Notdistant, I think the leverage was the fact that Brent was waiting in the wings. If he had said to bil after they missed the 2nd deadline 'you have x days to come up with the cash after that I go to Brent' the ginger tosser and his friends would have had to pull their fingers out. I think the only reason he stayed with them for so long was because Brent set out HIS conditions for buying the club, ie he did not want to pay some of the administrators costs. If he had done so we would be out of administration and p & a and guilfoyle would be just a painful memory! Don't forget that guilfoyle is a mate of ridsdale's, PAFC went into admin after a court appearance in leeds (ridsdales old stomping ground), p & a was appointed as administrators with guilfoyle as lead admin man, ridsdale made acting chairman by guilfoyle and paid exs and everyone else without a pot to piss in, risdsdale advising on all things football, risdsdale advising on bil, risdsdale buying club for £1 as part of bil deal and now p & a asking for 700k in fees. I thought I read on PAFC site that after august guilfoyle and his company was liable for the wages of the staff and players. They still haven't been paid.Of course people are making these accusations, its because it stinks like sh*t in a pit!
You demonstrate the exact point I was making mouldy. And I don't disagree with your comments either. You put the story so far from what you have heard and what you have seen and to you the whole thing stinks. What has happened that would not lead you to that conclusion? Precisely nothing I think. notdistant can say till the cows come home that we don't know this or don't know that but people will make up their own minds whether they know the whole story or not.
So Guilfoyle isn't completely stupid..............withdrawing his inflammatory statement will make it easier for him to deal daily with James Brent and a few of the Green Army. He just needs to get more realistic about how much of his absurd fee Brent will have to pay.
may i suggest you offer guilfoyle without prejudice £10 or see him in court. the shambles he has conducted, he owes argyle money
Apparently PandA agreed with Brent in March that if he was not picked as PB he would only pay up to something like £500k (if it reached this) and that would be capped - so confident that Brendan was with Heaneys bid coming in. Brent understandably does not want to cover anything over this amount as it was apparently agreed at the point he showed interest and was rejected, PandA should take Heaney to court for wasting their time and get the rest from him. Thats if you overlook that the incompetent handling by PandA. which in my view should mean that they should get paid only the last 6wks - as this is when Brent started negotiations and should chase Heaney and BIL for the rest.
Sensible Firstly, I believe I was one of the first to point out what I regarded as an unhealthy closeness in the relationship between Ridsdale, the administrator and the lawyers acting. I said that months ago when Guilfoyle first hove into view. However, personally I see manipulation of the situation by Ridsdale to get what he clearly wanted from the start i.e. the ownership of PAFC rather than deliberate impropriety by Guilfoyle. As far as the Brent situation is concerned, I now see: 1) The council deferring a decision whether to buy Home Park. Failure to do this would presumably be fatal to Brent's bid. 2) The League still not giving the business plan the all clear. 3) Limited money available to pay wages and no free cash injections forthcoming from Brent [why should he?]. 4) Brent in dispute with Guilfoyle over fees and Guilfoyle threatening to walk out due to threats & abuse from "fans", which would probably mean instant liquidation. 5) A target date for completion (the 13th) has just passed without completion taking place. There were perhaps things to dislike about the BIL deal, but are we now in a better position than when we appeared to be hours away from BIL completing? Hopefully it will all be OK but I stand firmly by my statement that there's significant risk in having restarted the preferred bidder process from scratch. We'd better hope the funds last until the deal gets done. We seem to be running it closer to the wire than any club has done before.
"There were perhaps things to dislike about the BIL deal, but are we now in a better position than when we appeared to be hours away from BIL completing?" In a word, yes. The BIL deal was always highly suspect in my view. The root of the problem being their late-emerging need to complete one deal to finance this one. Added to that, the late payment of the exclusivity money, the sale of the club for £1 sans assets all looked less than ideal, to say the very least. There were two other deals available and despite your bollox about 'proof of funds' either of the others looked preferable. The 'proof of funds' offered by BIL was obviously a smoke and mirrors job as it became increasingly clear there were no funds. So while the Brent deal does have some hurdles, the key difference is transparency. Brent is involving the Argyle Trust and other interested parties and does not seek to keep his identity secret. Guilfoyle is looking increasingly like an incompetent who was then too stubborn to admit his mistakes. We both know that the P&A partnership could halve their fees and still show a profit so for them to stick out for the full £700,00 and risk a suit for negligence looks unlikely. Why do you think the council will duck the issue, Distant? That would seem unlikely with the public gallery packed with Greens and the eyes of the footballing world on them. If they aren't willing to help, why did they get involved?
Brent is clearly a better people person [or publicist, whichever way you want to look at it] but the circumstances are the same - the club hasn't the money to pay wages and Brent isn't putting any in until he gets what he wants. I don't blame him but others were quick enough to criticise BIL for exactly the same thing. As far as the council are concerned, I hope most sincerely that you are right but in a time of financial stringency it can't be a foregone conclusion that a deal acceptable to both sides will be reached. It may be Brent who doesn't accept their valuation rather than the council refusing outright. I have the impression you worked in the City Western, if so you know what a proof of funds is. It merely states how the potential purchaser will provide the consideration IF the deal completes and what internal procedures have to followed for the funds to be released. It isn't a promise to pay a brass farthing if the deal doesn't go through!
I interpret westernmac's comments regarding smoke and mirrors not to mean that some sort of evidence was not forthcoming from BIL but that the evidence provided was either a lie or flimsy to say the least. I did not read it was a promise by anyone to actually hand any of it over without a deal. As for the Council and the purchase or repurchase of the ground. On face value and without the benefit of any of the actual paperwork to look at, it seems to me to be a good deal for them despite the current financial situation of the world. They would or could re-coup the outlay in as little as a decade and there is nowhere in this world at the moment where you could safely invest money and come up with that sort of return. If the club folded and the land was vacant without any other football club wanting to use it then the land becomes prime land for developement and would be worth considerably more on the open market. As a local tax payer I for one would urge the Council to complete this deal and that is with no sort of Argyle hat on at all. It is win win for them even if you bunged on another £1m to the asking price. I think they were being cautious the last time and not being seen to jump in before due consideration was shown to have taken place. The last thing they want is for somebody to cry to a Government Department and for everythng to be put on hold while it is looked into. If they do things properly and by the book then that is far less likely. I know you deal in facts and to some extent experience in these matters notdistant but you do seem a tad reluctant to accept that on face value the BIL offer, the Administrator's apparant ignoring of all other bids and his closeness to Ridsdale (you do accept that as you've said but I was adding all 3 together) appears to be a carve up and fiddle. You don't have to say it was as we of course don't know all of the details but to the layman or outsider you must agree it raises more than an eyebrow as to it's handling and what we do know. People will level accusations at this simply because that is the way it looks and you can't blame them for that conclusion.
Sensible It worries me that people's attitude to the club we love are being informed largely by what are baseless rumours and accusations. That isn't to say they are necessarily wrong, just that they are baseless, although in my opinion cock-up is always far more prevalent than conspiracy. You still state the role of the administrator incorrectly. His primary task is to get the maximum possible value for creditors. There is an assumption that this can be done by selling the club as a going concern [which there isn't in liquidation] but it's not carved in stone. You also say promises were made. That's wrong, promises are never, ever made as they can be enforced. Unenforceable statements of intent may have been made, subject to terms & conditions! I don't think we know who let who down, certainly in the end analysis Ridsdale & Guilfoyle were unable to get the League to hand back the Golden Share, which is clearly a deal breaker. And I repeat, I don't see our current situation is better than it was when the BIL deal was apparently finally ready to go until scuppered by the League. We are beset with a new set of dangerous risks and I for one don't blame Guilfoyle holding out for the deal he thought was nearly over the line until the last minute. Ridsdale's interests in keeping the BIL going may have been somewhat more self-serving.............
Appearance is everything to the outsider notdistant and it is appearance I am talking about here not necessarily fact. The appearance is that BIL, despite numerous statements to the contrary, did not have the funds to complete. Now they may well have in reality but we will never know. It is the appearance that the Administrator was in cahoots with Ridsdale from the start to get what he wanted rather than what was best for Argyle or possibly the creditors. I do understand the role of the Administrator in that it is the creditors he is meant to work for. It has been said numerous times before and Ihave taken that much in. But, to the average joe soap punter that was not necessarily what they saw in the beginning and it is that which led to all the suspicion initially. This suspicion has never been put to bed and has festered rather than deminished. Add to that the track record of failure with Heaney or at least perceived failure and you have your incredulity that the Administrator put so much faith in his offer. On the other hand there was Brent being seemingly up front with what he was offering to do and his track record which is 100% on paper better than Heaney's. Quite rightly you are taking a step backwards and are looking at this not as a supporter but in a dispasionate way and according to the real rules of the game. You do this from experience which is probably much more than most of us on here or other websites. I for one never believe anything until the fat lady has sung even if I say I have a gut feeling that this will be ok. That is more a wish than a true belief and something I desperately want to happen so I say it. The problem with the conspiracy theory being put to bed now is that it was stated there was no room for plan B when it is now well under way. That is a statement made so it is not conspiracy. It looks to most people whether true or not that Heaney was simply a time waster and Brent had the only real offer in the first place. ergo the Administrator made a huge mistake and was incompetent. The fact that the bill for all of this has been racked up to such an extent when all the supporters would have binned Heaney in the first place if they could and wanted Brent as their first choice. If you take the emotion out then the Adminstrator probably hasn't done a lot wrong in law but put the emotion back in which is where supporters come from then it looks poor. The only way you could put that away would be for some sort of enquiry made public which laid out all of the proper facts in a dispassionate way showing what was know and when and what was done and when. Trouble is it is unlikely to happen and therefore despite any defence of the process somebody like yourself would make, it will never be accepted by the core supporters as right and proper dealings. So in a very long round about way I come back to my original point which was that on appearance this whole thing does not look cosher.
Notdistant, my comment re proof of funds' was that Guilfoyle accepted BIL had the money, not that they would pay regardless. They were supposed to have made substantial payments for exclusivity, reportedly one million pounds. In the event, it transpired that the funding was conditional on another transaction and the exclusivity payments were short and late. Buttivant's bid was better for the creditors but rejected because, we are told, the proof of funds was unsatisfactory. Heaney had previous in terms of failed companies and also had an existing footballing interest which was always going to preclude him from ownership - hence the cosy deal with Ridsdale. It was also reported that the 'Irish Consortium' had dropped their backing for the bid some time before the BIL bid was, necessarily, withdrawn as they didn't have the money. This looks like a shark in the water, scenting blood but not actually having the teeth to attack. I think BIL hoped the plumb would fall off the branch and they could then use the land value to finance their development plans. Those plans may or may not have included a football club... Brent has been honest and, as importantly, visible throughout. We will probably never know who, if anyone, was behind BIL. Commercial secrecy is one thing but smoke and mirrors make me nervous. I don't think the P&A partnership has been fit for purpose. I was a Director of two UK PLC companies in a previous life and have been involved in purchasing a company out of administration. I know that football is unique as a business and most normal rules do not or are not applied but from what I can see here, the administrator has not acted as one might expect a professional firm to act. They have allowed deadlines to slip continually, they have been very remiss in dealing with anonymous bidders and they went missing at the critical time. I know the 'fit & proper' test is something of a joke if we look at some of those who have been judged suitable but when you don't know who the owners are it makes it a tad difficult even for the elastic football men... It is a sad reality that the salvation of our club was always bound up with the less than savoury world of property development - to an extent it still is but at least the current bidder appears to be on the ethical end of the spectrum. Let us hope this proves to be case.
We can't go on about this forever but I'll just throw in a few points to you both probably in no logical order: 1) I don't think Guilfoyle ever said specifically that exclusivity payments were in arrears based on the arrangements made. He did try to extract money via the court but that was thrown out peremptorily, suggesting they were certainly not in default. 2) Making deadlines is one thing, enforcing them is quite another, being dependent merely on the strength of your negotiating position. You'll know Westernmac that there's a lot of posturing that goes on in these deals but the fact of the matter is that there were 2 elements: the property, which had a positive commercial value and the football club, which needed money merely to survive. Anything that absorbs cash rather than generating it has a negative investment value however you calculate it and so the buyers would always be better off taking the property WITHOUT the football club. What sort of leverage do you think that gave Guilfoyle in pleading that the club needed cash to survive? 3) I've been involved in buying companies - successfully in the end - from blind offshore trusts. It is a complicating factor but not entirely unusual and you have to just get on with it. Whether or not there was anything untoward with BIL, we'll never know but the chances are it was just a straightforward [and legal] tax avoidance scheme - which by it's very nature requires anonymity! 4) Administrators do rack up enormous bills - it's something of a disgrace but it's not unusual! 5) What's unsavoury about property development, provided it's done properly? Yes, people will make money out of this scheme but won't Plymouth be left with a quite an impressive sports & leisure hub for the whole region? 6) The fact that the BIL deal collapsed for unknown reasons doesn't mean that every bit of wild speculation about it was right or even any of it, come to that! As I've said before, my big hope that with a new owner, new manager & new players, there would be a reunification of fans & club after all the bitterness of the past couple of years, even if it was at the wrong end of the league. All the over-heated speculation acts against that and so, while fans are entitled to their opinions, it is a Bad Thing in the real world.
Read what I said, notdistant, there is nothing wrong per se with property deals but property development is a murky world. Big money attracts all sorts and conditions of men, as a former company secretary of a property company that dealt with Willie Stern, I do speak from experience - that may be before your time but he ended up as Britain's biggest ever bankrupt. Olympia & York and creative accounting ring any bells? I agree that the admin bills are a disgrace but professional fees are always inflated to what the traffic will bear. I knew M&A lawyers who charged at £1700 per hour plus VAT. I have no issue with professional fees for proper professional services. You cannot get around the fact - admitted by Heaney, that the money was coming from another transaction - worryingly that was news to Guilfoyle and his 'proof of funds.' Of course enforcing the various agreements would be difficult - impossible if Heaney and BIL were the only game in town but they weren't. There were two other bidders and BIL should have been dropped very early on when they failed to meet the terms of the agreements. Why did Guilfoyle persist? We can only speculate and I am trying to avoid that. I am surprised that you, as an experienced businessman, actually felt that BIL was the preferable approach. Too much was hidden, too many contradictory stories and far too little substance for my taste - both as a fan and a former businessman. We will probably never agree but I think you are now starting to blow smoke rather than admit that you might have read it wrongly. Let's all just hope for a real solution very soon. The BIL deal collapsed because they couldn't meet the deadline for completion and the League weren't happy with some aspects of the plan, not least Heaney's position and the fate of football creditors. Nothing unknown about that. I think it became obvious when we saw the HMRC petition for Truro at the vital time.
Guilfoyle should be made to pay the wages as he as ben paid very well no doubt during this panto. He just be investigated and answer the questions as why he choose to go with BILge and Heaney, oh and the Riddler. All in it together! crooks. Guilfool should be struck off and not be allowed any were near a club again. ****ing moaning idiot! What did he expect the fans to do, sit back while he and the other clowns done nothing unless it was for their benefit.
You are right notdistant in that it is a little pointless going on about this. You quite clearly don't like acknowledging appearance to the ordinary man rather that what is known as fact. I have not said anywhere that anyone in this is a crook or anything else like some as the post above shows. I don't use those terms because I have no actual facts to back it up. None of us do but there is also nothing much out there to suggest there wasn't something crooked either. Mostly rumour and speculation it's true but you will never persuade most of the fans that there is nothing wrong somewhere. This is down to allowing the speculation to run riot and not being open or more open with everyone. Nobody believes BIL had the funds and it was not the FA that stopped them but that. Nobody believes that the Administrator wasn't in Ridsdale's pocket from the start because appearance points to that. Nobody believes that Ridsdale was just passing and happened to drop in for a match only to find the place was in turmoil. If none of what people believe is true then it is a story of holywood proportions.
Heaney and his allusive BIL consortium......I know it's all water under the bridge and we will never know the truth but.............did they ever exist ? It was only ever Heaney,Heaney,Heaney..........Irish millionaire we were told backing an Irish consortium with Heaney as an advisor........the money no problem we were told. Four months of time wasting while PAFC sank further and further into the mire. Can there not be an enquiry into the whole sorry mess,can not Heaney be brought to account for the trouble that he has caused. He makes Mr Trotter and his dodgy dealings look quite kosher...........will be interesting to see how Truro City get on financially in the coming months.
Brenda crook no.... inept yes. Risedale crook no..... manipulative, two faced, self-absorbed, lies like a mat..odds on yes. Heaney ginger. Sooner that this shower are seen leaving Plymouth in a Northerly direction at high speed the better. The smoke needs to clear from Home Park and the hopefully the stench will drift away with it. Dragging it over and over again will get no where and achieve nothing. IMHO you will never get the true facts because out of all those involved enough to know the truth none would come out with any credit.
Now, now...Don't be hard on Heaney, he can't help having imaginary friends who tell him they have money. He may have a neurological issue.
I'm determined to stop participating in this argument having said all I can usefully say BUT I NEVER said BIL was the best deal. I can't say that or that it was the worst as I simply do not have access to the facts. What I did say [repeatedly] was that, once the BIL deal was well underway, there were great risks in halting it and taking up with somebody else, especially if those urging the action did so on the basis of hair colour or the fact that the purchasers didn't fancy paying more tax than they were legally obliged to do. Despite what I do regard as a somewhat unhealthy closeness between Guilfoyle & Ridsdale, I have reasonable confidence that Guilfoyle selected BIL on what seemed like valid grounds at the time. Of course there are always opportunities for subjective judgement at the margins, but the man simply has too much to lose to select something that was demonstrably NOT the best option. The fact that decision turned out to be wrong [assuming it was] does NOT make him a crook or corrupt - it merely makes him mistaken - and who hasn't been that?
