Partly in view of the fact that somehow we've found a shed load (or even a warehouse load) of money to replace the pitch, and partly because I'd lost interest in this until recently, I thought I'd put my thoughts on the matter to the forum.
Firstly, with regard to the floating charge against GFC from Barclays - there is no evidence that this is against the £9.05m. If Barclays are the club's main bankers then it will be fairly standard practice to have a charge against the club to cover any overdraft facilities or short term financial arrangements that may be put in place. I believe that this is the purpose of the charge.
Everything else can only be commented on in relation to the 2017 accounts that were filed earlier this year which resulted in this thread being created. With that in mind ...
The £9.05m loan, previously on the books of PD, is now on the books of Holdings, not of GFC. GFC is not liable for the loan. As has been said, PS only owns 75% of GFC, but does own 100% of Holdings.
A the time when PD was struck off by voluntary arrangement (January 2017) I contributed to a thread on this board questioning where the £9.05m had gone, and it was the general consensus that it had at last been able to be written off. That is now evidently not the case.
However there is no charge registered against Holdings, so if that loan is secured by guarantee it logically will be a personal guarantee, not a company guarantee. And if it is a personal guarantee then the name of the guarantor is not recorded publicly. It’s also worth mentioning that the amount of bank loan interest paid in 2016-17 was reported as £66,059 in both GFC and Holdings’ accounts. As the £9.05m loan is not recorded in GFC accounts this leads me to believe that interest is not being paid on that loan. It’s recorded in GFC accounts that interest of £63,000 was paid to Three Directors for their loan, leaving £3,059 resulting from other activities, which is fair enough.
At 31st May 2017 PD no longer existed, and so surely could not be consolidated into Holdings' accounts. Although there may have been activity in PD's business during the year, the accounts are supposed to reflect the state of affairs at the time of the financial year end (31st May), and therefore on 31st May 2017, according to the accounts filed, the loan still existed.
So who is actually owed the £9.05m, who is prepared to continue to allow the debt to exist, but not charge interest on it?
As a further point, although Holdings is supposed to be a holding company, obviously some business has been transacted through the company in 2016-17. The only company that can be consolidated into the accounts for the year is GFC. However there are certain differences in the BS that I don’t understand how have arisen. In terms of income, the reported turnover in both sets of accounts is the same, but the cost of sales in GFC accounts is £5.374m compared to £5.509m in Holdings, so as a bottom line, Holdings’ nett income was -£132,457, compared to a profit of £2,084 for GFC. Could the difference be (probably legal) costs incurred in moving the loan to Holdings from PD? £135,000 seems a lot of money for that, but there again we don't have any information about the loan, other than its existence.
From all of the above you'll be acutely aware that I don't have the answers, but hopefully have made the matters surrounding the questions a bit more clear. We SHOULD see the 2018 accounts by the end of February 2019. Anyone prepared to run a sweepstake on when we'll actually get to see them?
