Adey, is there a reason you are not posting on here what you know? If we could find out be ringing Ryan, then it can't be confidential can it?
I would ring them, but they have better things to do I should imagine.

I am an outsider, but not a ridiculing one, though I would make no apologies for being sceptical.

I recall you assuring people when the deal to buy the lease was done that you knew the terms of the deal and that it was all about saving the ground from "predators".

It now appears that there was a loan debt owed to the RFL (when this loan was made and what it related to is perhaps best left to another thread - suffice it to say that this gives rise to a host of other serious questions!) which was discharged by the sale of the lease. The deal could instead be described as saving the RFL's bacon by giving it an asset in repayment for the debt...

Given the fact that the club is, by the admission of its directors, unable to meet its liabilities as they fall due only a short period after that sale, there must be a big question mark over the validity of the discharge of debt owed to one creditor (the RFL) by the transfer of an asset to that creditor, even if the transfer was at market value. The unfairness of this from the perspective of other creditors of an insolvent business is obvious.

There must be a significant risk that an administrator or liquidator of the club will challenge that transaction and seek to have it reversed so that the lease reverts to the club and can be sold along with its other assets. The alleged motive of the deal with the RFL - to save the ground - may well end up being thwarted if that happens. Surely it would have been better for the RFL and the Club and its major creditors RBS and HMRC to have done a deal between them that saved the club....

I hope that you are right to continue to trust the club.

Personally I would be very, very sceptical indeed. The directors ought to announce their resignations at say the end of April and call in the meantime for local business people to come forward to replace them. They do have time to be transparent with fans and investors and they really need to set out what has gone on and what their plan is to put the business on a sound footing.

There is no way that - despite the sympathy I have for the fans and employees of the club and the anger and concern I feel at the shocking state one of the most important clubs in the game is in - I will be pledging any money until there is a clear-out of the current senior management team. Otherwise you are probably just throwing good money after bad, I am afraid.

I can understand the posts calling for a change at the top, I really can, but I wish people demanding a new chairman would just look at the current list of people with hands up asking for the (unpaid) position:

Here it is below:










So, which of the above is it to be then?

If I recall the RFL mentioned the word predators not the Club, so naturally it got picked by everyone else

So you know that for a fact do you.

It it's wrong, you fill it in..

Just as soon as you provide a list of shareholders publicly offering their shares for sale and at what price.

One point that you have consistently - and, as far as I can tell, correctly - made is that we as a club are hamstrung by our shareholding profile. I believe that one of the reasons why you possibly looked favourably on administration was that it was one way to resolve this issue. We may soon see whether it does, but if we evade administration, do you have any ideas of how else we might be able to address it?

You suggest above a public sale of shares by the current shareholders. I take it that, by this, you mean all (major) shareholders, not just the current board. If this were to happen, what would be the optimal result? A single new investor (or small consortium) buying them?

Would there be any mileage in a new issue of shares, or would this risk compounding the issue by fragmenting the holding further?

I know that there is a lot of suspicion around at the moment, but I can assure you that I do not ask this with any agenda - I would just like to understand better, and I ask you as it's clearly a subject to which you have given a lot of thought.

Has anyone heared this business plan we have that says if we raise a million, are then debt free and then we have can move forward?

Where is the money come from to cover month to month expenses after the initial £1m pledge?

We need to know how this works going forward

Yes, the optimal result would be a single new investor. I agree with Adey that a fans holding or new issue could make the governing of the club even more difficult.

Peter Hood has consistently said he would step down as Bulliac and others have correctly said. The board have publicly asked for invstors and pubicly asked for 10000 people to give them £100 for no holding whatsoever. Yet at no time (correct me if i'm wrong) have we had any mention of 'sale' or 'valuation' either from the board or from the other shareholders. What does 'stepping down' mean? Resigning as chair but holding his shares? Offering his shares for sale at no cost and free beer for life? Offering his shares at £100million? In the current circumstances the position of chair is a poisoned chalice and nobody in their right mind would want it.

In this context we see Peter's offer to move aside is plainly meaningless. Is the club for sale? Is any part of the club for sale? Some would argue this isn't information for the public domain but it's not unusual for a board to place a valuation on a company if a takeover is on the horizon and particularly when they are asking us the fans to treat a club which is privately owned as a charity.

I agree the shareholding is at the root cause of the problem and will continue to be so. Administration is a dangerous place as there is no guarantee what assets the club can hold onto but i've argued for a number of years now that the position we find ourselves in was inevitable. If it hadn't been HMRC/RFL/RBS it would have been some other 'shock' as the core of the club is fundamentally weak.

Thanks very much for the clarification. I think the points about Peter Hood's shareholding are very valid and I hope that we have a chance to put them to him directly. However, without Caisley (and any other significant shareholders) agreeing to do the same, would the sale of Hood's shares really resolve anything? I had assumed that this fragmentation (in which the BOD hold a minority of the shares) was really what was causing the most significant problems.

I agree entirely.I'd wager that even if the entire shareholding agreed to sell their's zero chance they could agree a valuation. This is why I've argued that adminstration is the only means by which the shareholding situation can be resolved.

Maislebugs, in what for me is a very well-reasoned post, alludes to an excellent and extremely important point here IMO. I'd refrained from saying it myself in the hope that the club would do so, but now its been said anyway.

I do not think anyone making the pledge is doing so expecting it to improve the position of the shareholders (most shares are not held by directors) in a subsequent sale. If the club is now insolvent, their shares should be worthless. And that is how it should remain in any future sale, unless those who pledged and paid are first reimbursed.

Maybe if the board issued a call for new people to step forward it would be answered?

I can imagine there are people who don't want to be seen to be pushing themselves forward and causing division at this difficult time, but who might answer the call.

That's why I would suggest it would be better for them to announce an intention to resign at a certain date and call for new people to come forward.

If no-one comes forward then the board would have to stay in place, but it would have a degree of legimitacy conferred on it by the failure of anyone to come up with a better solution after they did the right thing and offered to step aside.

Whilst I agree with the scentiment I can't see how that could happen. My understanding would be that a business which recieved 500k onto its books is worth 500k more than it was yesterday. By next friday the supporters of Bradford Bulls could well have made Mr Caisley approx 125k better off than he was on thursday night. I'm not comfortable with that.

Thanks again. I appreciate the time you have taken to make that clear.

My pleasure.

Whilst I know little about private companies I'd guess that Bradford Bulls shares market value would be broadly unchanged at 3/5ths of sod all. What's the value? You can't sell them, and you get no dividend. Or to put another way, if you could sell them, how would the whip-round affect the price you could get? Am I wrong? Do the shares have an appreciable value? If so, what?

And if they do have a value(or maybe even if they don't) then why not raise cash by issuing new shares and inviting supporters or anyone to buy them? I'm sure very many would prefer to do that than just throw a hundred quid away, even if the benefit of owning a share might be purely notional.

Precisely. Which is why I have implored the club to say considerably more on the issues that are being raised.

As far as I can tell, the situation remains that if the club does NOT get this cash, its administration and all the risks that that entails. Which is why I cannot see a better alternative in the time frame. But that does not mean we should not expect some clarifications and undertakings regarding what happens afterwards, in return?

In all of this, I have always assumed that - even after the cash injection - the club shares would still have only nominal value. The club will never make enough money to pay dividends, and the net assets on a going concern basis would disappear on a realisation basis, so I cannot see anyone placing any material value on the shares. But should shares subsequently change hands for material value, then what you say would very much have come to pass.

Its a private company, so they could not invite the public to subscribe for shares without converting to a plc and issuing a prospectus. The first would take ages, and the second would be fraught with difficulties, if possible at all - and again would take ages.

You then have the issue of the existing holders, and the valuation of their shares and how to address the dilution in their voting rights (not that any of that is worth Jack Shìt the day the Court stamps the petition for Administration)

Time ain't on our side.

I would personally very very much prefer to receive shares for whatever sum I ultimately commit to. I would personally like to see a supporter-owned club if it was at all possible - then it really WOULD be "The People's Team". But its a non-starter in the time-frame. And anyway, it would prevent the acquisition by a sugar daddy (or a load of Daddylets) that we really need eventually to compete at the highest level.

I'll take that as meaning you can't then.

Sell a couple of young and up and coming players every year to make ends meet?

From what I understand we have enough money from gate receipts etc to pay all the bills, but the income doesn't pay off the debt so when we clear the debt the clubs income pays all the expenses.

I have just had a text from a friend of mine this afternoon and he has said that he saw Garry Hetherington at The Holiday Inn in Brighouse and that he met with Craig Kopczak and John Bateman,i hope that this is not true
He is not the kind of friend that would rub my nose in it what with it being April Fools day,as he is an arm chair Bulls fan too

0/10. Poor effort.