51% owned by the regular supporters putting in £1000 minimum each. 49% owned by HNWI. Collectively this is the PST. If it all goes Pete Tong then at least this time we only have ourselves to blame.
Cheers for the reply. So, in the day to day reality, the HNWI are running the club. They'll appoint the Chief Exec, who will in turn, give them the casting vote if needed. Interesting...
Our chairman has already appointed a CEO in Mark Catlin. Very well respected all over the UK. Day to day, the club is being ran by the PST. The HNWI's are PST board members.
The "board" is split between the PST - anyone who has put £1000 in can run for chair or any post they wish as long as they are elected into it. For the initial setup - and rightly so because of business experience, these people have been voted in by the 49% HNWI. Future elections can be run for by any of the fans who have put money in. The true working day fans will always own more of the club than the HNWI. I believe for the time being we have 2 of these fans sat on the board.
Lol. Sounds a lot like I wrote earlier. 41% gets you 2 voices out of how many? 15?, 20? Same old mathematics here. The HNWI will run the club and there will be a change at the helm every 3-4 years as they all battle for control with differing ideas of how to run things and no sensibility in taking things slowly. Big ideas from many is a major problem in this scenario because it starts out with good intentions with everybody a fan but the HNWI eventually get into a battle of egos with each other and it all goes up the swanny. You need more 'normal' fans on the board to at least be able to stop the HNWI getting carried away. Not to take over because that would spell more danger but at least to be able to slow things down and hold things up if needing to get advice from neutrals.
Whatever may transpire in the future, it's vital that the initial transition has people with a proven track record in business at the helm. I can think of nothing worse than a group of keen but deluded fans trying to manage this. It will be interesting to see how it all turns our but it must be better than what preceded it. Anyone fancy a season of Pompey only appearing in the sports pages? This might just happen!
You concerns have been recorded, byt lets be honet - this kind of set up has never been seen in English Football! Yes, there have been trust buy outs - but not at 51% of the club. You concerns are valid, but also highly speculating on what MIGHT happen.
I'm pleased that it got sorted, losing Pompey would have been bad for football. Yes a shed load of money has been lost to some low life chancers, but for the club to fold because they got off scot free would not have been justice. I hope with this second chance that the men running it now get a sensible five year plan in place & let the club evolve without risking everything on a quick promotion. Seeing Stockport drift further away this weekend just shows how sometimes you don't even know where rock bottom actually is, very sad. Twenty years ago they were a good Div 1 club where you never wanted to visit on a Tuesday night in the FA cup. Again, very sad situation.
There doesn't seem to be a way for someone shady to take all the profits/asset strip as there are no profits or assets. And they're not going to attract the mega-salary players who can get them into trouble no matter how much money they throw at them. So really, the worst thing the board can do is just put together a terrible team. So maybe the board composition matters less than the fans just showing up at games. As long as the fans still show up to watch, the team can stay afloat. But they'll probably have to have big 15k crowds for a couple of years while maintaining a very minimum wage bill before they are even stable enough to think about anything other than financial survival. I just hope everyone involved realizes this.
When I owned Southampton Leisure Holdings shares (about £500 worth) it entitled me to pretty much the exact same rights as Pompey Trust members have who have put in over £1000. I technically "owned" part of the club, much like you do. Saints had an elected board which had to comply with very strict corporate governance and stock market rules. The board maintained a clear majority voting rule for all major decisions. Normal fans numbered over 5,000 who had small amounts of shares. There was no one major shareholder who owned more than 8% of the club... ... and yet Rupert Lowe ran it as his club, with his cronies, his appointed non-execs and always managed to get his way. So really, what's the difference?
Excuse me for not being the most informed about Southamptons previous regimes. Was Lowe and the rest of his board Southampton Fans? Did the HNWI involved "own" more than 49%? I will talk collectively for fans who have not put £1000 in (not for distrust of the PST but because I genuinally couldnt afford to do so on top of my season ticket), we have our doubts - what we are trying to acheieve is unheard of in English football to these extremes. But surely the best place for our club to be is in the hands of fans? Even if they have put in 100x times more than the £1000 share? As I said earlier - should this not work, we only have ourselves to blame. However, at least that will give us the opportunity to take it on the chin. Previous regimes have tarnished our club, and who was blamed initially? The fans.
Fair comment IMHO and as far as I am aware the biggest FAN was / Is Leon Crouch , and him and Rupert did NOT get on , in a Big way .
The fans will never vote as a bloc. At best they'll split their votes 75/25 on any given issue, and most of the time it will be much closer than that. 51% of the club doesn't give the fans control of the club, it just prevents any one individual from getting control of the club. If there is an actual disagreement and all the HNWI's vote as a block they will win. But what is more likely to happen is when there is a disagreement the board will split into factions. And the fans will not have a majority on the board. And if it goes to a share vote, the fans will be split and cancel themselves out.
Half of the Saints board were long time directors & fans from the 70's & 80's. Lowe had the control of some "sleeping shareholders" who just let him vote their proxy because they just happened to have shares in Lowe's old retirement home business that were converted into Saints ones. I guess it all boils down to trust. You say you trust the HNWI's at the moment, which is understandable, but they are not been tested as yet and the honeymoon period will be short. Would be interesting if a very rich person approached Pompey in the near future to buy the whole club, with the HNWI getting a sizeable profit being in favour of it... it would only take a small number of normal PST members to make it a majority decision to sell the club wouldn't it?
No one would buy Pompey to make a quick buck, so I'm prepared to believe in the goodwill of those concerned. If the fans return (which they will now they are not putting money into some crook's pockets) and they are patient, Pompey should be okay. Can't see there rise being rapid though, because hopefully the new board have learnt not to spend what you haven't got.
Suppose it's irrelevant if they are in league two with no infrastructure, a knackered ground and gate receipts of a mid table league one club. There's never going to be any money in that club again, even if it washes its own face. Still seems curiously inconsistent from the fl though.
Exactly. Which is why numbers that suppose a 15k attendance for a League 2 side ought to be greeted with suspicion.
Some clubs achieve high attendances in the lower leagues...nothing like winning to increase gates. Also Pompey have the incentive of being a fan owned club...whatever that turns out to mean. I expect them to get decent gates.
