Post by Macmoish on Jul 22, 2010 7:34:03 GMT
Guardian/Digger
Sir Roy Gardner still profiting from Plymouth's plight• Chairman controls company that arranged loan on ground
• League One club posted pre-tax losses of £3.1m last year
Matt Scott The Guardian, Thursday 22 July 2010
Plymouth Argyle's chairman Sir Roy Gardner is profiting from the club's financial difficulties as a shareholder and director of a company that is acting as lender to the League One side.
Accounts for the year to 2009 show that even after selling £2m of players Argyle made a £3.1m pre-tax loss in their penultimate season in the Championship before relegation.
In an effort to mitigate this staggering deficit, Argyle took out a mortgage against Home Park last December. It was syndicated through Mastpoint, a company controlled by Gardner and his close associate Keith Todd, a fellow Plymouth director. Todd told Digger yesterday that the interest rate on the loan syndicated through Mastpoint is lower than would have been achieved with a commercial lender and that Mastpoint takes no fees from the mortgage against Home Park.
However, Gardner and Todd are part-financers and sole security trustees of the loan, and, whatever the discount on commercial rates, the financing does not come for nothing. Now, despite the monies received through Mastpoint to tackle Argyle's financial problems, on top of an existing £2m property loan, the club is still trying to squeeze its stadium for cash. Next up is the £7.5m "sale" of Home Park (despite its current replacement-cost valuation of £10.1m) to an arm's-length company to which the club would pay an unspecified rent.
Gardner was unavailable for comment but Todd explained: "The football club will be guaranteed the use of the facility to play its matches. We are trying to build a rational business-based future for Plymouth and people will have the opportunity to invest in either the football or infrastructure development activities of the club."
But as the club is divested of its only significant asset, no one has yet explained how this will be financed.
Martin's reward for chaos
Digger was astonished to read on Southend United's website yesterday that their owner, Ron Martin, has been rewarded for his club's chaotic financial situation with a place on the Football League board. "Chairman Elected to League Board" was the headline to a breathless piece. Except he hasn't been: there was no vote because he stood unopposed. And in any case Barnet's Tony Kleanthous is League Two's representative: Martin will only act as stand-in in case of the former's absence.
Still, it is yet another reflection on the perverse politics of football's boardrooms. As a nonexecutive director of the League, Martin would be charged with ensuring good corporate governance, and who could be better qualified? After all, Southend players have been quitting the club en masse amid allegations of unpaid wages. And his club is the subject of the taxman's high court application for an administration order and of a separate high court application for a winding-up order from one of its lenders. If either application is granted when they come to court next month, Southend will be in breach of the League's insolvency rules and would suffer a points deduction.
Blame game at the FA
If you are wondering why the Football Association improved Fabio Capello's contract on the eve of a tournament that would produce England's heaviest-ever finals defeat, the reason is now official: blame Lord Triesman, left. That is what the FA council was told last week. Although Sir Dave Richards, as chairman of Club England, was the man who put the FA's pen to paper on the new deal, he was only making official the verbal agreement Triesman, then FA chairman, had struck with the England manager, and so his hands were tied.
More chicken anyone?
Headingley's failure to fill even a third of the available seats for Pakistan's "home" Test against Australia yesterday is a blow for Yorkshire, who hoped to tap in to British-Asian enthusiasm for cricket and build a long-term association with the large numbers of locals.
The holding of a two-week Yorkshire cricket mela, or festival, around the match was a positive step, but the needs of Asian visitors have not always been so carefully catered for at northern Test grounds.
Digger recalls the lunchtime spread for English and Pakistani journalists in the press box at Lancashire's Old Trafford in 2001. To this day it is impossible not to wince at the image of a buffet featuring chicken wrapped in Parma ham and the sight of a hastily discarded Scotch egg that some poor Pakistani had bitten into before realising what it contained. -ends- Please consider the environment before printing this email
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/22/plymouth-argyle-roy-gardner
Sir Roy Gardner still profiting from Plymouth's plight• Chairman controls company that arranged loan on ground
• League One club posted pre-tax losses of £3.1m last year
Matt Scott The Guardian, Thursday 22 July 2010
Plymouth Argyle's chairman Sir Roy Gardner is profiting from the club's financial difficulties as a shareholder and director of a company that is acting as lender to the League One side.
Accounts for the year to 2009 show that even after selling £2m of players Argyle made a £3.1m pre-tax loss in their penultimate season in the Championship before relegation.
In an effort to mitigate this staggering deficit, Argyle took out a mortgage against Home Park last December. It was syndicated through Mastpoint, a company controlled by Gardner and his close associate Keith Todd, a fellow Plymouth director. Todd told Digger yesterday that the interest rate on the loan syndicated through Mastpoint is lower than would have been achieved with a commercial lender and that Mastpoint takes no fees from the mortgage against Home Park.
However, Gardner and Todd are part-financers and sole security trustees of the loan, and, whatever the discount on commercial rates, the financing does not come for nothing. Now, despite the monies received through Mastpoint to tackle Argyle's financial problems, on top of an existing £2m property loan, the club is still trying to squeeze its stadium for cash. Next up is the £7.5m "sale" of Home Park (despite its current replacement-cost valuation of £10.1m) to an arm's-length company to which the club would pay an unspecified rent.
Gardner was unavailable for comment but Todd explained: "The football club will be guaranteed the use of the facility to play its matches. We are trying to build a rational business-based future for Plymouth and people will have the opportunity to invest in either the football or infrastructure development activities of the club."
But as the club is divested of its only significant asset, no one has yet explained how this will be financed.
Martin's reward for chaos
Digger was astonished to read on Southend United's website yesterday that their owner, Ron Martin, has been rewarded for his club's chaotic financial situation with a place on the Football League board. "Chairman Elected to League Board" was the headline to a breathless piece. Except he hasn't been: there was no vote because he stood unopposed. And in any case Barnet's Tony Kleanthous is League Two's representative: Martin will only act as stand-in in case of the former's absence.
Still, it is yet another reflection on the perverse politics of football's boardrooms. As a nonexecutive director of the League, Martin would be charged with ensuring good corporate governance, and who could be better qualified? After all, Southend players have been quitting the club en masse amid allegations of unpaid wages. And his club is the subject of the taxman's high court application for an administration order and of a separate high court application for a winding-up order from one of its lenders. If either application is granted when they come to court next month, Southend will be in breach of the League's insolvency rules and would suffer a points deduction.
Blame game at the FA
If you are wondering why the Football Association improved Fabio Capello's contract on the eve of a tournament that would produce England's heaviest-ever finals defeat, the reason is now official: blame Lord Triesman, left. That is what the FA council was told last week. Although Sir Dave Richards, as chairman of Club England, was the man who put the FA's pen to paper on the new deal, he was only making official the verbal agreement Triesman, then FA chairman, had struck with the England manager, and so his hands were tied.
More chicken anyone?
Headingley's failure to fill even a third of the available seats for Pakistan's "home" Test against Australia yesterday is a blow for Yorkshire, who hoped to tap in to British-Asian enthusiasm for cricket and build a long-term association with the large numbers of locals.
The holding of a two-week Yorkshire cricket mela, or festival, around the match was a positive step, but the needs of Asian visitors have not always been so carefully catered for at northern Test grounds.
Digger recalls the lunchtime spread for English and Pakistani journalists in the press box at Lancashire's Old Trafford in 2001. To this day it is impossible not to wince at the image of a buffet featuring chicken wrapped in Parma ham and the sight of a hastily discarded Scotch egg that some poor Pakistani had bitten into before realising what it contained. -ends- Please consider the environment before printing this email
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jul/22/plymouth-argyle-roy-gardner