Not for the first time, both pre and post-admin, Victor Cattermole maintains his ‘insistence’ that he and his ‘Endeavor Plan’ are ‘still interested in buying Premier League strugglers Portsmouth.’
Talking to sky sports news this time the New Zealander says he could still be keen on taking over, but ONLY after the due diligence that he had always wanted to take place did happen: ‘we are still interested in buying Portsmouth.
‘We still have to carry out due diligence and see what is owed, what is expected to be paid for it and what the value is going to be once the whole issue of relegation and the nine-point issue is sorted out.’
He feels the chances that he will take us on are ‘quite good’ and is also under the impression, his own opinion mind, that things are ‘not as bad as they might seem’ and we are ‘quite an affordable business.’
Banking proof that his group could have taken on the clubs debt, and more – albeit not much more, well unless we sorted things out as a ‘soundly run’ business – is something that he says WAS put to the club before we went into admin, although concluding a deal was NOT something that was ever going to be possible before we went into admin, as, to be fair, he made pretty clear from the off…
He also says, as I think we all know, that admin was the only route would could have taken or it was highly likely that we would have, today in fact, been liquidated: ‘we provided evidence of an offer for a bank facility of 200million euros last Tuesday to Mr Peter Storrie.
‘That was obviously not disclosed to any of the media.
‘We also wrote to them advising that we were strongly opposed to administration but they had a path they were on and it didn’t matter what we said, that wasn’t going to change.
‘We wouldn’t have bought it – administration was unfortunately inevitable because we couldn’t have carried out due diligence and negotiated prior to the liquidation hearing.
‘Sadly, administration was the only option and the revenue department, as late as Friday morning, were adamant that there was nothing that could be negotiated with anyone that would stop them taking their action.
‘So unfortunately, because of that, administration was really the only option to save the club.’
Already, and from the off when his interest was revealed a week or so back, there were stories going around about him and Endeavour not exactly being ‘above board!’
I think we will find this is going to be the case with anyone showing an interest – the automatic reaction will be to look for the negative, but I guess we have to give them the chance. Although you would HOPE that if there is any doubt about anyone new ‘tougher’ fit and proper tests, at whatever level, will see we are ok?
I honestly cannot say I know anything about the guy, other than the very briefest of checks I did and that told me little, I am not digging though, I will leave that for others… What I would say is that if there are any ‘serious’ links with ANYONE that has been involved with Pompey recently I would be ‘concerned’ though…
UPDATE
Phil Hall, the spokesman for Balram Chainrai had this to say about Cattermole to sky sports news today…
‘I don’t know enough about Mr Cattermole. He says he is a bona fide bidder for the club and we certainly hope he is.
‘The fact is last week, when he mentioned he showed proof of funds, unfortunately they were on a letter from an unrecognised financial institution. We didn’t know who they were.
‘When we asked for him to produce that proof of funds on a well-known bank headed notepaper, that wasn’t forthcoming.
‘When we asked to meet Mr Cattermole we were dealing with a 22 or 23-year-old representative, and when we suggested a meeting at his office he said ‘I don’t have an office, you’ll have to come to my dad’s home’.
‘Forgive us, but it was one which was hard for us to take further at that time.
‘I’m not saying that there was an air of unprofessionalism, but because of the mistakes made in the past, Balu is very safe in the knowledge that this time it has to be done properly with a proper bona fide major bank guaranteeing the funds of the individual and then we can take the talks further.’
PLAY UP POMPEY!
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