I'm not in the camp of demonising SD for everything that goes wrong. He's done lots of good for the club. However it does appear that he'll have made a big mistake if he's trying to mess with FPP
I'm wearing my gardening specs and read that as 'price of porkpies' ... ... better get my proper ones before the match starts!
I didn't say what was spent, I started that he contradicted himself. From memory, he said that he hasn't touched it, then he said that it had paid costs abs I'm sure there was a third explanation that I can't remember
It’s not really a loan. Think of it in this way, SD wants you to buy the equity from him for £15m but you only want to pay £9m. He doesn’t want to sell for that price as he will lose money and thinks he can get promoted and get a higher price. So you say you’ll be happy to pay him £15m if he can get the club promoted - and in fact you’ll give him the £9m now up front to help him do it. If he can get promoted, you’ll give him the extra £6m. If not, he accepts the £9m. So if you did that, you would obviously place fairly strict conditions on what he was allowed to do with that £9m in the meantime, ie he can’t use it to buy £9m of insurance from Bride. But he would also want to know ru at if someone comes along and offers him his £15m in the meantime, he can pay back the £9m and take the £15m. So that is basically what is going on here. SD has sold his equity for £9m unless he can get them promoted or get a higher offer.
Was just about to ask you if this is what the 'loan' actually was. Cheers for the posts, cracking info and really easy to understand.
.... and if SD is lucky enough to get a higher offer from elsewhere, with 9m pounds of their money already in SD's 'pocket', I would imagine FPP would have the right to match any offer and complete the purchase if they wish to??
Which is why SD sometimes refers to it as a loan and sometimes as an investment. Neither are strictly incorrect in layman’s terms. If SD pays it back it was the same as a loan, if it converts into equity it wasn’t. It’s a bit like a convertible bond but no one would say that in a press release and it isn’t actually a convertible bond - it just has some similar features. It’s simply ‘a deal’. A deal between two private parties can be as complex as you like and have whatever terms and conditions you both agree to. It doesn’t have to have a label.
No jd I doubt it because there is a clause that prevents SD selling any equity without their permission. So the only way someone could out-bid them is if he first paid them back. In which instance, they are of course free to bid or not against any other buyer. The issue with these ‘right to match’ clauses is that there is no way of knowing if you are matching something genuine or not. I could bid £100m for SAFC tomorrow. I wouldn’t be able to complete the deal though so why would FPP want to match it. I would imagine that there is some break clause in there that would mean FPP get their loan back plus something (maybe an extra £1m) if SD repays it. That compensates them for the DD costs, etc.
I very much doubt it will be this season as the whole structure of the deal is about which division SAFC are going to be in. The only way it could be in Feb would if some lunatic agreed to give SD £15m for his equity right now. So either FPP after the season ends or someone else earlier. I suppose there is an outside chance SD and FPP agree to ‘meet in the middle’ before then but who knows.