I'm sorry I insulted you.

But here's the sequence of events.

1) Allam continues to ride roughshod for weeks over the Airco tenants. The council action appears to be limited to trying to find them homes and helping the Allams' application with the FA.

2) The Allams then breach their lease agreement. In this instance it's the council's job and responsibility to act, right? Basic compliance enforcement, nothing more.

3) You post on here that the council are "not taking this lying down", "waving a white flag" "padlocks on gates"etc.

4) I interpret 3 as overly emotive rhetoric in the context of both point 2 and the absence at that point of any action.

5) The council write a letter to the Allams about considering legal action. I post several times that I'm really pleased about this, in the context of 2.

6) You have several personal goes at me and accuse Adam Pearson of "raising millions against the SMC"

7) You repeatedly talk about your personal contribution to sport in Hull. Not sure whether the Jordan reference fits better here.

That's it really. We're going round in circles now. To clarify for the fifth time. I'm glad the Council is doing its job. The reality here is that the Allams have been eroding our tenancy status for several years. Let's hope you can expedite matters to the point of conclusion rather than compromise that means the war rather than the battle is won. I wish you luck, they appear to have little appetite for reasoned argument, consistency or compliance.

She's an accountant, it's in their DNA

It was relevant , I accept that I made a mistake but the point remains that whoever it was who took out the loans which I accept again was Russell Bartlet it has been put as a debt on the SMC accounts, which has left any realistic chance of the council taking up the Allams £1 offer for the SMC at zero, had this not been the case and the council had took back the SMC this would not be happening, so relevant? absolutely.

SMC advertising for a Managing Director and Facilities Manager! Apply to Hull Tigers.

Apologies accepted, but when I was talking about White flags and not taking it lying down, I was already aware of what Steve was planning, and having been told in confidence it was quite difficult for me to convey the message without making the announcement when I new Steve was talking to the BBC, Without wanting to be accused of Grandstanding again, there is a Humber Sports Partnership Board meeting on Monday PM and a property and assets meeting at 9am i'm sure what will be leading the agenda, and I will within reaason let everyone on here know what is happening.

I'm not saying the mortgage debt is irrelevant (although them SMC accounts suggest that an agreement is in place with RBS to repay all the debt),
I'm saying that AP's sale of the SMC is irrelevant.

Are you saying that the mortgage was taken out to fund the sale of the SMC, so AP is implicated?

=#FF0000edit: I guess when Mr Allam says the debt will be settled in full, what he really means is he will lend £?m to the SMC who will then be in debt to Mr Allam to the tune of £?m.

What are the scenarios for action? Forcing the SMC to make good the Arena surface, revoke the City exclusivity and open the venue up again? Or further-reaching than that, to the extent of lease termination?

..... a forensic audit of the SMC accounts might be interesting.

If, hypothetically, the council could take control of the arena and stadium (free of the SMC debts, obviously), that would be attractive, imo. I'm not a fan of private control of public assets - and this is an extreme example of why.
The morning after though, with current tenancy agreements, could the council run the stadium at something approaching breakeven? I guess it would be hard for you to speculate, especially publically, but I imagine it's a thought that has at least crossed a few council minds.
Presumably there'd need to be some re-negotiation, even if it was viable - a council-run SMC buying a tranche of Hull FC season tickets wouldn't work, I assume.
If it can be run at breakeven, then it should be under public control. And if it can't the be run at breakeven or better, then ultimately it'll probably have to covered by the public purse, as no private company will take it on - not one that isn't trying to leverage control to gain ownership anyway.
Running an out and out community asset like the arena at a loss wouldn't be problem. The stadium tenants are important civic institutions, and should be supported, but ongoing 'subsidy' would be politically difficult for all parties.
As somebody suggested in an earlier post, I think, an independent audit would be interesting.

HCC should take back ownership of the KC, sell or lease it to a third party (who are just a go between) then let both teams take out 100 year leases on the place with joint ownership on a pro-rata peppercorn basis but both these teams are responsible for the upkeep (pro-rata again). Then all three clubs in Hull would be one a even keel

When the KC first opened, Hull were expecting gates of 8k and city hadn't averaged more than 10k for 30 years.
Small profits were still made by the SMC, despite the so called over generous subsidies both Hull and city had negotiated (to prevent either club going bust again).
Then Mr Allam took over.
Surely profits can be achieved again by an SMC, either under the full control of the council, or a totally independent body.

Of course the stadium can be run at break even or pretty much no sporting club would be able to afford a stadium. We have the advantage of no build cost mortgage to service, a premier league football club and a well supported SL team. Add in events and the like and the KC should be generating a tidy profit if the books weren't being massaged. When you factor in the lack of non match day income, lack of stadium sponsor income, lack of match day food and drink sales income etc. we pay well over the odds for the kc. Would be interesting to have a proper comparison to the dw and the john smiths, neither of which cost their clubs anywhere near what ours does and neither of which appear to be a financial mess

That would be reasonable.

This, having paid for the stadium etc outright it leaves you a lot to play with in terms of attracting use of all the facilities even accounting for the community stuff.
I suspect City haven't even being paying their way pro rata compared to FC for some period of time, not according to Allam's figures anyway

I wonder how many applicants there have been for the manager's job.. in small print, 3 month probation with one month rolling contract

The stadium is older now and if one set of set of accounts can be politicised, so can another. It's very plausible, but 'surely' is possibly pushing it on the limited available evidence, imo.

A lot of clubs do run at a loss though. Even those that run at a profit, it's hard to define how much of that is attributable to the stadium. You need one, in the same way a taxi driver needs a cab, but it's an expense to tax, maintain, put fuel in and insure it - it's driving it that makes the money.
And my point was can it be run at minimal risk to the public purse with current tenancy agreements? It doesn't really matter how successful Hull and City are, if the SMC doesn't breakeven - unless they voluntarily chuck more money in. Even in it's days of profitability, it was only modestly profitable and adding in events didn't help much.
To return to my rubbish taxi analogy, if I rent a car to a driver on very generous terms, but remain responsible for servicing it, petrol etc, then even if he or she is doing well, I can still lose money.

Yep.

Incidentally, when was the last time the Allams made a public statement on this case?

Not since the pitch went down and certainly not since the letters were leaked to Angus Young.

Nothing in response to the legal letter from the council and nothing further to Brady's appearances on Humberside. In fact James Hogarth repeated several times his 'disappointment' that the Allams were unresponsive to calls to invite them onto Sportstalk on Tuesday. He didn't try to hide his disgust at their reticence.

Where are they?

Ehab was on Humberside when we were in the traffic jam on the M62 trying to get to Wigan, they haven't said a public word since, that was the 13th March.

The KC pitch was changed to accommodate Hull City being in the Europa league which lasted for the grand total of one game and now Hull FC have to play on a shorter pitch, and now the Arena has been changed and local community clubs aren't allowed to use this facility! ......And this stadium and facilities was meant to be a gift to the citizens of Hull and the local community after the KC shares made so much money! ......My a*se!

The current tenancy agreements would be null and void if the smc lose their right to manage the stadium so it would be up to the clubs and the council to negotiate something new. Currently, city have an income at least 20 X that of Hull yet their proportion of the costs are not being split anywhere near that. I'm sure that Hull have been hit (albeit notionally) with costs of upgrades to meet premier league requirements. No doubt the airco arena changes and the led lighting will be paid through the smc and will be added to the supposed defecit between what we pay and what the smc claims our costs really are.

My point is there are plenty of clubs doing OK with only 1 tenant at the stadium. Having 2 does not double to overall costs so should be more cost effective.

It's all irrelevant as the smc won;t lose it's agreement

Your tenancy would be secure, legally as well as because it is common sense. I'm pretty sure a tenancy isn't affected by a letting agent or even landlord going bust. But yeah, there'd have to be at least some cosmetic changes. I like your 5% plan.


I hadn't thought the smc would lose the agreement, and they still probably won't - but they do seem to be bashing away at the self destruct button pretty vigorously right now.

I'm starting to wonder if this is the point. Do they want out of the SMC before they sell City? Thus leaving the new SMC owners with a multi million pound debt - owed mainly to the Allams?

Did they know exactly what they were doing when they compromised the Airco, after HCC declined the £1 purchase offer?

It doesn't matter how much the SMC owes Allam because he will never get it if the SMC has no assets; nobody else would be liable to pay it. In fact if it is loaded with debt nobody would buy it anyway. If the council terminates the head lease that would be the end of the SMC and its creditors including Allam would lose their money. That may include money paid to the SMC by City and FC for rent etc.

The thing is, if they lose the lease, the SMC is the manager of nothing and has all of the debt. A new company, or the council starts with no debt. It is interesting that they have advertised for a new md right now. Wonder why the current MD is leaving? Having worked with him in the past, I wonder if he has said he doesn't like what is going on and walked.