mark lawn

. Given @EricMcManus has said about money flowing back to the German company I am now really worried. The loan in theory will have been given by the German company owned by Rupp and Rahic. It looks like they are taking back what they paid for Bradford City.

Sorry I am not skilled in reading balance sheets, @EricMcManus must have arrived at the figures from gaining access to some kind of balance sheet. I do know this three way ownership is unusual and no real idea why it was done like that.

 

Except none of this is showing on the clubs accounts

 

Perhaps a more accounting minded posted could help. Would a balance sheet actually show this though? Wouldn’t it need a dissection of the P&L account?

 

Well obviously I don’t know @EricMcManus but I doubt he would put something as hot as this on a public message board if it was not true. It is one way to get money out of the club when the club is not generating profit, and protecting your investment without putting money in.

 

Yes that is my understanding but we don’t publish the P&L accounts, so not sure where the information is coming from, unless someone has breached their own code of ethics and leaked it.

 

If you read back to @Dennis post early in the thread it explains that any loan taken by the club and being paid by the club would show in the accounts. Plus if someone was lending the club £4m they would register a charge on the club in case of non payment.

 

Froma quixk resd the links @EricMcManus has Shared is the owners buying a German company, renaming it and adding themself as directors

 

I did read that, so we shouldn’t worry about these rumours then?

 

The clue to the company that owns us is in the name ER sportstgroup (Edin Rahic?)
It looks like the company was formed to purchase BCFC and act as a holding company
I understand that Bradford City is a wholly owned subsidiary of that company, and also understand City publish limited minimum accounts under UK law, Anything more detailed will be in the German company's accounts

 

But any loans taken out by the club or any loans taken out using the club as collateral would show in City limited accounts.

 

Depends if you want to believe them. Remember t is easy to put stuff here with nothing to back it.

Here goes

Edin earns £500 a week
Wife earns £250 a week

Is that any more believable than the other set.

 

Maybe they would not have to take collateral as the holding company fully owns the club anyway, The loans to purchase and finance would be taken out by the holding company and repaid through the subsidiary (BCFC) to the holding company,

 

Twitter

 

Well to be honest the salaries don’t bother me, I think the quoted salaries are steep to say the least, but I don’t expect them to work for nothing. However, the priority should be the first team playing budget, and I don’t think it is, and that does bother me.

 

If the loan was to to the holding company it wouldn't necessarily show up in the clubs accounts, if the club are paying this it could very well show in the P&L instead of the limited accounts - most likely as a "management fee". An underhanded way of doing things but still used frequently by businesses especially when part of a group (I've seen this in every company I've worked for, main company take a loan for their own expansion, loan repayments are then covered by "management fee" invoices to the smaller parts of the group)

Also keep an eye on BC Bantams Limited - only the limited accounts available but will be interesting to see how the investment figure and liabilities evolve on there

 

Come on Storck keep up with the rumours - the wife earns at least £1900 a week.

 

Thanks @Stevay_b. It is worrying though as this isn’t expansion it is to repay R&R for the initial costs of the club! As a club we can’t afford to do that and field a competitive team. Plus there is a strong element of deception in that we were given to believe we would be playing in the Championship at the end of this season. Well I think we can safely say that won’t be happening. Plus if we go down they will be totally held responsible for our downfall. I have been mistakenly thinking they have to protect their investment, but actually they don’t, they have already covered that haven’t they?

 

No problem @Onside! If it is what they're doing then it explains why everything else is being run on a shoestring (this is sadly quite common when covering this type of expense "no pay rises until this is paid off"). Even if we are relegated that expense will still need to be covered, which would mean we'd have even less to work with in League 2 barring a miracle cup run or someone comes in with high bids for awful players.

Just to add, if we are indeed paying a management fee to the holding company, don't expect this to end when the loan is paid off - regardless of the reasoning behind setting up the fee, if it's paid for that long I can guarantee it will carry on as guaranteed income for the holding company which in turn will fund dividends for Rahic et al from ER sportsgroup

 

just a quick question - can anyone actually confirm what price was paid for the club? we’ve seen £5m+ quoted but there’s no way a league one club with no ground, no training ground and a squad made up of loan players and free signings at the time is worth anywhere close to £5m.

i ask this as i can’t remember the price actually being confirmed by anyone and also because i was at a wedding earlier this year where the owner of the venue was discussing that, as a life-long city fan and succesful businessman, he was offered the club by lawn for around £1.2m.

 

As if I wasn’t depressed enough. So they have managed to step through the FA rules on clearing the £2 million losses that must be cleared before dividends can be paid. We are in a hell of a state if this is all true.