moving parts there is more that can go wrong, What if hotel is not a success? Is and Floating Charge or Security being issued on Club assets in order to fund any of this senario? Who has that Charge or Bond? What happens if the hotel is a success and is returning money to Club buyer but Club is not being succesful? In any event there are plenty of folk around who will shine the light on what is actually going on, it will be upto the fans as to what to do with that information Oh my goodness Richard you are sounding like someone who knows what they are talking about.Why dont you invest some cash and we the fans will back it up with ours? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Oh my goodness Richard you are sounding like someone who knows what they are talking about.Why dont you invest some cash and we the fans will back it up with ours? been there done that, and although there was no Pozbaird designed t-shirt, if there was i would have one. I also got legal advice at the time of the first bid failure of 10000hours that they would only advise a purchase of 75% privately, this was not available at the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 I don't think he would want to unless the Consortium dropped their price. It was over-priced at the time of 10000Hours and arguably we are in a worse position now. the price is an odd issue. it all depends on what the return is. If someone wants to develop out in a Newco the hotel etc then you could argue £1.25m is cheap if you want to keep it all at the Ltd Co you could argue it is expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mid Calder Saint Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Rea.Very interesting post.We are in my opinion a very attractive club for any likely purchasers.I would agree with the splitting of assets for security purposes.This often is the case not only in commercial categories but also in certain residential instances.We as fans should be doing all we can to talk up our wonderful Club which is the envy of many.I have long felt that we should be doing more with our assets due to our close proximity to an International Airport which just the other day announced record numbers of passengers.The hotel parking etc seems a realistic venture coupled with Airline Advertising similiar to Brentford FC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Rea.Very interesting post.We are in my opinion a very attractive club for any likely purchasers.I would agree with the splitting of assets for security purposes.This often is the case not only in commercial categories but also in certain residential instances.We as fans should be doing all we can to talk up our wonderful Club which is the envy of many.I have long felt that we should be doing more with our assets due to our close proximity to an International Airport which just the other day announced record numbers of passengers.The hotel parking etc seems a realistic venture coupled with Airline Advertising similiar to Brentford FC. Indeed, i suppose my concern is that the main reason for financial interest has little to do with actually playing good football. It is not to say that the investment angle is wrong it is just a totally different balance from the current one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 (edited) Please remind me what that used to look like.........the last two seasons have been torture to watch. The LC win in 2013 papered over the cracks of what was an appalling season. this is what good football looks like...in fact Stunning Football Edited May 12, 2015 by rea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Pityme Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Oh my goodness Richard you are sounding like someone who knows what they are talking about.Why dont you invest some cash and we the fans will back it up with ours? Back of the net! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pozbaird Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Richard... For argument sake, say the English consortium buy out the current incumbents for 1.25 million. They then own a football club. To see the football club make a profit, it needs to be successful. It therefore certainly needs to get back to the top division, it certainly needs good cup runs, and it needs to be playing the kind of attacking winning football that would see home fan gates increase from around 3,500 to at least 5,000 if not more, each home game. It would also need to greatly expand its' commercial activity, the use of the corporate suite, and the conversion of the void to a money-making club bar or equivalent. All of this is, I assume, what you refer to when you say it would be possible for the club to turn over a profit, but it would be very difficult to achieve. Starting from a situation where we have just been relegated, and people have been made redundant. 'Difficult' sounds like a big understatement. Aside then from their 1.25 million outlay just to buy out the sellers, just how much is it going to cost, and how long, to turn the club around to a position of success and therefore profit? How much investment in players, infrastructure, additional commercial staff to achieve more in that field? Then there is talk of a hotel and long stay car park at the stadium. How much would you estimate it would cost to build and operate such a facility? When you are up against massive international chains with three hotels already very much on-site at the airport itself? Build costs, staff costs, running costs? This is why I am extremely sceptical of anyone who appears on the scene with talk of hotels. Add the price of buying the shares to the money needed to turn the team and club into profit, then add that to the costs involved in building a hotel and long-stay car park. How much do you reckon that would amount to? The question 'Why St Mirren, you urnae' even Smurrrn fans' has never been more appropriate. Why do they even need a football club? If a hotel and car park is seen by them as a sure-fire thing, why not do a stand alone deal to acquire the land they require for their hotel project? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Yes as I said LC win papered over the cracks. Out of interest how many games did you attend that season home and away as a Director? I'd hazard a guess that you did not witness many of the games during Oct and Nov 2012 when we managed 1 point from 7 games. I'd hazard a guess that you did not witness many of the games following the LC win when we did not manage a win in 7 games. It is certainly the case that i did not attend many games home and away, but the football, as you know, was never my focus, most of my work with the Club was monday to friday Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beyond our ken Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Richard... For argument sake, say the English consortium buy out the current incumbents for 1.25 million. They then own a football club. To see the football club make a profit, it needs to be successful. It therefore certainly needs to get back to the top division, it certainly needs good cup runs, and it needs to be playing the kind of attacking winning football that would see home fan gates increase from around 3,500 to at least 5,000 if not more, each home game. It would also need to greatly expand its' commercial activity, the use of the corporate suite, and the conversion of the void to a money-making club bar or equivalent. All of this is, I assume, what you refer to when you say it would be possible for the club to turn over a profit, but it would be very difficult to achieve. Starting from a situation where we have just been relegated, and people have been made redundant. 'Difficult' sounds like a big understatement. Aside then from their 1.25 million outlay just to buy out the sellers, just how much is it going to cost, and how long, to turn the club around to a position of success and therefore profit? How much investment in players, infrastructure, additional commercial staff to achieve more in that field? Then there is talk of a hotel and long stay car park at the stadium. How much would you estimate it would cost to build and operate such a facility? When you are up against massive international chains with three hotels already very much on-site at the airport itself? Build costs, staff costs, running costs? This is why I am extremely sceptical of anyone who appears on the scene with talk of hotels. Add the price of buying the shares to the money needed to turn the team and club into profit, then add that to the costs involved in building a hotel and long-stay car park. How much do you reckon that would amount to? The question 'Why St Mirren, you urnae' even Smurrrn fans' has never been more appropriate. Why do they even need a football club? If a hotel and car park is seen by them as a sure-fire thing, why not do a stand alone deal to acquire the land they require for their hotel project? The hotel question is an interesting one, but there are several international chains that would probably franchise to a private developer with access to long stay parking on a site that is practically on the airport campus. Some chain hotels are owned by the chain and run by a franchisee, some are owned by a franchisee who pays a fee to benefit from the expertise,branding and publicity of a chain and others are owned and run by the chain. If you pick the right chain and they want a glasgow airport site then you are almost up and running right away. You would need your franchise deal agreed in principle at a very early stage, though. Biggest mistake would be to build an independent hotel such as the Killie venture, which has none of the location benefits that Greenhill rd has Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Richard... For argument sake, say the English consortium buy out the current incumbents for 1.25 million. They then own a football club. To see the football club make a profit, it needs to be successful. It therefore certainly needs to get back to the top division, it certainly needs good cup runs, and it needs to be playing the kind of attacking winning football that would see home fan gates increase from around 3,500 to at least 5,000 if not more, each home game. It would also need to greatly expand its' commercial activity, the use of the corporate suite, and the conversion of the void to a money-making club bar or equivalent. All of this is, I assume, what you refer to when you say it would be possible for the club to turn over a profit, but it would be very difficult to achieve. Starting from a situation where we have just been relegated, and people have been made redundant. 'Difficult' sounds like a big understatement. Aside then from their 1.25 million outlay just to buy out the sellers, just how much is it going to cost, and how long, to turn the club around to a position of success and therefore profit? How much investment in players, infrastructure, additional commercial staff to achieve more in that field? Then there is talk of a hotel and long stay car park at the stadium. How much would you estimate it would cost to build and operate such a facility? When you are up against massive international chains with three hotels already very much on-site at the airport itself? Build costs, staff costs, running costs? This is why I am extremely sceptical of anyone who appears on the scene with talk of hotels. Add the price of buying the shares to the money needed to turn the team and club into profit, then add that to the costs involved in building a hotel and long-stay car park. How much do you reckon that would amount to? The question 'Why St Mirren, you urnae' even Smurrrn fans' has never been more appropriate. Why do they even need a football club? If a hotel and car park is seen by them as a sure-fire thing, why not do a stand alone deal to acquire the land they require for their hotel project? Well the cash flow position in top div is at least £100k per year, it will be more in Championship and you probably would not get it back at the end of each season if your aim is to invest to get promoted, you could certainly with the sort of things you speak off need £250k per annum easily until promotion if you wish to keep a top flight infrastructure while trying to gain promotion, off course you could find a star player and solve all of this in a brush stroke, and at the end of the day many prospective owner just believe they can run football clubs better than the last guys, but with zero evidence to back it up, you dont normally get the chance to run a second one. to build a hotel etc etc of a scale that would attract and would have additional usful facilties to the Club, (see Old Trafford Cricket Ground fro an example) you certainly wont get much change from £3m quid for starters in my opinion which even more so says to me that anyone buying the Club from a property development angle needs to be uber focused on this and who knows if that could end up being to the detriment of what the Club is actually for which is playing football. behind the scenes at 10000hours we spoke to a few hotel guys about filling in at least one of the corners and then running the hotel so that the profits went back to the Club rather than to the creditors, it can certainly be done and it would look for a time nice a shiny but take Kilmarnock taken over the piece with the Park Hotel be a good or a bad thing....who knows Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 The hotel question is an interesting one, but there are several international chains that would probably franchise to a private developer with access to long stay parking on a site that is practically on the airport campus. Some chain hotels are owned by the chain and run by a franchisee, some are owned by a franchisee who pays a fee to benefit from the expertise,branding and publicity of a chain and others are owned and run by the chain. If you pick the right chain and they want a glasgow airport site then you are almost up and running right away. You would need your franchise deal agreed in principle at a very early stage, though. Biggest mistake would be to build an independent hotel such as the Killie venture, which has none of the location benefits that Greenhill rd has you would still need a developer and security of tenure on the site for any lending to build it and that would require 75% of the Club and probably various cross gaurantees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pozbaird Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 The hotel question is an interesting one, but there are several international chains that would probably franchise to a private developer with access to long stay parking on a site that is practically on the airport campus. Some chain hotels are owned by the chain and run by a franchisee, some are owned by a franchisee who pays a fee to benefit from the expertise,branding and publicity of a chain and others are owned and run by the chain. If you pick the right chain and they want a glasgow airport site then you are almost up and running right away. You would need your franchise deal agreed in principle at a very early stage, though. Biggest mistake would be to build an independent hotel such as the Killie venture, which has none of the location benefits that Greenhill rd has An independent stand-alone hotel is what worries me. A big chain, either operating on their own or with a franchise system.... Why does anyone harbouring hotel plans in Ferguslie Park need to own the football club that resides nearby their preferred site? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rea Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Back of the net! like i said been there and tried that, only 52% was available at the time, 75% certainly makes a mixed private/fan bid similar to Bidco/Fanco at FoH easier to do, but not for me at the moment. I had 2 goes already Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayrshire Saints Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 What a silly first paragraph. It was a tad sarcastic but the sentiment remains. No Saints fans at this moment in time have the money to purchase the club. If they did the deal would have been done and dusted long ago. It's beyond highly unlikely that the new owners will be Saints fans. Not saying that's good or bad it just where we are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted May 12, 2015 Report Share Posted May 12, 2015 Is there a genuine need for another hotel or more airport car parking? Remember, there's currently plans to turn our old ground into a car park. And is there enough land owned by the club for a hotel and a car park to be built in? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.