Andrew Ellis & Bulstrode Try Buy (Glasgow) Rangers

Here the reference to Bulstrode (unless there's a son?)

Two London-based property developers, a £33m bid to buy Rangers . . . the plot thickens again
Published on 5 Mar 2010


Michael Grant
It is too soon for Rangers supporters to know what to make of the revelation that a new £33m bid is being lined up to take the club out of Sir David Murray’s hands, but there will be plenty who looked at the calendar and expected to be reading about something like this around now.

Cynics suspect that the timing is far from coincidental. Ibrox season-ticket renewal forms will be sent out in a month or so, after all. What better way to drum up some interest than by letting it be known that the club’s desperate financial situation could soon be relieved? New money! New signings! New contract offers! Roll up, roll up, guarantee your seat for the new campaign!
Forgive the scepticism, although it is unavoidable to anyone who has followed the laboured saga of the Rangers sale since Murray stood down as chairman and reiterated his desire to sell last August. Until more is known about the motivation and spending power of London-based property developer Andrew Ellis, none of the faithful will be doing any cartwheels down Paisley Road West about the idea of him taking ownership.

Having said that, no self-respecting businessman would allow his name to be attached to a baseless marketing ploy to help Rangers flog season tickets to an otherwise wary and questioning fanbase. Ellis and David Bulstrode, the other name linked to this new approach, clearly have an interest in buying Rangers and have posted notice of a proposed £33m bid once they have had a look at the books. Inevitably, the early information on their bid is so sketchy that there are far more questions than answers. Chief among them, of course, is how much money they have and why they are interested in spending it on Rangers.

Lloyds Banking Group and Murray – in that order – may be satisfied with a £33m bid for ownership but all that does is change the tyres on the car. It doesn’t get it moving. There are two elements to the sale of Rangers. It makes perfect sense for Lloyds to accept this offer, recover all of what they are owed, and wash their hands of a football club which has mired them in bad press and criticism. For Murray, too, a bid of this scale might persuade him that he can get out of football relatively unscathed. Rangers’ last reported liabilities stood at £31m although it is believed the current bank debt has reduced a little to £27m. £33m would therefore cover the current debt with £6m left over for Murray, which was precisely the sum he paid for Rangers back in 1989. That all seems quite neat and tidy.

What we don’t know is whether Ellis and Bulstrode have £33m or £133m. That’s what really matters to Rangers the football club rather than Rangers the business. New owners are going to be able to advance the club only in phase two of any takeover. They need to have money to buy them in the first place, then they need to have money to spend on new signings, new contract offers, and all the endless other matters which drain cash out of a club. That need not be multi-millions in Rangers’ case so long as a tighter, more efficient business plan is imposed than has been the case in recent years at Ibrox. But manager Walter Smith will stay only if there is money to spend on transfers at long last, and the same goes for Kris Boyd in terms of a new contract.

Naturally the very phrase “property developer” will be chilling to some supporters. What’s in it for a couple of London-based businessmen, with previous interests in QPR, to stick their noses into Rangers and plough millions into an SPL club which, despite its huge infrastructure, is chained and anchored by Scottish football’s limited broadcasting income? The thought occurs that Murray Park could be demolished, the land used for housing, and some of the profits used to build a new and smaller complex elsewhere. That looks all well and good on paper, but the best of luck to any businessmen who try to persuade fans that it would be good for Rangers.

Murray has always been emphatic about one thing when it comes to the sale of the club: he would pass on the ownership only to a party he was convinced had the club’s best interests at heart. Things aren’t so clear now that Lloyds are on the scene demanding their money back. It was in the middle of January that the club was said to have rejected an £18m approach from a consortium including Ibrox directors Dave King and Paul Murray, along with two other businessmen who were understood to be wealthy Rangers supporters. That was entirely unconnected to this new interest from London. What does King do now, if anything?

Donald Muir, the man some fans call “the enemy within”, was a Murray appointment to the board and is perceived as being there to represent Lloyds’ interests and get their money back. It is understood that Muir was the man who revealed details of the Ellis bid to the other Rangers directors at the start of the week.
If Muir thinks Ellis is right for Rangers, and the money is there to back up a bid, this saga has taken a dramatic new turn.

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