Details of what had developed last night were pretty sketchy for me – I was travelling to Pompey on the train, and as such my t’internet connection is pretty weak.
Although, from what I could gather our CVA proposal had been thrown into chaos and seemed destined for failure as one of the creditors, HMRC, had got their own insolvency people, Griffin, on the case to propose their own CVA.
They feel that Sacha Gaydamak’s claim for £32m should be dropped, trading insolvent should remove his right to make his claim – in fact he will be hunted down for an amount of £50m or so, and creditors should be offered a better deal than the one they had, something like 65p up to as much as 99p in the £, depending on Gaydamak’s payment.
With this development my first though was that we had no chance of the other unsecured creditors accepting the 20p in the £ offer if they thought that they had a genuine shot of getting more, and perhaps in all reality rightly so…
It ‘seemed’ that the HMRC’s ‘backer’ believed that the administrators were working too much in the clubs favour, and not the creditors, as they should be to be fair.
Having the CVA agreed, let alone coming out of administration seemed highly unlikely, in fact starting next season on a minus points total, as much as -19pts and with the transfer embargo STILL in place, not to mention the fact that player contract could basically be ‘torn up’ left us in a whole heap of trouble from the looks of it.
As I say, my details were sketchy, at best, but the impression I was getting was things were not good, and who said things could get no worse…
That said, on the flip side the common thought is that this is a last ditch ‘publicity stunt’ attempt by HMRC – who are mighty peeved at football clubs and the way they work – to try and force the hands of people to get them a better deal because at present, I think I am right in saying, they cannot command enough of the unsecured credit (on a proven level) to oppose the 20p in the £ offer, commonly believed to be a ‘decent offer’ from an administrative point of view, that other creditors appeared happy with.
A creditor thinking they can get more than first offered would, inevitably, be tempted to go for more, who would not?
But in all reality is £20p in the £, which could rise to 25p in the £, to gain a full percentage of money owed for the duration of a 4/5-year period better than a higher amount in the £, but for a shorter time period until we go out of business, not better? And we WOULD go out of business eventually on these repayments now being asked.
Repayment on that level, taking into account it would almost certainly mean relegation again, just would not be sustainable over time – so, as said, the current repayment amount and option surely makes better ‘financial sense’ to most unsecured creditors, many of them are actually Pompey fans (former owner fans, not fans of the club of course but fans of the money they would get back) so would that not weigh on them too?
By chasing this higher offer, which is thought should be paid; creditors would in effect be signing our death warrant as well as their own, right…
So, whilst it would be foolish to ‘dismiss’ this threat as a non-starter perhaps getting too carried away by its threat could be something to consider – perhaps I am being too optimistic, a new found optimism all of a sudden, but automatically jumping on the ‘we are totally doomed now’ bandwagon could be advised against?
Either way it will be a LONG 10-days or so in the lead up to, and the actual taking part in the CVA meeting next week…
PLAY UP POMPEY!
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