Suddenly I'm Not So Sure... | Vital Football

Suddenly I'm Not So Sure...

Soccerates

Soccerates

Vital Youth Team
With all the interest surrounding the possible acquisition of the Club by International Entertainment Corporation (IECorpand the subsequent developments, or lack thereof, I decided to have a little look at the Chairman of IECorp, Dr. Choi Chiu Fai Stanley.

Dr. Choi has been a busy lad. Apparently his registered address, in an apartment on the South of Hong Kong, is a bit overcrowded-
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Who are these other people? None of them show up on IECorp's list of directors.

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Game Centre Developments Ltd is a now-defunct, defaulted intermediary of Albert Hung & Co -

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The vast majority of these other companies that span out from Albert Hung & Co are all defaulted, closed down and had offices in the British Virgin Islands. Albert Hung & Co also was a BVI company. This information is from the Panama Papers and is available to view via Offshoreleaks.icij.org

I know businesspeople always try and surf the curve of what is legal, trying to squeeze a bit of extra money along the way, but I have some doubts about the nature of this prospective takeover. Whilst IECorp aren't themselves named specifically in the Panama papers, it just makes me wonder where the money from the Club will actually end up.
 
I'm no expert in these type of things but i imagine your first point about the shared address is probably an office that acts just as a legal address for the purposes of legalities of doing business. My guess would be Dr Stanley lives and has all of his money outside of that country but needs to have a local address registered to comply with various regulations and laws. I suspect non of them actually live there and may not even know each other, they are just all using the same 3rd party office for the same legal purpose.

For Albert Hung & Co how does that relate to us? I just had a look on Reuters company profile page and Dr Stanleys page and i didn't see a direct connection. Have i missed something and they are tied to this deal in some way?

Regarding where the money goes - intitally there will be no money they can take out as we make annual loses due to our wage bill exceeding our income, so they would be having to pump money in. They wont get anything out of us financially unless they get us back to the Prem and then there is a lot of money to be made. The investment to get us to the Prem would probably be quite significant so if we got up it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to look to recoup that intial investment and make some extra. Promotion is worth about 200m, even if they took say 50% of that out as profit we'd still likely be in a much better position financially than we are now and would never likely have been able to have any percentage of the Prem tv money without them, so hopefully it's a win-win. But you never know until it happens.
 
Only way of looking at it is that way king arry. What the hell have we to lose?
If it all goes breast up at the worst it could be non league after a few more years of fun and believe me and others non league was bloody great fun too.
 
IF the potential new owners get it wrong then, we could lose everything. I remember 'the good old days' at Springfield Park with all the shite facilities and the rip-off owners etc. After everything that DW has given us, I now regard the previous period as bleak and something I don't want to go back to.
 
king_dezeeuw06 said:
I'm no expert in these type of things but i imagine your first point about the shared address is probably an office that acts just as a legal address for the purposes of legalities of doing business. My guess would be Dr Stanley lives and has all of his money outside of that country but needs to have a local address registered to comply with various regulations and laws. I suspect non of them actually live there and may not even know each other, they are just all using the same 3rd party office for the same legal purpose.

For Albert Hung & Co how does that relate to us? I just had a look on Reuters company profile page and Dr Stanleys page and i didn't see a direct connection. Have i missed something and they are tied to this deal in some way?
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My worry, dezeeuw, is that I wouldn't like to see the club pawned off into intermediaries, based in the BVI and then be asset stripped. The infographics are more cautionary; IECorp don't seem to have this so maybe there have been lessons learnt from past experience by these people. They're buying a good club, our club, which I want to see do well and not fall into obscurity, or worse.
 
soccerates - where did you get that info from? I’d be more concerned as to who the Narvasas are - direct link.
What are you trying to tell us?
South Horizons appears to be private housing. Generally companies have registered addresses with their accountants or lawyers.
 
Soccerates said:


My worry, dezeeuw, is that I wouldn't like to see the club pawned off into intermediaries, based in the BVI and then be asset stripped. The infographics are more cautionary; IECorp don't seem to have this so maybe there have been lessons learnt from past experience by these people. They're buying a good club, our club, which I want to see do well and not fall into obscurity, or worse.
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The thing is any takeover is a risk as you never know what the new owners will do. But we do know running a football club has become vastly more expensive, with our small crowds and cheap season tickets it's very difficult to be self sufficient and the Whelan family arent willing to keep putting money in and take annual loses. There is no option to keep the status quo as we are already living beyond our means and without a takeover we are in much greater danger of being forced to sell off all our assets to balance the books the best we can and risk falling down the leagues. The only option is a takeover and to hope we get good new owners.

Also worth noting that we have something like a 70 years lease left on the DW (as do the Warriors) and the council is retaining a stake in the ground i believe that is designed to ensure we both can't be kicked out and the ground sold off. So asset stripping shouldn't at least initially be something to fear as we aren't that valuable unless we get to the Prem in which case we become the goose that lays the golden egg. The issues any club would face is if their investment fails to produce promotion after a few years and they give up but cant find a buyer and we are all vulnerable to that scenario.

Also the fact Henry Cheng was meant to be our original buyer, then it appeared to be Dr Stanleys IEC. Yet a quick look at IECs books shows there's no way they can afford to buy us in their own right and i dont think we've seen Dr Stanley but Mr Cheng has been to the ground more than once does make me think that there is a lot more to this takeover than just IEC or Dr Stanley. I suspect there is a good reason why the takeover is being done in what appears to be an unusual way that we don't know (maybe something like seperation of conflict of interests like Chengs K8 betting co to fulfill FA rules, getting money out of China despite investment crackdowns by their government or tax purposes?) but that will also be the reason it's taking so long. So i think unless we get more clarity on the full make up of this takeover (we may never get it) it's really difficult to judge based on what little we can find on IEC and Dr Stanley as i suspect that is just scratching the surface of a bigger picture that somehow involves Henry Cheng. It's all speculation for the moment but hopefully we'll finally get some answers soon.
 
No one knows whats going on. People try to explain something that either they dont understand or that no one else understands. All this speculation, guessing and chin stroking is neither helpful or interesting.

Why does it matter how many times a bloke goes t the ground before he buys it, Glazer never went to old trafford, the russian bloke never saw chelsea live until he bought them, Whelan wasnt a regular at springfield park before he bought Latics and the bloke that owns spurs hardly ever goes, i could go on....

I know nothing about the chinese tax system I know nothing about the Australian one, other than overly complicated.

I have no idea what the companies books tell us, but i know if you look at my bank balance there is know what on this planet that i can afford this house i own.. But i do and i afford to pay the loan back

Lets all just wait and lets stop the guessing
 
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