Turns out that we were paying way over the odds for some of the clubs hospitality, when the Allam's looked into who was providing the hospitality services, they found that the company was owned by Mark Maguire's missus. Naughty.
Who was the chap who constantly argued with me about him? The poaching of staff from Stockport and paying them far higher wages than existing City counterparts, the public questionnning of the number of company cars on the club's books and then - rather brilliantly - gives every new member of staff a company car. Whoever it was suddenly went very quiet anyway.
Was it also something to do with the xmas thing at the,bonus arena that was,linked to his missus that was a complete financial failure.
The Stockport County fans are still wondering were some of their money has gone after the said fellow was involved with their finances. Football is a gravy train for some people at our expense. Are we mugs?
Not as long as we have the Allams as owners.. makes you wonder why AP never put a stop to all of Maguire's shenanigans...
Yep, lost 6 figures. He was warned time and again regaridng lack of passing footfall but went ahead anyway and paid for it with his job.
Good questions. I imagine he'd be directly responsible to the Allams and I just can't buy this thing they keep saying about finding new expenditures all the time and that this dodgy crap can be going on beneath them without them knowing. If that's true then they aren't the sensible businessmen they claim to be.
The Allams shouldnt have to micro manage those beneath them though. The likes of Maguire and Pearson were in positions of authority and should be trusted as such. Obviously they breeched the Allams trust.
Not really, if we wanted to we used to be able to manipulate loss figures (theft, waste, damages etc) so that to our area managers they looked a lot better than they really were (eg if you dropped a case of wine that was £6 a bottle you'd wait til it was on promo at £3 a bottle and halve your damages figure for it). The only way to get caught would be for them to come in and do a stock check themselves, but if they did that you'd just say you must have had a shoplifter in and write them off that way. I'm quite sure going up the chain our AMs could have told all their stores to do that and been able to keep it from their own bosses without their own bosses having to be poor at business. (it would be in their interests as it affected bonuses) When the Allams took over their main priority was to sort out the loss making departments of the club, and particularly the football side as it was both the biggest cost and the department with the biggest ability to influence the profits of every other department as well. They weren't going to be that bothered at that stage about the hospitality department having a profit ratio of 40% instead of 50% or what ever it was. They'd leave it to the department heads in those areas to improve performance, and when you've got someone appointed to the board running that side of things you expect them to be doing it honestly. Once the football was sorted financially (which bar the big contracts running down we have the structure in place now) their attention was switched to the rest of it. Completely overhauling the running of the club isn't an overnight process.
If they wanted to find out how much we were paying for certain services or who we were paying them to, they could find out. They have responsibility for everyone below them and particularly if the dodgy dealings are going on directly beneath (or even at?) boardroom level that makes it all the more stupid that they couldn't find out.
The whole point of people being at board level is that the responsibility is delegated to them and there is a legal duty to act in the interests of the company and not in their own interests. The fact people have been sacked shows they did find out about them and took action. The fact it has taken time is because fixing a profit making part of the business is not as high a priority as fixing the part that's causing a loss of over £20M a year. The idea that these things are found as easily as looking at a bank statement or asking someone is laughable, just look how long it took them to get round to filing papers against Duffen. It was months after he left despite them having a team of forensic auditors going through the books specifically looking for any dodgy transactions in that area. If someone is trying to hide things it will be hard to find them out, and it will take time, especially when there's nothing actually illegal in itself being hidden in the accounts. The potential illegality is all off book, and MacGuire's Mrs being involved in the company is only an indication of the potential, and is a factor you'd only know about if you looked into the company in question. You're much more likely to assume you're being ripped off like you've been in every other deal at the club and just tell them to negotiate a better deal when it comes up for renewal.
