The deceptive Craig Whyte
25/05/2011 578 Comments
“Deceptive”: adjective Giving an appearance or impression different from the true one; misleading.
Whyte has released a statement on the official Rangers website dismissing the calls for “vigilance” from outgoing directors as just sour grapes from men replaced for resisting change. His statement includes the following:
“I believe most Rangers supporters understand that, as a result of the takeover, the Club’s debt to the Lloyds Banking Group has been cleared and I have repeatedly stated to the Board my intentions to invest in the team.”
This statement is nothing short of a clear attempt to mislead Rangers supporters. It is a craftily worded statement (Hay McKerron must be exhausted) that amounts to an attempt to deceive his paying customers. Craig Whyte does not say that Rangers FC’s debt has been reduced. He did not say this because he cannot say this. He cannot say this because it is not true. As this blog has stated several times, the debt that Rangers owed Lloyds banking Group was purchased by Whyte’s Wavetower company (as it was then named) in a transaction that did not involve Rangers. The purchase of MIH’s shares in Rangers FC by Whyte’s firm for a single pound was a separate transaction. So Rangers do not owe Lloyds this money any more, but they owe the same amount to someone else: Whyte’s company.
Prove me wrong, Mr. Whyte. Make a fool of me. Discredit this blog by revealing the structure of Rangers’ debt today. It is a plc and it does have 26,000 other shareholders who have a right to know the amount of indebtedness of the company they co-own with you.
The truth is that Rangers’ debt is about £28m (including negative working capital). The takeover did not change Rangers debt, but Whyte is trying to imply otherwise. Whyte is shaping up to make Sir David Murray look like a model of transparency and straight-talking.
Rangers supporters and journalists should note what Whyte did not mention. Whyte ignored the “circular” that he is alleged to have promised to the Independent Board Committee (a sub-committee of the old Rangers board that reviewed the takeover proposal). Alastair Johnston says that this was originally promised to be released on 16 May, but is now scheduled for 6 June. This “circular” is supposed to reveal the how Whyte plans to fund Rangers going forward (the £25m investment promised). Perhaps Whyte is just practicing ‘dignified silence’ on this subject? Perhaps this is simply a subject that he does not want to discuss publicly in advance of a result in the tax case?
About rangerstaxcase
Rangers Tax Case 
In an insolvency event (which would require a legal administration filing or similar) the SPL penalty is set at 10 points. This applies immediately upon the filing and does not carry over into subsequent seasons.
Only two ways for any club to avoid the points penalty for administration:
– File in the close season and re-emerge before the new season starts. This would be almost impossible given the tight timeline. (What the ‘start of the season’ is formally is not defined within the rules, so there is room for an additional few weeks of wiggle, but I cannot see that ever mattering0.
– The SPL change their own rules. (For all of problems with even handed administration of the game in Scotland, I cannot see this being done).
Liquidation does not apply to these scenarios because in liquidation the team and its league place are gone.
I imagine that if liquidation was to happen that a swiftly formed “The Glasgow Rangers FC” would apply for an SPL place immediately rather than playing through the leagues. Just about everyone except the team that would have taken Rangers’ place would accept the new club being parachuted directly into the SPL. Why? Obviously money. Interest in watching Celtic run away with the league in the first few years until we sank to the level of everyone else would be limited. Like it or not, but the spraying of vitriol during games between Celtic and Rangers is the primary reason why anyone, SKY Sports included, shows any interest in our game. I would guess that the Celtic board would be the strongest backers of a move to ensure that the rivalry did not die or dissipate. Other SPL clubs would know that their gate and TV receipts would take a beating without Rangers.
RTC
Would HMRC winning necessarily signal administration or worse?
There are three likely motives for HMRC tackilng this issue:
To get back to the Exchequer money owed to the tax payer thus replenishing the public purse that is heavily indebted.
To discourage others from usng the same schemes in the future thus reducing future loss to the public purse
To encourage those who have been using EBTs in a simiar fashion to reach repayment settlements without the cost of a law case.
The tax man expects to be around for a long time and so why will he not be prepared for a long repayment period?. Say £3M a year over 10 years or £3M over 20 if necessary?
If there were another 50 clubs/organisations in Rangers position, £3M a year becomes £150M to the Exchequer each year. £1,500M after ten.
Sure that would leave Rangers less for players wages but how far would the wage bill need to fall to take it below say Hearts? Sure a lower wage bill will most likely mean less income, but surely an impoverished Rangers in player terms would still attract enough suuporters to sustain themselves and repay the tax if the term was a long one?
Message to Adam.
I haven’t forgotten our discussion about the real debt calculation. It will be tomorrow before I get access to the computer on which I have the already worked out.
In general principle, we are on the same page. You are right about the degree to which people accept what is spoonfed to them through the media. Scotland is not exactly short of accountants so I would have expected more of a debate over how to calculate the debt of a football club (any club). Yet, our discussion on here is the only one I have seen.
My comment that your Celtic numbers were wildly off must have been a mistake. I must have misread your calc. If our numbers differ by only £2m, then we have the same big picture view at least. As well you will know, there is always room for debate over what numbers are relevant for a real calculation of debt.
We can slice up the numbers on both clubs tomorrow. In liabilities, I do not include accruals for pre-payments that are unlikely to ever actually be repaid (such as the JJB Sports advance). I did not capitalise lease payments, but this would be the right thing to do as these are commitments and not any different to an actual loan. In current assets, similarly filtering the accruals that are not likely to be returned is the key.
It would be nice to agree a formula for this and try to publish a REAL debt table for the whole league. If we could get it to catch on and become the lingua franca used by the media when reporting club debt, we would have done our game a huge service.
Taking the line that the new owners are not just preparing for administration but couting on it, isn’t it likely that any new signings made this summer would come straight from season ticket income without a penny contributed by Whyte and co.?
If the Wavetower/RFC Group debt is secured against existing assets, I doubt the collateral is going to be players but rather fixed assets in Ibrox and Murray Park etc. That being the case then RFC Group just have to keep the cashflow running up to the point they expect the tax bill to kick in. Any cash lost between now and then will only impact the amount other creditors (HMRC) receive so they might not even need to plan to pay wages for a full season.
They can then hold up the money ‘invested’ in the team in the summer as proof of their commitment to the team, while blaming the tax case on the old board members (who’ve they’ve set up as the bad guys already) as they resurrect and quickly offload the New Rangers to wealthy fans group for a tidy little profit while ensuring they don’t get lynched when they take a walk in Bridgeton.
Boab
“Craig Whyte is shafting Her Majesty ltd”. certainly would be a more accurate representation. Lol:)
Its not so much the name change that I find odd but to what it has been changed too.
Perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree but could The Rangers FC Group Ltd not be a possible replacement for RFC when the HMRC bomb goes off?
Audlheid,
Firstly, I have been meaning to say that I am very glad to see you posting on here. As a lurker of many years on CQN, I have been reading your stuff for a long time and felt flattered when I first saw you posting on here.
To your questions, your analysis and question is good. “Why would HMRC not give Rangers time to pay?”
If there was a demonstrably genuine inability to pay, HMRC might get into a discussion on repayment terms. However, HMRC is not a bank and does not want to get into the risk assessment and funding business. Their standard retort is that companies should borrow the money to pay them. If they cannot borrow the money, then there is the question: why should HMRC effectively lend them the money?
Time to pay would necessitate that the taxpayer is also charged a commercial interest rate. (HMRC is currently using rates of about 4%- which is actually very reasonable considering that they dealing with tax delinquents). Let us assume that Rangers eventually get hit with the full whack £54m including penalties. So if Rangers were to pay £5.4m per year + interest on the balance in the first year £1.94m,
they would have to find £7.34m out of their current budget. It is simply too onerous a millstone around their necks to pay regardless of whether they are given time or not.
The Celtic fan in me hopes that the bill is actually reduced to the point where a Rangers owner might fancy his chances in paying it off. “If we can get a few more Champions’ League runs”. A total bill of about £30m A £4m per year (or so) handicap for 10 years would be a very fair resolution to the issue of the tainted titles. If Celtic cannot take advantage of this to rebalance things, then so be it. It might keep Rangers alive (just), but would represent a strong headwind every year.
The question would be whether HMRC would ever wait 10 years. In cases I am familiar with, repayment terms have been over a few years. I think HMRC would expect a business wanting to repay over such a period to get a loan from a bank or other lender, pay them immediately, and then work on repaying the lender on their own.
Rangers recent troubles with Lloyds will not have done much to enhance its credit rating. LBG would not want to get back into the business of lending money to any company where demanding repayment is deemed detrimental to your ability to operate in Scotland. Better to just deny them a loan in the first place. (Rangers fans have yet to grapple with the unintended long-term consequences of their campaign against Lloyds).
Lastly, if Whyte’s plan for the tax case is: heads I win a lot, tails I win a smaller amount, would he even want to deal with the headache of dealing with repaying a bill that is, from his perspective, optional? Only a real Rangers man would want to fight through the headwind. (If I was in his shoes at Celtic, there would be no amount of money in the world that would make me want to be known as the man who killed Celtic. It would be like killing a family member to profit from the will). So, if HMRC win, we will quickly see whether Whyte’s bluenose is just fresh paint or whether is subcutaneous pigmentation.
Cheers RTC and thanks for looking at the figures. Like you i have left out prepayments and the lease payments, or at least the one for Albion that we are paying, i have left at the total as at June 2010, less the proposed payment shown for this year.
Its good to finally find someone who is willing to look at it or understand it tbh as many of my friends on boths sides just tell me im talking piss. lol
Oh and wee fatbhoy says that your figures are as close as his first shyte and that he is 42 years young !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL
There are a few legal beagles reading and posting who will be able to define this more tightly than I can, but my understanding of this is that there are two “name change” senarios.
1. Full Administration (as opposed to a CVA): This involves moving the productive assets out of the existing legal entity and into a new company. If >75% of the creditors (by value) agree, then they can cherry pick which liabilities the new company will take forward. Therefore, a new company would be created which has to have a sufficiently clear indication that it is a different legal entity from the old one: i.e. The Rangers Football Club (2012) Ltd would be typical. [This new legal entity would be considered a continuation of the old club for football purposes. The team name, record etc. would carry forward into this new company. Nothing would change except some off-the-field paper shuffling and debt reduction]
2. Liquidation: this would involve the complete death of the old business. The team name, company name, league place, and honours could not be inherited by any newly formed business. The assets can be sold off individually, but the business stops being considered to be a going-concern. Any newly formed team e.g. Airdrie United, would be free to try to pick a similar name for the team, but it could not be the same. Becoming known formally as “Glasgow Rangers” would probably be enough.
For the record, if Rangers lose the tax case in the amounts which have been assessed already, then I think we can discount the possibility of a CVA. In a CVA, the same legal entity, usually with the similar or the same owners, continues. The fact that Rangers asked for the penalty tribunal to be separated from the underpayment and interest tribunal means that there is a substantial future liability that would still be hovering. The point of creating a new legal entity is usually to build a firewall from legacy liabilities. The fact that the legacy liability in this case would be owed to the majority creditor (i.e. HMRC)creates a bit of an unusual complication. Would HMRC allow an administration process to build a firewall against one of its own bills?
This starts to paint the picture as to why I think the most likely outcomes here are either Rangers win the tax case or Rangers are liquidated.
Would like to hear from any of the lawyers or insolvency practitioners on here as to how they think this will likely play out.
MD, I think we have the same line of thinking on this, except why do you think they’d want to appeal and delay the tax bill? Surely they’d want the bill to kick in before the cash supply has run out and the have to find alternative funding.
But would they be allowed to keep the silverware? All their records would now be consigned to history book NEVER to be updated, 54 league titles end of story!
When Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes (Famous for it’s “Concrete Cows”) they had to hand back there silverware.
This would now be GRFC! They could have NO link to the past! Unless they want to pick up the tax bomb. I think that they would lose some support from their fan base. People who could not afford to go on a regular basis in these difficult times could use the excuse that “their not my Rangers!”
I saw weefatbhoy’s comments. We do not need that stuff on here. I am not on some morality drive about these issues. I enjoy goading my RFC-supporting friends as much as they enjoy winding me up. However, we have context and have defined our own lines that should not be crossed.
I don’t want to seem heavy handed by issuing threats and such stuff, but I want a constructive atmosphere on here where alternative view points help us uncover what is likely to be the truth about issues where the Scottish media is intentionally misleading us all. Rangers fans who contribute on here will be motivated to challenge assumptions and will help refine our analysis: that is great.
As much as there is a bit of schdenfreude flowing through this blog, I really do just want to understand what is going and to communicate what is going on.
I agree with Peter. If the stadium and training ground are posted as collateral on a loan, then Rangers Group Ltd take possession of the assets in the event of default. To my understanding no post-liquidation sale is required.
It made me laugh so no offence was taken RTC..
In legal and accounting terms, you “own” or more accurately ‘control’ a business when you have 50% of the voting shares. So Whyte’s firm does legally “own” Rangers.
Below is an extract from Rangers 2010 Annual Report that describes this best:
30. ULTIMATE HOLDING COMPANY
The Directors consider that the ultimate holding company is Murray International Holdings Ltd. (reg. no. SC 192523). As Sir David E. Murray has a controlling interest in the share capital of the ultimate holding company he is considered to be the ultimate controlling related party. The largest and smallest group in which the results of the Company are consolidated is that headed by the ultimate holding company whose registered office is at 9 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, EH2 4DR.
MIH never owned all of Rangers either.
Yup. It is a single purpose holding company that was purchased off-the-shelf. The name change just aligns the company with its business. It does also serve the purpose of allowing Whyte to be evasive. When talking about “Rangers” he will always have the escape button of claiming later that he was talking about the holding company and not the club etc. Odds of the Scottish media ever asking him to clarify which Rangers he means when he makes a statement about debt etc? 🙂
The seller (ie the security holder) decides what bids for Ibrox or other assets covered by the security are acceptable to him not the administrator or any other party. If Whyte decided to accept a lower offer than some other imaginary RFC consortium might make then he could if challenge say the offer terms or some other factor made the bid more preferable to him – he’s not bound to accept the highest or any offer.
So if Rangers are liquidated, RTC, which you think will happen if HMRC win the whole amount, do they have powers to get the money from the former directors ? When I say ‘former’ this itself is deceptive. Who would be the relevant directors in such a situation?
I am not at all an expert like you, but I thought that if HMRC beleive directors have been negligent – and why else are they seeking the maximum penalty? – they can go after them if the company can’t pay.
Can you enlighten us on this? Could some of the money be extracted from individuals? If so, would this affect the liquidation process?
Tora Bora would be safer!
Whyte does however have the advantage of having a scapegoat in Minty. So heads he wins a lot. Tails he lets RFC as it is now go down but announces plans to resurrect it under the guise of RFC2012. He can quite legitimately claim that he has no other option, he was given advice that they would win the tax case but this advice (which presumably can only have come from Thornhill) was flawed. So blame David Murray for the demise of RFC but if you want to buy into RFC2012 (which is really the same club wink wink, nudge nudge) then we will be opening for business soon. “Ok we have to drop a division or two (no matter what the rules are the SPL/SFA will make sure that they are admitted somewhere) but at least we are still out there playing on our hallowed turf and we’ll be back in the SPL soon but with no debts.”
He could on the other hand simply put the repayment of any tax into the hands of the fans. “If you want the club to survive then you need to buy into this flotation, if not then don’t blame me. I tried to help you but sorry I’m taking back the money I gave you and you can blame Minty and Thornhill for the mess they left me in. Honestly, I was just a nice guy trying to help”
As with everyone else on here (and as much as I like speculating) I don’t really know what Whyte and his gang are up to. The only thing I can be certain of is that they will not lose any money. They might not make any but if they are venture capitalists then they are used to taking risks. This is just another one (albeit with a lot more personal feelings riding on the outcome than if it was a business making nuts and bolts), even to Whyte. In fact from a venture capitalists point of view if they can make a modest investment (and £18m is modest by their standards) whilst at the same time ring-fencing their investment, with the chance of making millions, then it would seem quite a reasonable proposition.
If RFC are liquidated does this make all player and Manager contracts null and void ?
Meaning Ali and the playing staff could do a Bosman or demand a signing on fee from Whyte to join the new co?
Yes, this is something that gets agreed between the administrator and the new owner. Going into administration and in its course, most of the cash paid by ST holders will be gone. If the assets are moved into a new company, a new owner needs to balance pissing off his customer base versus basic survival.
So timing would be key. If a newco emerged near the end of a season, there would be no doubt that the owner would honour existing season tickets. If it happened near the start of a season, it becomes more difficult to go a full year of paying players without receiving much cash.
I do not know how many of those 3 year season tickets have been sold, but I could well imagine that a new owner would balk at having people sit in his stadium for years without giving him any money.
Your assumption that liquidation would result in the wiping of RFC’s honours may not be correct, unfortunately. Middlesborough retained their honours list despite being liquidated in 1986.
If whatever entity takes Rangers “the brand” forward can demonstrate continuity, it is almost certain that the football authorities would allow them to keep their “history”, tarnished as it may be. From a wider, national point of view, it would be silly for Scotland to lose the history and achievements of one of their most successful members simply as a result of a legal nicety.
That is why Celtic and/or other clubs SHOULD vigorously pursue the possibility of having the tainted titles and trophies removed from the record. It is highly unlikely that these titles, etc would be awarded to runners-up, but at least they would be removed from Rangers’ record.
I think too that Fiorentina after they were resurrected were able to buy back their ‘history’ ie colours, badge, name etc after a couple of years despite being wound up a decade or so ago.
I think you are totally wrong about Celtic’s attitude towards new Rangers being readmitted into the top tier immediately, RTC. In fact, as a Celtic shareholder, I would be enraged if the club allowed that to happen. For three years, Celtic have been effectively cheated out of £15m (at least) of Champions League revenues by the increase in corruption we have seen in Scottish football in the SPL’s efforts to keep Rangers alive. This has had a catastrophic impact on the club’s finances.
The directors of Celtic would owe it to its shareholders to force new Rangers to climb back up the tiers while Celtic gets a shot at beating Hearts and Dundee United to the golden pot. I imagine Romanov and Eddie Thomson might also be prepared to forego the revenue of two home games a season against them to give themselves a chance in Europe.
No, my friend, I think (and desperately hope) you are wrong about Celtic’s attitude.
To be more accurate, if HMRC get to hit them for the full whack, liquidation would be most likely unless some madman wants to pay the bill for them. (Remember we do not know who funded Whyte or why. If it is someone of fathomless wealth who does not mind being £80m+ poorer just to have kept Rangers alive before investing in the team, then they could always escape unharmed. That does seem rather unlikely).
Those who have had liquidated losses (i.e. real and measurable losses not just notional) related to Rangers going out business would be able to (in theory) go after the directors for assorted mismanagement claims. These are rarely successful, but in this case there would be a good claim. That several directors knew that what the club was doing was illegal but continued anyway opens them up to personal liability. That the club did not declare the risk of insolvency dur to the tax case is also a risk.
However, the biggest defence that they will have is that directors owned about 93% of Rangers’ shares during the tax fiddle. Therefore, it would be left to small shareholders to claim and that will be difficult to see the costs being worthwhile. However, Murray has been moving assets into offshore trusts. That could be interpreted as “planning for the worst”. Alastair Johnston’s famous head-nod was probably an attempt to insulate himself from claims that he failed to disclose risks. So, I think that there have been genuine concerns from former directors about this possibility.
Contracts will survive going into administration, but liquidation is an end-game. Any players who could not be sold during administration would have their contracts terminated as liquidation proceeded. A new buyer (Whyte or otherwise) would have to buy the contracts for players they wanted to keep. If they do not buy the contracts, the players would be free to go to the highest bidder.
Tomtom
I agree that he has the alibi of “a big boy did it and ran away” his only problem with that is he has already told them they are debt free and have won the tax case, possibly to sell season tickets, but none the less thats what the majority believe. He will then be into the dodgy dave territory of having promised moonbeams but not delivering.
My own personal beliefis that he doesn’t give a stuff about what anyone thinks, he is only in it for the money. Which astounds me that none of our esteemed press have had found all these ex employees that he shafted and had their side of the story of multi billionaire Whyte!!!!
Just a thought, how long before he gets christened “Craigie”
Is there a case for missing administration and going straight into liquidation and who would get to decide this, could Whyte decide that route?
I didn’t know anything about the Middlesboro situation, but the wiki page on the subject is a good read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesbrough_F.C._survival_from_liquidation
Despite the death of the club being announced on TV, there was a last minute resuscitation following some funding guarantees from ICI. It reads to me that Middlesboro were not actually liquidated.
“A meeting with the Football League took place on Friday 22 August. Notes were passed from room to room between the league’s representatives and the consortium. Colin Henderson agreed a deal with ICI for a bond, meaning that they would pick up a major part of any subsequent debt, and the consortium put in their £825,000. With ten minutes to spare before the registration deadline, the documents were signed by Graham Fordy, Reg Corbridge and Henry Moszkowicz. In recognition of Henderson’s achievements in delivering the bond in a format acceptable to everyone, he was named chairman of Middlesbrough Football & Athletic Company (1986) Ltd., the new company formed by the purchase of Blackplay Ltd., a dead company, off the shelf. Gibson, Fordy, Corbridge and Moszkowicz formed the board. The club had been saved and the deal was announced to the public at the town hall.”
thanks RTC, but I was really thinking about HMRC collecting the money from the directors, or at least some of it. From what you say it doesn’t sound easy. And if they could, would this affect liquidation, or would the company have to be liquidated before any of this happened (if it ever does)?
So it looks as if this isn’t going to save Rangers if HMRC win everything, it was just a thought
Thanks for that response RTC
A follow up
If the only way Whyte can avoid nullifying player contracts is to go to liquidation via administration
and buy the contracts during the administrion time period does this mean that the footlball choice could boil down to losing 10pts ( through Administration) or losing the chance to buy out contracts by going straight to Liquidation ?
Yes, RTC, the CLUB was saved, but the original company was not. This is possibly what will happen with Rangers. To all intents and purpose the CLUB will be saved, but the company may not be.
There is a difference, as you are no doubt aware.
But faced with Armageddon I think that the Rangers fans would be prepared to forgive him for his being economical with the truth about the debt. He has not lied about the debt, Rangers are debt free, but in order to get the stadium back he needs to give Wavetower back their money. This is a different matter and when the chips are down it’s amazing what people are prepared to forgive.
I should add to my comment below that liquidation DID take place at Middlesborough, the new consortium merely “saved” the club by entering into a transaction which was the best available to all relevant parties. I don’t see how that is particularly differrent from the Rangers siuation.
This can be done. The various insolvency processes: CVA, administration, liquidation are designed to protect the business from an individual creditor.
So, if you owe £100m in total, and you owed me £100,000 from a year ago. I could go to court and get a winding up order that would allow me to, in effect, turn up and do a sherrif sale on your assets to get my £100,000 back. If all of your assets are only worth £200,000, then this creates a problem. It becomes a case of first to court gets repaid and the rest are screwed. This is bad for the economy as a whole, so the law has been written to provide a mechanism for orderly repayment according to a pre-set priority rather than who asks for the money first.
So the various insolvency schemes are designed to prevent creditors from implementing a winding-up order. These are initiated by different groups for different reasons, but in Rangers’ case now, I would imagine that it would be either Whyte’s company (the holders of Rangers’ secured debt) who would file to prevent HMRC for executing a winding-up order, or it would be Whyte’s company (the holders of Rangers’ secured debt) who might decide upon receiving a bad result in the FTT that the company was now insolvent and that it is best to bow to the inevitable quickly to avoid wasting more cash on legal bills.
I am pretty sure that they would not go for “liquidation” immediately. They would likely file for “administration”. This gives them many more options including allowing the team to keep playing in the hope of a buyer who ignored previous opportunities to step up and pay coming forward. It would provide a platform to test HMRC’s resolve “maybe they will just forget about pushing for payment?” In the end, you can still liquidate from an administration process, but you get more time to see how all options play out.
To answer the question of who decides this, it is determined in a court by a judge who specialises in insolvency. Whomever applies for a particular process needs to satisfy the judge that the business is indeed insolvent and that the selected process is appropriate.
A good intro to this subject can be found here:
Click to access 1028.pdf
Thanks for the repeated comments about the money behind Whyte. I can’t help wondering: if there is really a white knight out there, why bother with all this cloak and dagger stuff? The temptation to infer otherwise is almost irresistible…
Donald Macintyre has now been sacked from the Rangers board.
Tweeted by Jonathan Sutherland of BBC
Let the leaks begin! 🙂
This question answers itself. 😉
I have asked the same question: who would pour a lot of money into a football club but would not want all of the acclaim that comes with it? There are a few possible answers as to the type of person who would want to keep his head down. The theories about it being Murray or a famous Celtic fan are not true. That does not leave many options left.
My read on the Boro situation is that they entered a liquidation process but, in the end, were not actually liquidated.
This would be quite possible, but it will require that HMRC agree to a deal. This might mean Whyte would have to share the proceeds of his secured assets with HMRC. HMRC would have to be happy with a tiny fraction of what they were owed (another opportunity for people to mistakenly believe that you can do pennies on the pound deals with the tax man if you cheat on your taxes now)- and it would require that Whyte is willing to share his spoils.
If HMRC stay aggressive in this process, I think liquidation would be the most likely outcome in the event of losing the tax case. There are two conditions in that statement, so this is not guaranteed or inevitable, but you will have to set your own probabilities to those conditions.
RTC
Are you suggesting that Donald Macintyre may sing like a canary?
Go for that, transparency would improve significantly if a real debt picture was presented to which spending and income could be allied so that all clubs had a balance profile that they each must conform to
“For three years, Celtic have been effectively cheated out of £15m (at least) of Champions League revenues by the increase in corruption we have seen in Scottish football in the SPL’s efforts to keep Rangers alive”
lmao
Does anyone know
1. what per centage of First Tier Tax Tribunals are held in private?
2. what arguments Rangers used to ensure the hearing was kept private?
3. whether any of the media sought to challenge the request to have the tribunal held in private?
sing baby sing this is so interesting whatever the outcome it’s not looking good for rainjurz? RTC do you know if HMRC have completed the first tier of investigations?
I know it’s not quite the same thing but a couple of decades ago in America the Cleveland Browns NFL team out of the blue upped sticks and moved to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens. The people of Cleveland were naturally outraged at this turn of events as Cleveland were one of the historic teams in the NFL. As a result it was agreed by the NFL that Baltimore Ravens, even though they were really the old Cleveland Browns, could not keep the history and colours of the old team and a ‘new’ Cleveland Browns was set up in Cleveland, by Randy Lerner, the owner of Aston Villa. The ‘new’ Browns were granted the rights to the “history” and colours of the old Browns by the NFL. So although it is technically a completely different team the history books show them to be one and the same. Would the SFA allow a “New” Rangers to do something similar?
More tweets from J.Sutherland
“JGSSutherland Jonathan Sutherland”
“Philip Betts is a new director at #Rangers. Gary Withey becomes company secretary.”
feckn BBC
Another tweet from Sutherland
“bit of confusion about this Donald Macintyre story. His position as company secretary has been terminated. Understand he remains on board”
No Canary then 😦
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1227851/TONY-HETHERINGTON-A-wall-silence-shamed-broker.html
Looks like the new personnel have morals in keeping with the club traditions!