I've read a fair bit of the last few pages, much of which has been reasoned and constructive, especially some of the criticism of the Trust, some of which has been yah boo sucks playground stuff. So by and large par for the course - I hope the Trust board do pick out the constructive criticism because it's well put and needs taking on board.
I'd make two specific points on the past and on the future. On the past, I've read a few people say the Trust achieved very little. I'd dispute that (well, I would, wouldn't I?). We were faced with a situation where the club was in very real danger of being destroyed - 2 periods of administration and repeated episodes of "5 minutes from locking the gates" with no sign of learning any lessons from those periods of peril showed that. It was under threat primarily because of the way it was being run by Diamandis and Wills Jr. They, in particular Diamandis, had made it very clear that they would NOT sell up until after they'd secured the pay-off they thought they deserved from a redevelopment that was in their interests not the club's, would have condemned the club to at best the kind of struggles we saw and still see Oxford undergoing under Kassam and in any case always doomed to failure under their leadership. But they refused to accept any of that and pressed on like a bad sea captain heading full steam for the rocks everyone else jumped overboard to avoid.
Under those circumstances, our primary objective was to force the Wills family to jettison Diamandis and to sell to proper owners (NB not anyone - we never had the "Anyone but Diamandis" approach some had). Our secondary objective was that they should sell to the alternative we presented. We failed in that secondary objective, we succeeded in the first. Had we not succeeded in the first, I'm quite convinced we wouldn't have a club now.
Secondly, looking to the future. I don't think achieving a shareholding in Seebeck/Swinton/AN Other Holding Co is worthwhile, as it's too easy to simply swap out the underlying vehicles, leaving the Trust holding worthless paper. Likewise, a simple shareholding in the club itself is not worthwhile without also achieving a change in the Articles of Association to make a certain level of shareholding (e.g. 25%) a "blocking shareholding" that can veto (for example) changes to the share allocation. That's to prevent the kind of dilution that happened with Black when he diluted the shareholding and overnight over £10,000 worth of Trust investment was wiped out to about 100 quid. Or indeed anything much else - as it stands unless you own the majority of the shares, you don't have squat. So unless the Trust can gain a controlling interest in the club (unlikely) or ally itself with another minority shareholder to achieve a majority between them (again unlikely and likely to be unpalatable - hands up who fancies a Jed/Trust "dream team"?), you need to achieve some kind of agreement with the owner to buy a significant %age of shares and to amend the Articles of Association to create a threshold where that gives you some degree of at least veto powers (e.g. on wiping out your shareholding, selling the ground if we ever own it, etc etc). Otherwise, you spend a lot of money on pissing in the wind. I'll wait for Si Pie to correct me on why I'm wrong here
Oh and I'm aware that the changes of securing such an agreement are extremely remote right now, but I don't see it's worth paying 0000s for 10, 20, 25, 30% of the club/holding co unless you get that kind of agreement with it.
