StInky

His support and personal involvement ensured the success of the "Ron Davies Day" at SMS. I wish him well.

There'll be one or two glasses of schnapps downed in the StInky household tonight! Vielen dank und vielen gluck.

Didn't he grow up to be David Bowie?

Made me laugh!

Have just phoned Begbies London asking for Richard Fry's email. They gave it to me. Suggests he does work there. So why have they taken his details off their website?

So let me get this straight:- Richard Fry, as our Barclays Bank manager, insisted we reduced our overdraft back in October. Rupert resisted the temptation to raise any cash in January. Cash crisis approaches towards the end of March. Rupert begins discussions with Begbies Traynor and seeks their advice(?). Begbies have been singled out by WH Ireland as a "company to watch". We exceed our overdraft limit, cheques are bounced, presumably with R Fry's knowledge. Rupert, having lost the support of the bank, then appoints BT as administrators. Then we find out that R Fry has moved to BT, but not yet publicly announced? A perplexing series of events, n'est-ce pas?

Thanks for that.

I don't think the Bank Manager was a Richard Fry and it was Rupert who appointed BT.

Of course, but I think Art's eyes must be going if he thinks that wasn't EC in the photo. And his memory too - Stevie was in Blind Faith and the Spencer Davis Group; Muff only in the latter as far as I am aware.

You're joking, right? That must be the Muff Spencer who played with the Stevie Davis Group then!

When is the next stadium loan payment due? 31st August? £2m?

Nope. "Trading unprofitably" just about covers it!

1m less cash (asset) = 1m less debt (liability). The company's value still doesn't change! But I agree, whilst the company is trading unprofitably there will be a cash drain.

Just to reiterate . . . if you sell a player for 1m, you're swapping one asset (the player) for another (cash), so no change in the value of the company.

There is a growing misconception . . Lowe put us into administration. He appointed BT. And if that was on April 1st (?) then you can be fairly certain that he and Mark Fry of BT had been discussing the situation (long?) before this.

I suppose Mark Fry will carry on administering SLH and its assets until, in his judgement, the break up value of the assets exceeds the value likely to be obtained from selling off SLH as a whole.

Why unsure mate?

It may be helpful to detail the objectives of administration as per the Insolvency Act:- A. To rescue the company as a going concern B. To achieve a better result for the Company's creditors as a whole than would be likely if the Company were wound up (without first being in administration), failing which C. To realise property in order to make a distribution to one or more secured or preferential creditors.

Good questions. The 6 month figures needed to be lodged by 31st March. Without the Bank's support SLH could not claim to be a "going concern" and it would all be over. My guess is that there was a game of brinkmanship between Lowe and Fry at Barclays. Perhaps Lowe assumed that Barclays would back down and offer their support at the last minute. In which case it was a misjudgement. Or perhaps Lowe, realising that he'd lost the Bank's support, just wanted to create as much damage as possible by calling in the administrators after the League deadline (I don't subscribe to this view by the way). It was Lowe that called in the Administrators on 2nd April, although I imagine Begbies would have been advising Lowe in the period leading up to administration. It would be interesting to know what had been going on behind the scenes.

A bit simplistic, but if Pinnacle are offering 30p in the pound and the Creditors think Pinnacle can afford 75p, I can see that there would be a lot of room for negotiation.

Normally the latter - it depends on what has been agreed with the creditors.

I regularly receive admistrator and liquidator reports on clients that have gone bust. These quote actual hours spent and costs racked up by the administrators/liquidators. Comparing, as far as possible, like for like I calculate that £5k per working day would be more than enough to compensate Mark fry and his team.

The Bell (end)s of St Mary's

Sorry. Couldn't resist it! Actually, I might have written the same thing back in November. The football was entertaining, well worth watching and showing lots of promise, but unfulfilled as it turned out.

That's what makes it fun though. Remember this one? "I think we'll continue to improve and learn and finish around 16th this season."