Cardiff City Forum



A forum for all things Cardiff City

Fans Club

Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:14 pm

My ideal scenario is for the club to be owned completely by the fans in a Benfica style democracy where a president is voted for each year based on their manifesto. I believe there is a step the club could take immediately to both solve our immediate cash flow crisis and start the process of handing the club to the fans.

I am no company law expert and I don't understand all the nuances of private and public company law. However I see it like this. The club has 41,000,000 shares in circulation. The last major issue/sale was to ridsdale for 11p. So for the simplicity of this example I will use 11p as a valuation. If the club issued a share rights issue of 41,000,000 shares at 11p to all current season ticket holders this would raise £4,510,000 which would surely help the short term cash flow and put the clubs ownership 50% to the fans. The obvious opposition to this would be the people with serious stakes in the club as this would basically half their ownership.

What I want to point out is, if this offer was put forward it would cost each season ticket holder £322. In fact what is more telling is that if each person at the march yesterday invested £2255 they would raise enough money to buy the 41,000,000 shares at 11p.

The real point of this post is to emphasis how much power a motivated group has. Where the current board wants to con that money out of us, we could raise the money to have real ownership and democracy.

A share rights issue is a very valid way of companies raising money. My question is how many people would be prepared to invest in our club to get rid of the board and have the club run on a fan based democracy.

Haydn

Re: Fans Club

Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:18 pm

mp4-12c wrote:My ideal scenario is for the club to be owned completely by the fans in a Benfica style democracy where a president is voted for each year based on their manifesto. I believe there is a step the club could take immediately to both solve our immediate cash flow crisis and start the process of handing the club to the fans.

I am no company law expert and I don't understand all the nuances of private and public company law. However I see it like this. The club has 41,000,000 shares in circulation. The last major issue/sale was to ridsdale for 11p. So for the simplicity of this example I will use 11p as a valuation. If the club issued a share rights issue of 41,000,000 shares at 11p to all current season ticket holders this would raise £4,510,000 which would surely help the short term cash flow and put the clubs ownership 50% to the fans. The obvious opposition to this would be the people with serious stakes in the club as this would basically half their ownership.

What I want to point out is, if this offer was put forward it would cost each season ticket holder £322. In fact what is more telling is that if each person at the march yesterday invested £2255 they would raise enough money to buy the 41,000,000 shares at 11p.

The real point of this post is to emphasis how much power a motivated group has. Where the current board wants to con that money out of us, we could raise the money to have real ownership and democracy.

A share rights issue is a very valid way of companies raising money. My question is how many people would be prepared to invest in our club to get rid of the board and have the club run on a fan based democracy.

Haydn


Clydebank FC Ltd is owned by the United Clydebank Supporters Trust Ltd

The members elect the board of directors onto each company yearly(I've served on both in the past).
Each member gets one vote regardless of how much they put into the Trust.

Difference being, these were new companies in a sense as opposed to the CCFC situation which carries a massive debt.

Re: Fans Club

Sun Mar 07, 2010 4:22 pm

I have though about this extensively and I realise the debt is the biggest obstacle. I want to plant these seeds as I fear administration or even liquidation is not too far away. I wonder if we were in administration, the administrator could clear the debt with the stadium (as heartbreaking as that would be) and a group of the right size could purchase the club. I fear it may come to this and I would like us to be ready. I thought yesterday was very encouraging.