Thetownend.com

This may be a stupid question but what is a rights issue?

This keeps being banded about as the saviour of the club?

It's where the club issue out the rights for stuff. For example I bought the rights to be the official stfc rasta jew. I now own the rights to this and if anybody else claims to be the official stfc rasta jew then I can sue their anal passage with my 12 inch cock.

:shock:

Well thats cleared that up, bollocks I had my eye on the rasta jew gig. Bastard!!

 Its a noise you make when you've a man cold.

I think it's to do with the Board wanting to change supporters rights.

Apparently they're issuing new ones.

The right not to ask where the moneys gone.

The right not to criticise the board, no matter how inept.

The right to be apathetic sheep.

The right to go to Chippenham (Or elsewhere) to watch home games.

The right to think MD is the One True Messiah, who will bring the club back to the glory years.

And many, many more..................

The serious answer is:

A rights issue is where the right to buy x amount of shares for every y you hold. e.g. a 1 for 5 rights issue would be where 1 share was offered for sale (to you) for every 5 you hold.

This has the advantage of raising additional funds without diluting the power of the major shareholders, provided they take up their option (right).

So essentially much as at the present position has proven. You give them your money for 'shares' you get shares but they mean absolutely fuck all as the directors what they want.

Si Pi is Right.

Ah................. but is it in the club or the holding company ?

So I'm wrong?

Fuck! I thought I was beginning to get my head around all this.........

Not sure it really matters in the grand scheme. If more shares are issued in the holding company, then that company would still have the same amount of control over the football club, as no more shares from the club have been issued.

That said, there could be a crafty scheme to shift power within the holding company in order for certain individuals to have more influence than others with regards to the voting rights of the shares owned in STFC.

The mind boggles...

Just for arguments sake. Would this affect BPs' position if the Clubs stance that his 1.2 million was for shares in the Club was upheld and the rights issue was for the holding company?

My head's beginning to hurt again...................

The rights issue was mooted a few weeks back as almost a side note in one of the many rather bizarre club statements we've had recently (IIRC this was the same one where they said the Consortium backer - singular - was American) and it was then stated that a rights issue "had been launched" in the holding company and that they were considering doing a rights issue in the club as well. Given that the only shareholders in the holding co are the Wills family and a block of shares held through a trustee/firm of solicitors (which may be being reserved for a development partner or may be already held by a 3rd party - Mr D?) it would seem fairly bizarre to view a rights issue as a mechanism for raising funds, as the Wills family would be raising from fresh capital from, erm, themselves. So FWIW, given that no-one knew anything about this "launch" and we've not heard a lot since, I'd be inclined to view it as part of the ongoing blizzard of bullshit. Unless there's more to that nominee holding than meets the eye or the Wills family have recently given a block of shares to someone they then hope to raise funds from via said rights issue. All clear now? Good, good.

The rights issue is in the holding co - if the club claim that BP's shareholding is in the holding co (and that's not clear as at different times they've said it's in both the holding co and the club); and if that claim was subsequently upheld by a court; then it would be a way of diluting his stake in the holding co. But that's a lot of ifs - best not to hurt your head over it  :D

It depends, I'm not wholly familiar with all the shareholders in the club, despite seeing accounts as a shareholder and getting my accountant Dad to look over them with me.  If we had a large number of significant shareholders that didn't want to take up their right BP would be able to up his stake.  As the has one major shareholder and his 'cronies' who will all tow the party line it would need someone like Wendy Godwin to help BP to increase his holding.  I think many fans took up shares a few years back from Cliff Puffett, so like many clubs we have a large number of very small shareholders.  I for one would be questioning whether to buy more shares as I have little faith that the money would be doing any good under the current regime.

Call my cynical, but I think the only logical reason the club would raise a rights issue is to dilute the shareholding and therefore make it difficult for the consortium to gain a controlling share.

But if as Paul D points out the RI is in the holding company this would not dilute power in the club (with the minority shareholders).

Interstingly Paul has raised some points about BP that I would personally be concerned about. Not being a lawyer type, I wonder if it is found after a RI that someone owns shares, do the rights (and the shares) get transferred to them? Seems a bit sneaky and wrong if you can just make a RI when that doubt is being cast.

I understand that the club has a multitude of shareholders and the holding company is something of a 'closed shop', but what power does the holding co. have and what does it do?

Well a holding company is a company that holds shares in another company. It is often referred to as a 'parent company'.

An example is that 'a holding company' holds 50% of shares in 'a club', therefore the holding company has 50% of voting rights in the club. Within the holding company are individual shareholders who each have a certain amount of power in the decisions the holding company makes. If 2/3 of shareholders in the holding co. want to do vote for one thing in the club, but 1/3 wants to do something else, the majority decision would influence the whole 50% vote in the club.

I hope that makes some sort of sense  :?

Makes sense to me Si Pi, but I kind of already knew about 'holding companies' and such from my Business Studies days.

Interesting it's the same mechanism Militant used to inflitrate branches of the Labour Party in the 80s, via "caucuses". Not relevant, but thought I'd throw that in for good measure and general interest.

Ah all falls into place, cheers SiPi, so effectively SSW can sell parts of his shares (up to 49% to be sure) in the holding company, yet still retain the ability to have assolute control over his shareholding.  IIRC the trust tried to get people to give them the voting rights of their shares when it was set up?  I suppose that makes the trust a kind of quasi-holing company.

And you claim that you're not a socialist???

Come out of the closet, grow the beard, smoke the cigars and don the beret, PD...

   Ahh the halcyon days of the Militant Tendency...always felt a bit sorry for Dave Nellist....who the voters of Coventry  were prepared to elect....as a Labour MP with known Militant ties, who was then kicked out of the party, in the Blairite move to the right.  Nowt wrong with a bit of infiltration.

 :D

Sod off - grew up on Merseyside in the 80s, there was a lot of it about then ie Militant caucusing everything from local Labour YS groups, to trade union branches to pensioners clubs - winkers the lot of 'em (erm, Militant not the pensioners clubs etc)

Interesting use of language there. There was me thinking that all I did at the age of 16 was fill in an application form, pay my subscription and attend branch and YS meetings, ie join the Labour Party, but apparently I was infiltrating!

I think what you're missing here is that Militants support was recruited from the Labour Party, from people like me that were already members. There wasn't some big covert operation where a couple of thousand Trot revolutionaries all joined the party under false names or something you know.

If you're not careful you'll start to sound like the twats that constantly referred to anyone who's politics they didn't like as "outside agitators". Quite where they thought we all lived I don't know.

I was one of about 7 people that organised the rather marvellous Poll Tax protests in Swindon; at the first of which several thousand locals lobbied the council, stated their refusal to pay, and eventually forced the doors to the council chamber and disrupted the meeting, (where I still maintain that legally there was no way a poll tax rate was set, I know 'cause I was 2 foot from the chair of the meeting shouting through a megaphone when the whole thing broke up in disarray, and I didn't see any kind of recorded vote).

The presence of Militant papers and stickers caused the inevitable knee jerk reaction and the whole thing was put down to "outside agitators". Some of the people that used this phrase used to see us at branch, GMC, and TDLP meetings every bloody month. I'd lived in Swindon since the age of 8, and all but one of the rest of us had been born, and lived their entire bloody lives there.

If you want to talk about the Labour Party being infiltrated mate, you're looking in totally the wrong direction.

Historically the party always had a fairly broad spectrum of left wing political opinion. You'll know about the ILP affiliation, that CP members used to hold party cards and all that. Just about anybody in the TU movement with a left wing agenda was a member or an affiliated member.

Its the Blairs and Mandelsons of the world that are the ones that are completely alien to the roots of the party. Ex-public school, in Blairs case a former tory. Those people have infitrated, taken over and remade the party in their own image.

And isn't it doing a great job!

That gap between the poorest in society and the wealthiest has grown even bigger, the NHS is on the brink of bankruptcy, they've managed to introduce loans to replace grants and tuition fees in HE that even Fowler failed to do under the Thatcher government. All that and a couple of wars that make that little Falklands adventure seem like a masterstroke of foreign policy.

I've spoken to people that say when they look at this Labour government they're reminded of the closing paragraph's of Animal Farm when the animals look between the men and the pigs and can no longer tell the difference between them. But for me that analogy is a bit flawed. After all you can only complain that your leaders have failed and betrayed you if they promised one thing and then did another. The current LP membership haven't really got that excuse. They elected Blair knowing he was a right wing fucker that cared only about being PM. In fact that's why they elected him.

And that lovely smile of his got irritating really quickly didn't it.

:?:

hehe, nice one samdy

hey lumps i must have met you, i was one of the first through those council chambers doors. was a great night. :D

Brilliant

Lumps is a bigger Leftie than Davis  :shock:  8)