The Rover

I believe it is often HMRC who pull the plug on companies. If Rupert is planning this, he will make sure that the VAT and PAYE payments are reasonably up to date before proposing the CVA. If he does it the way I've suggested he and the other Directors choose the timing. This would also explain why there has been no fire sale of players this month. Rupert is actually planning to keep us in the CCC. I f he pulls this off he will be expecting to be seen as the Saviour of Saints. What a thought. :confused:

My guess is that the club will not be put into Administration. Aviva (Norwich Union) and Barclays would lose most of their money if this happened. I think they would far rather do a deal with Lowe. This can happen if the Directors propose to go for a CVA (Company Voluntary Arrangement) without first going into Administration.. Details are here: http://www.one2threecommercial.co.uk/cva.htm From the article: "A CVA can be set up when a company is in liquidation or in an administration, as well as at any other time." Again from the article: "Before the Company Voluntary Arrangement proposal is made, it is possible to make an application to court for a moratorium which prevents creditors from taking action against the company or its property for up to 28 days,.." and " When the CVA has been proposed, a nominee (A licensed Insolvency Practitioner) reports to court on whether a meeting of creditors and shareholders should be held to consider the proposal. The creditors meeting decides whether to approve the CVA. If 75% of the creditors agree to the proposal (75% of the value of debts held by the creditors who actually vote), it is then binding. Any creditors who do not vote and had notice of the meeting are bound by the terms of the arrangement." Presumably the League would not deduct points if this happened? My bet is that Rupert & Co will follow this route if it doesn't.

OK - how about this for a plan: Saints enter Voluntary Agreement - legally binding between a (basically insolvent) company whereby the creditors and the company agree a schedule of repayment of debts rather than sue the company and tip it into insolvency. The positive result for the creditors is that they (hope to) get more of the money owing to them than they would if the company went bust. The advantage to the company & owners is that, assuming they meet their agreed repayments, they retain control of the company and are protected against insolvency for the period of the agreement. This way there is no need for Administration and there is no points deduction. Lowe would keep his job and he, Wilde and Crouch wouldn't lose their shares. Any bets that negotiations are happening as we type? NB Many thanks to SaintBaz on TUI for much of the above info on V.A.

Does anyone know how Voluntary Administration works? I've heard that Lowe could put us into Voluntary Administration and do a deal to reschedule and or reduce our debts with the major creditors (Barclays and Aviva) either before or during this period and then bring us out of Administration by a Company Voluntary Agreement (CVA). I believe this is what David Sheepshanks did at Ipswich and he remained Chairman afterwards: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/i/ipswich_town/2950192.stm I had rather hoped that if we had to go through administration, at least we would see the back of Lowe and Wilde but perhaps we won't. Does anyone know more?

So basically what Lowe did yesterday was to give a half-hour team talk. It would have saved a load of money if we'd not bothered with the Dutch sextet (or however many there are now) and appointed Rupe's as manager. After all he's already got the monogrammed track-suit. What a laughing stock this club has become.

As has been said above, I think we could well be in administration within the next week or so. I'm sure I read that we would not be able to afford to turn down any good offers for players this month. Surely the converse also applies - we haven't managed to sell anyone and are therefore well and truly in deep cack. I just hope that Lowe doesn't have some cunning plan to rise like a phoenix from the ashes which would cetainly be my nightmare.

Lowe must realise by now that JP is not going to save the club from relegation or attract enough punters to save us from administration. I think he's up to something. Maybe he wants to bring on administration while acting as if he doesn't, hence being seen to meet with JP to sort things out. I wonder if he is already preparing a bid to buy the club out of administration. I suspect he'll never dare set foot in SMS on a match day if he does.

That is the only trouble when the likes of Stanley aka SF76 on here and Chester Perry on TUI get involved. They have always been so obsessively anti - Lowe, that now there is real reason to object to what he has done they will frighten sane supporters away from getting involved. I can't quite understand why Stanley doesn't like Lowe. I'm would have thought they all shared the same right wing politics - they should be best mates.

I reckon I know who the mystery person is. If I'm right he's a decent person and the self styled "most optimistic Saints fan there is" but I don't see him having the financial clout to do much about our situation. Sorry but I'm through with false dawns. We ain't going to solve this one with positive thinking.

Well said Duncan. This isn't the time for pontificating. I do think that the only thing we can do as fans is to boycott matches. But unless the ST holders are willing to forgo their pre-paid seats it still won't have enough impact.

Why not tell him that the team keep losing because the big bad man who owns the club keeps spoiling everything. You could get him and his pals to prepare a petition and send it to the Echo. All good education. You could also tell him that in England mothers are Mums not Moms. HTH.

It's going to be pathetically small, insignificant, and meaningless imho unless it's set up so that ALL forum users can vote ie whether or not they've paid £5 for the priviledge. Otherwise it's a good idea. I also agree that a boycott right now, which includes current ST holders is the only way Lowe and co will listen. This was suggested byu David Armstrong on Radio Hampshire this evening.

Very tempting GM but I don't think it's a bad idea to have a pension fund in some shape or form. I don't want to have to join Tescos fleet of geriatric delivery drivers in order to make ends meet in the years to come. I'm still intending to splash out on a decent long haul foreign holiday this year though!

All I want to know is whether the FTSE100 is going to stay above 4000 this year. So if you could ask your friends for me GM and jonah I'd be most grateful. If it's going any lower I'll be stuffing my mattress with £10 notes.

Totally agree - I said much the same as you on GM's 'You Don't Know What You're Doing... ' thread earlier today. If the idiots running the club into the ground haven't even got together to discuss how to get more bums on seats they have no right to be Directors of any company, far less our football team. I had this discussion via email with Luker last year, when I argued that they should be offering the Early Bird prices to all comers (not just renewing ST holders) to boost attendances. His answer? 'I think we've pitched it about right'. Sorry mate you didn't. God help us.

What gets me is that the club haven't even discussed reducing prices to get higher attendances amongst themselves yet. Luker says: “But what I can do as box office manager is look at more inventive pricing for next season. “We need to be more inventive as a club. “That’s my personal view, it’s not something we’ve discussed internally yet. “We need more people coming to watch the games so we need to look at our prices." It's amazing, the club is in financial meltdown and they haven't got round to talking about the most basic way of boosting income by getting more bums on seats. Do this Board deserve to still be in business? Personally I don't think so. You'd hardly call them a pro-active bunch.

That's very hard Weston. As an experienced ex-Premiership player he probably has an extravagent lifestyle and many ex-wives to support. Surely it's our duty to finance him.

I think you'll find that your friend has been banned - presumably (and quite rightly) for his piece of nastiness towards FF earlier today. I'm glad I didn't say that to Mr Wallace - I'd have felt a right pr*ck when I sobered up. Still better than feeling someone else's when your'e p*ssed. :)

As you said elsewhere, the stadium loan is paid in yearly instalments (around about June I think.) How does this mean we can't have been running up debts on Tax, NI and VAT over the winter, especially as they are paid to HMRC in arrears? I didn't mean to infer that YOU had said we were losing money month by month. My guess is that we do have a monthly negative cashflow though, as we did in the last financial year. If you are suggesting we use any spare (?) incoming cash to make structured overdraft repayments instead of making provision for paying the next stadium loan installment, we would be robbing Peter to pay Paul. We will be well and truly in the mire when the Aviva payment becomes due (if we survive that long.) I believe that we traditionally rely on advance Season Ticket purchases to meet the loan tranches. As probably only you and GM are renewing next year they won't help David Jones much. OK GM you have me bang to rights. I was oversimplifying rather than writing a treatise on company accounting. Yes of course the overdraft is all about cashflow. However I strongly suspect the cashflow is negative at the moment. Even if it is positive it would be foolhardy to agree to a steady reduction in overdraft facility when provision should be being made for the next annual stadium repayment. On your last point, if you are right, isn't it scandalous that highly qualified professional teachers are paid less than service engineers.

Barclays and Norwich Union (who fyi are now called Aviva by the way Jonah) are not the only large institutions that are likely to be unpaid creditors if the company folds. Many companies are forced into Admninistation by HMRC for unpaid VAT and/or PAYE payments. This is of course the reason several clubs have had point deductions as they have not been able to agree CVA's with the taxman on coming out of Administration. Lowe and Wilde haven't exactly excelled at brining in new money have they? Why should it happen now in the depths of a credit crunch? (I can see that Lowe might 'find' investment after Administration so that he can buy the whole club for a song). So according to you we're losing money month by month and still paying off the overdraft . That would be a pretty amazing trick if it could be done. I really can't imagine why UP doubts your business acumen jonah. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

If Fitzhugh Fella is right Chapel End, the current management is in it's death throes and administration will be here by the month end:

The club's debt is growing larger every month, not helped by below break even attendance figures. Barclays have not given the club an unlimited overdraft. Sooner or later the club won't have the funds to pay salaries or the VAT and PAYE that is owed to the tax man. When that happens, either the directors call in the Administrators as the club will be insolvent or HM Revenue will do it for them.

In view of Fitzhugh Fellas excellent post which suggests that Administration will happen as soon as this month perhaps we should be discussing the aftermath? http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=158472&postcount=79 I wonder if Leon Crouch will buy the club from the Administrators to help ensure our survival. If so who will replace Jan P? It's a pity Nigel Pearson and Billy Davies aren't still available.

From reading FF and Morph's comments above it is looking like we will be in Administration fairly soon. I don't underestimate the upheaval and problems that this will cause but I think it's got to the stage where things aren't going to improve until it happens. It's a great pity that Crouch and Pearson weren't allowed to continue what they had started, especially as it seems the bank would have backed their plans but it's no use crying over spilt milk. Here's hoping to a brighter future without Lowe. I know we've been here before but hopefully this time we WILL get a club back that feels like it's a part of the community rather than just a dim man's play thing.

And we got fooled again.