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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 7:21:13 GMT
[And Yesterday's Portsmouth in Administration Thread - qprreport.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=11486The Guardian/Jamie Jackson
Portsmouth prepare to be 'cut to bone' after entering administration• Administrator promises complete transparency
• Chief executive Peter Storrie set to leaveThe administrator of Portsmouth, Andrew Andronikou, insisted he would inform the police of any evidence pointing to financial irregularities should they be discovered during his efforts to save the club from liquidation. Andronikou admitted he could not give a 100% guarantee that Portsmouth would survive, despite promising he would be "cutting to the bone" the club's costs. Among the reduction in staff numbers may be Peter Storrie, the chief executive who is the focus of criticism from supporters over his stewardship of the club and who has offered to take a pay cut. Andronikou described the chief executive's position as "untenable" but went on to say that Storrie was "an integral part of the club", leaving his future unclear. When asked how he would deal with any possible wrongdoing in Portsmouth's financial management Andronikou replied: "We are all governed by money laundering provisions today." Did that mean he thought this might have occurred at a club that have had four owners this season, and are at least £70m in debt? "We are all governed by money laundering provisions and if I find something untoward I have to report it," the administrator said. Questioned if he would be surprised to find evidence of money laundering at the club, he replied: "I won't be drawn on it. [But] I'll be completely transparent." Andronikou also said he would look to interview Portsmouth's previous owners this season, who include Sacha Gaydamak, Sulaiman al-Fahim, and Ali al-Faraj, in the interests of complete transparency. He said: "At some point I will have to conduct an investigation as to what has gone on in the last few months or so." Gaydamak pledged his help. "I hope that the appointment of an administrator will enable this great club to re-emerge on a sound financial footing," said the man who sold the club last summer. "As a former owner and ongoing fan I will work with anyone seeking to ensure the fair treatment of all creditors and to secure the future of Pompey." Having now entered administration Portsmouth are expected to be docked nine points by the Premier League. Yet despite the governing body confirming its intent to do so, Andronikou claimed the club may yet avoid the penalty. He said: "I understand everyone is taking it for granted we are going to be docked the nine points. It is something I need to broach with the Premier League and then look to start talking about parachute payments. I need that to be confirmed during the course of the week. We are the first Premier League club to have gone into administration so let's just test the rule." Andronikou added that at a meeting of chief executives of Premier League clubs on Thursday he will try to gain backing for a "sale-and-loan-back" of players, as a method of reducing costs. Andronikou said that if this was allowed, to preserve the integrity of the competition, players would then not be selected for Portsmouth's first team. "It's been clearly stated to me that they [the Premier League] will make a concession. Probably on the basis that there will be a sale-and-loan-back to the club," he said. "There are clubs out there that would occupy the lower areas of the league which would want Pompey to survive, and they'll be very flexible in helping us through buying players and leaving them on our bench. "[There are] other clubs further up the league that have lost to us who want to see us fail. So there's a massive conflict and there's always a question of competitiveness. So the Premier League wouldn't want to see me sell a player [outside of transfer window] and see that player score the winning goal against one of two sides at the bottom. There's a fine balance." His preference, though, was "to try and manoeuvre them [the clubs] into a position where I can sell [players] outright. To that end I hope to address all the chief executives and ask them to see sense." Andronikou was asked to clarify whether Portsmouth would still pay the wages of any players sold and loaned back. He said: "It's down to me to negotiate really – I'm going to try, if I can, to sever the liabilities once and for all. It will probably be reflected in the price of the player." He said he hoped to raise between £3m and £7m from the exercise. "We have got a valuable squad here despite what people say. You'd be surprised. I've seen figures between £25m and £35m depending on whether you're buying or selling." Storrie said in a statement that he accepted some criticism of his role in Portsmouth's crisis was inevitable but added: "What I am not prepared to accept is the very personal level of abuse on websites, emails and local radio which I have received over the last couple of days. "It is my intention to work with the administrator to help sell the business and I hope that will be quick as there is already interest in acquiring the club. I will also work with Avram Grant on the football side. Once the sale is complete, I will tender my notice to the new owners as set out under the terms of my contract. "I find it somewhat ironic that a couple of months ago my name was being chanted by the fans at a time when I seriously considered my position at the club. Yet now, because I appear to be the last one left, they are calling for my head." www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/26/portsmouth-administration-andrew-andronikou |
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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 7:38:08 GMT
The Times February 27, 2010/Oliver Kay
Portsmouth become first Premier League club to enter administrationJoyce Tynan, 77, shows her support at Fratton Park despite the 112-year-old club being forced into administration with debts of more than £60 million Portsmouth became the first Premier League club to enter administration yesterday as the excesses of wages and irresponsible ownership finally took their toll on the world’s richest domestic football competition. After a succession of embarrassments under a variety of overseas owners, the 112-year-old club was placed into administration at 10.20am yesterday in a desperate attempt to save itself from a winding-up petition made by HM Revenue & Customs over an unpaid tax bill of £12.1 million. With overall debts of more than £60 million and with a monthly wage bill of £3 million, including several players earning more than £40,000 a week, Portsmouth now face a period of cost cutting to satisfy their creditors and avoid going out of business. The administrator said that he would be “cutting to the bone”, but while the club’s staff fear redundancy or pay cuts, the players will be protected under the terms of their contracts. Andrew Andronikou, the administrator, made a pledge to the club’s supporters that Portsmouth would stay alive, but, when asked whether there was a danger that they could go into liquidation, he said: “There is always a danger.” He added that it was “inevitable” that more Premier League clubs would follow Portsmouth into administration, and said: “We won’t be the last.” Although clubs from the Football League have been declared insolvent on 53 occasions since the Premier League’s money-spinning breakaway in 1992, this is the first time that a club within the so-called golden circle has fallen into administration. Trevor Watkins, a sports lawyer for Clarke Willmott, said: “I was talking to the chairman of another club who was saying, from a commercial rights point of perspective, how embarrassing it is to have your brand tarnished by a club going into administration. This is the Premier League. I know it happened a lot in the Football League, but this isn’t good. Football has to take a long, hard look at how it goes about transferring ownership and whether or not the club stay in their current state.” A spokesman for Gordon Brown described the news as “a sad day for a great club”, but said that the Premier League and its clubs had been warned by the Government that its financial excesses were unsustainable. The spokesman said: “It is a matter for individual clubs and the HMRC, but this issue of sensible rules and governance has been raised by Andy Burnham [the Health Secretary], when he was at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We remain concerned that fans and communities of clubs like Portsmouth shouldn’t suffer because of the inability of clubs to manage their finances properly.” Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 2008, but dreams of a new golden era evaporated as the reality of the financial situation became apparent. The club had a wage bill of £54.7 million, 78 per cent of turnover, during the 2007-08 season, and has spent the past year trying to offload players to cut costs and satisfy creditors. The club has been owned by four different foreign investors since the season began in August. Alexandre Gaydamak, the French-born son of a billionaire, sold the club to Sulaiman al-Fahim, a Dubai-born businessman who confessed that he did not have the funds to back up his plans. Within two months of buying the club in August, Mr al-Fahim sold Portsmouth to Ali al-Faraj, an obscure Saudi property developer. Any hopes of Mr al-Faraj proving to be a saviour were dashed as he repeatedly failed to pay the monthly wage bill on time and was forced to borrow money from associates. One of them, Balram Chainrai, a Hong Kong businessman, took over the club after it had defaulted on repayments of his £20 million loan. After talks with a series of prospective buyers failed to reach a conclusion before a deadline on Wednesday, the Portsmouth board accepted administration. That results in an automatic nine-point deduction in the Premier League, which leaves the club adrift at the bottom of the table and seemingly doomed to relegation. Mr Andronikou said: “I would say to our supporters: please stay behind the club. I promise you I will save your club and take you forward.” Portsmouth’s supporters have expressed their disgust in recent months, but a protest at today’s match away to Burnley has been called off after Peter Storrie, the chief executive, said he would leave when the club was sold. In a statement, the SOS Pompey group said: “We will not accept anyone past or present thinking they can ever again take our club for a ride. Portsmouth Football Club needs a clean break from the past, a fresh start free of the baggage and personalities of the past. A great club like Pompey will never lay down and die, thousands of passionate fans won’t let it.”www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7043170.ece
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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 7:40:01 GMT
Times/ Nick Szczepanik, Russell Kempson Any money-laundering at Portsmouth and I will find it, vows administrator
Any suggestion that illegality rather than incompetence has led Portsmouth to the brink of oblivion will be brought to light, according to the man charged with making sense of the financial chaos at Fratton Park. As expected, Portsmouth became the first club in the history of the Premier League to enter administration yesterday. But if they thought that surviving despite debts of £70 million was their only problem, Andrew Andronikou, the lead administrator, highlighted an additional dimension to their difficulties when he promised to report any evidence of wrongdoing that he finds to the appropriate authorities. “We have the responsibility of investigating the company’s recent financial history,” he said. “We are all governed by money-laundering provisions and if I find something untoward, I have to report it. Unfortunately, ‘money-laundering’ is a description attached to all sorts whenever there are money irregularities. It hasn’t happened on its own. I am confident of getting answers in due course.” Andronikou’s remarks will confirm the beliefs of conspiracy theorists among the supporters who have made “Where’s the money gone?” their mantra in recent weeks. But he also subscribes to the cock-up theory of history. “It was inevitable a Premier League club has got into this position, and we won’t be the last,” he said. “If you have made a commitment to a payroll of £4-5 million a month, then you have got to make damned sure that your revenue streams are significantly higher than £60-70 million a year.” Earlier, Andronikou said that he would ask the Premier League to revisit the possibility of allowing Portsmouth to sell players outside the transfer window. “There will be no fire sale,” he said. “But we will have to sell one or two players and we will be talking to the Premier League about a possible concession. I am hoping the transfer window will be open for us.” A similar plea from Portsmouth to the League and Fifa, football’s world governing body, fell on deaf ears last week, but Andronikou will try again at a Premier League meeting on Thursday, suggesting “a sale and loan back” system. He also suggested that the League may consider not imposing the nine-point penalty that Portsmouth will incur for going into administration. “I think it’s early days to be talking about deducting the nine points,” Andronikou said. “It is the rule at the moment, but we are the first Premier League club to have gone into administration, so let’s just test the rule.” Although the League is likely to stand firm, there is a growing feeling within its hierarchy that if Portsmouth were to indicate that they were about to go bust, it might have to contemplate making a drastic exception to its rules. An advance of the £5 million due to the club from the League’s television revenue would make only a dent in the debt and Andronikou may ask for a portion of the £16 million parachute money that Portsmouth would receive in the event of their relegation. In a statement, the League said: “The board will meet the administrator at the earliest opportunity to receive their views on the financial status of Portsmouth and set out the conditions for the club to fulfil its commitments for the remainder of the season.” With Portsmouth apparently at the mercy of the League and Fifa, Andronikou promised fans that he would be cutting the Fratton Park cloth accordingly. “Every aspect of the club’s overheads will be reviewed,” he said. “Our aim is to maximise all revenues and to eradicate all unnecessary costs. I promise you we will save your club and take you forward.” Peter Storrie, the longstanding chief executive, has said he will resign, citing the abuse aimed at him and his family. “I feel sorry for the genuine fans but not those who have made life hell for me and my wife,” he said. “I can’t go through this any more. They feel they have to blame someone and, effectively, I’m the only one left." www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article7043147.ece |
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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 7:45:12 GMT
Times
Portsmouth order only delays decision on future
Analysis: Danny Davis All the administration order issued yesterday does is put off the day on which a decision has to be made. Portsmouth will lose nine points, and undoubtedly be relegated from the Barclays Premier League but the administration will rumble on for the rest of the 2009-10 campaign. The administration will rumble on for the rest of the season but, once it is over, the Football League will have to make a decision, in the absence of any new investment in the club, whether it will allow Portsmouth to continue playing. I think that is unlikely. For all the noise about prospective investors and purchasers, it seems that there were never any real prospects. No one wants to invest in this club, at this time, with this level of debt. Portsmouth will survive only if an investor can convince creditors to take a bath on the amount that is owed. Portsmouth is the football story of our time. The recession means that there are simply fewer people willing to invest in such a folly, and that at the bottom end the customers are understandably spending less. There cannot be an easier business to manage. Each club knows almost exactly what its income will be at the beginning of each season, yet almost every club still spends more than that known income. At best, that is imprudent management. Danny Davis is an insolvency solicitor at Mishcon de Reyawww.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/portsmouth/article7043426.ece
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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 9:48:04 GMT
Portsmouth News Pompey go into administration 26 February 2010 By David Hurley Pompey today officially entered administration. A judge at the High Court in London signed the document which effectively confirms the club's relegation from the Premier League. Once the Premier League board meets the club will be docked nine points, leaving them with just seven - 17 away from safety. Administrator Andro Andronikou is expected to arrive in Portsmouth this afternoon to begin work on safeguarding the future of the club. His task is to bring in a new owner and pay off the club's creditors. The News has learned that Pompey's debts stand at £66m.But by becoming the first club in Premier League history to go into administration, a large chunk of this will be wiped clear - paving the way for a new owner to get the club for a cut price. A source close to Pompey's finances said £30m would pay off the creditors as well as Balram Chainrai, who would accept as little as £11m for Fratton Park.The source said: 'Chainrai is desperate to sell the ground - he's no interest in staying long and anyone who bids as little as £30m could have Pompey, which can be seen as something as a bargain considering the land at stake.' While football clubs, players and coaching staff will be paid in full under Football Association and Premier League rules, the rest of the unsecured creditors - including Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs who brought a winding up order against the club - will have to negotiate for a share of what is left.Pompey's biggest unsecured creditor is former owner Sacha Gaydamak who is owed £31m. Up to £9m is also owed to football agents while the club owe up £3m to former captain Sol Campbell and striker Kanu for 'image rights'. Millions more is owed to HMRC and other businesses. These creditors may be asked to settle for as little as 10p back for every pound they are owed. A potential sweetener for any new buyer is that Pompey will receive at least £37m in commercial, broadcasting and parachute payments from the Premier League by the beginning of next season. Meanwhile, The News understands Mr Chainrai, who loaned Pompey £17m, has transferred the ownership of Fratton Park stadium in to a holding company. Mr Chainrai has already taken £4m out of Pompey since he took over from Ali Al Faraj. If a buyer cannot be found to take Fratton Park off Mr Chainrai's hands, it is understood he will rent the stadium back to Pompey for £1m a year - the equivalent of £2,740 a day. Finance expert Carl Faulds, whose company dealt with the first-ever administration of a football team with Aldershot FC in 1992, said: 'You can understand why Mr Chainrai would do that. 'I think if someone offered him the rest of his money back for the stadium he'd take it. 'He's only there to get the money back he loaned the club. He's protecting his position, creating a second option. 'Should a buyer come in and they can't afford the stadium, then he'll still get his money back by loaning it to them for a number of years. www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Pompey-go-into-administration.6107703.jp |
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Post by toboboly on Feb 27, 2010 10:15:30 GMT
Seems like the administrator hasn't got a clue, "Storrie's position is untenable yet he is integral" and "We may not be docked points" whilst everyone else thinks the club may not be around next year, a distinct posibility considering they cant sell anyone at the moment.
Whilst the Pompey paper is being very upbeat I saw everywhere that they will receive around £20m at the end of the season for tv money and parachute payments. The £37m odd will be the total received after the end of their first season in the Championship.
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Post by SmartRs on Feb 27, 2010 10:52:28 GMT
I live fairly close to Portsmouth and know a few Pompey fans. They are very scathing of Peter Storrie mainly because they feel he must have known what was going on if he was in any degree competent. If he was incompetent, then he deserves the stick too. He was getting a salary of approx £1m p.a. which is just under £20k per week! Nice work if you can get it.
He also has an impending court case against him regarding tax evasion (same as Harry Redknapp).
Must admit this case reminds me of what happened to Leeds United a few years ago. I can see Pompey struggling next season in the Championship (if they survive). They have a few tough years ahead to get back onto an even keel.
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Post by toboboly on Feb 27, 2010 10:56:01 GMT
I think they will go down further and harder than Leeds, who were and are a far bigger club.
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Dave Sexton
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Post by ingham on Feb 27, 2010 18:30:35 GMT
I find myself wondering whether losses on this scale aren't simply mismanagement at one Club. I've had an eye on Pompey for a few years because it was clear they were wildly overspending and that Redknapp hadn't cobbled together a successful side on the cheap.
Does Pompey's predicament reflect costs which are too high for any Club? And costs which were inflated, not just by the investors and the managers, but by all the other Clubs?
Didn't Pompey spend on this scale because every other Club was doing much the same? They won two titles back to back in the early 1950s, and have been poodling around for a long, long time without anyone really noticing.
But if they spent on this scale because this is what you have to spend, then all the others are in a similar predicament. If costs are too high, they're too high for everyone.
But they only know one way out. Spend more. The entire logic of the Premier League is (a) if you're not in it, you're nowhere so (b) you must gamble everything to be there.
Fine if, once you get there, you simply stay there. But it doesn't work like that, and it can't. Because all the Clubs left behind are under increasing pressure to do the same thing. And the mechanism of relegation and promotion ensures that Club after Club departs as Club after Club arrives.
If failure follows the first flush of spending, the Clubs which have failed don't see this as a warning to go back to the drawing board. On the contrary, they become more and more desperate to return.
So every Club is bidding up the price of competing, far beyond what any of them will ever get from doing so.
The old logic was eminently workable. You had the money you'd earned through success, by and large. Success was more likely at a big club, but a small Club with talent could compete for a while, depending on how much talent it unearthed.
But now the Clubs are so desperate they can't wait to find out whether a player is talented or not. The big clubs snap them up before they've played a league game. The lesser Clubs, deprived of quality as a result, pay enormous sums in the hope that the players they sign MIGHT be more talented than their track record suggests.
The benefactors are the really big Clubs, who once had to compete with all the others to win the major trophies, but who now monopolise the top four places and the trophies, more or less exclusively.
But in many ways, things are even worse up there than they are down where we are, with losses in the billions as each season goes by with United winning most titles, Liverpool winning none, and Chelsea and Arsenal struggling to make any impact at all despite £1 billion of debt between them.
Are the smaller Clubs exercising a malign influence over the big boys. Portsmouth only needed to balance the books and stay in the Premier League, but they couldn't do both.
But NONE of the Big Four can do this either. For them the Premier League consists of only 4 places. And being outside the 4 is almost unthinkable, even for a season, let alone for a protracted run.
So that monopoly, with the same four clubs in the top four almost every year for at least the last dozen or so, isn't as healthy as it looks.
They are trapped in a way they never were before. In fact, the League's great strength was that you could go down a bit to a level you could afford, and where your results would pick up, crowds would return as you became relatively more successful again, and you could mount a renewed challenge refreshed, with hungry players eager to grab their share of the glory.
While other clubs took their share of the spoils and maintained the competition's competitive edge, giving a much wider pool of players a chance of winning something, and - the younger ones especially - showing what they could do.
In a way, the cost of competing with the big Clubs has made it impossible for Clubs like Pompey to cope. But is it also the case that competing with the smaller Clubs is making it impossible for the Uniteds and Chelseas to cope too? If Pompey are spending £3 million a year on players, and there are 30 or 40 Clubs like Pompey which aspire to doing so, isn't that a contributory factor in the vast losses in the top four, where Liverpool aren't even managing the interest payments, and Arsenal have just had a huge windfall from property deals and are STILL hundreds of millions in debt?
After all, there are 88 Clubs outside it, and only 4 inside. And if Villa, Spurs and Everton managed to break in, the Big Four might become even more unworkable than they are now.
There is a lot of talk about more Clubs following Pompey, and the assumption might be that it will be more Clubs LIKE Pompey.
But if the league is a system, and these problems are systematic, could it also be a much bigger Club - or a group of bigger Clubs - which began to find the lemming like rush into more and more debt completely unsustainable? Especially as some of their debt, in a couple of cases, most or all of it, is not 'rich playboy' money, but corporate lending from institutions?
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Post by QPR Report on Feb 27, 2010 22:52:00 GMT
Cute! News of the World PORTSMOUTH'S CRAZY SPENDING REVEALED STORRIE: Has tendered his resignation By James Piercy, 27/02/2010 THE staggering extend of Portsmouth's unsustainable wage bill can today be revealed. The Fratton Park club went into administration on Friday with debts of more than £70million. Amazingly, former chief executive Peter Storrie defended his record and said his eight years at the club had been "largely successful." This was despite a wage bill over the last three years of £131m, as admitted by Storrie last week. But the News of the World can reveal Storrie's nephew was on the staff as Pompey's 'player liaison officer' - on an incredible £60,000 a year. Paul Mullally hired cars, did odd-jobs and ensured the players stayed on top of bills. It was just one of a number of posts at the club where the wages were, to say the least, generous. Director of communications Gary Double, who resigned on Friday, was pocketing £156,000 a year, finance director Tanya Robins £250,000 a year and kit man Kev McCormack £46,000 a year plus bonuses. Former defender Sol Campbell launched legal action against Pompey in January over £1.7m in image rights and bonuses he claims he is owed from his three years at the club. But Storrie said: "I have worked for eight years at Portsmouth and overall I think I have been very successful for this club. "People say, 'You should not have paid this player that' but the owner says I have the funds to do it - he is the boss. If an owner says: 'I want to do this, I want to finance this', then it is his right to do so. "If I had said: 'I am not sanctioning this', the owner still has the ability to overrule that. "I can look back and say I should have been stronger and say I should have done this or that but I think the club just got too much success too quickly. "I sit here as chief executive officer and accept criticism, that is what you expect as a CEO but I am not the owner. I am not the one who has to put finance into the club." Storrie, who was first brought to Pompey by Harry Redknapp after his work at West Ham, tendered his resignation on Friday, claiming his family have been left in tears by the abuse he has received. Storrie has pointed the finger of blame at previous owners Sulaiman Al-Fahim and Ali Al-Faraj - despite being instrumental in negotiating both comical takeovers. Storrie added: "I am taking the brunt of the abuse because effectively I am the last man standing. All the people who should be funding this club have left me to take the flak. "What I cannot take is the vile personal attacks. I do not see the point in staying and working in this sort of environment if that is what people think. "My daughters cannot believe some of the things written on the websites about me. The abuse is directly affecting my family and that is very, very wrong. "My wife is at home upset and crying and that pushes it beyond for me - I am not prepared to accept that." Accountant Nick O'Reilly, from the Vantis company who examined Pompey's books for the High Court, last week labelled them "completely dysfunctional" and that the business had gone against "all good governance." Administrator Andrew Andronikou is the man now charged with finding a buyer. His previous work was at Swindon Town, where he twice helped them out of administration after being appointed in 2002. www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/football/741881/PORTSMOUTHS-CRAZY-SPENDING-REVEALED.html |
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