Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:41 am  

So from what we are saying, Hood is less of a liar, but more of an incompetant? Either way, he should be savvy enough to realise that his position is untenable in most BUlls fans' eyes. Problem is, if he's made himself personally liable by injecting cash / mortgaging his home etc..., he isnt simply going to walk away, and we are stuck with him! unless somebody buys his shareholdomg at a price that covers his liabilities.

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:50 am  

I can see that going into Administration at this stage of the season would be much more difficult than at the end of the season. At least then there's some time to sort things out and, most importantly, start generating income from season ticket sales.

I'm still not convinced though that staying out of Administration will lead to us retaining our better young players. Even if the pledge is successful it only averts the immediate crisis. In the complete absence of any meaningful information from the Board, I would fear that we'd still have to offload Bateman, Whitehead and a few others to keep going.

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:53 am  

Its been over 24 hours since the shock went out - here's some thoughts - not all my own - but a compilation....

They Bulls shareholding is such that no sugar daddy will be prepared to step in.

From memory - Chris Caisley owns about 25% of the shares but suspect that over 80% of the shares are owned by people no longer connected to the club.

This (if accurate) is a major stumbling block for the long term future planning.

Caisley himself has had divided loyalties over the last few years and has acted as agent for several players at the club.

Some of those players have left for pastures new, with contracts negotiated by Chris Caisley. Sam Burgess for example.

After a meeting with Hood about four years ago, he struck me as a very focussed but cautious man, intelligent but not in any way dynamic.

Maybe he is the wrong man for the job or maybe not - don't have enough knowledge to be sure.....

Events over the next couple of weeks may well prove him to be a fool or a genius....

The way is clear for a wealthy backer to come forward now.

Any such person would be worshipped by the Bulls faithful and be able to take charge of a club that has the possibilies to dwarf Huddersfield and Warrington in terms of potential support.

Changes to planning guidelines announced today will make it much easier to build retail facilities as part of an Odsal redevelopment and solve the financing problems for a new stadium.

It's not known yet what Bull owe HMRC but the image rights issue is still unresolved as far as the Bulls are concerned and they will owe some PAYE. Probably will not owe any corporation tax as it's been a while since they recorded a profit!

The Bulls are blaming the bank, in part, for their problems because the bank removed their overdraft facility. As far as anyone outside the club knows there are no outstanding loans with the bank. There must be some cash in the bank as they are still in a position to trade and zero cash plus zero income and some debt would make them technically insolvent. Hood has stated that they can only continue to trade for a couple of weeks.

The Bulls are only asking people to pledge to give £100 and if they don't hit the target and go bump you would expect them not to ask people to honour their pledges.

At a guess - what we have is a company with very little (if any) debt but no cash. They now don't have any access to credit at the bank and very little income for the remainder of the season.

On the bright side

The club owes nothing to the RFL having just paid the loan back

Owes nothing to any other club in Superleague (Leeds payments for Harris ended last season)

The ground will NOT now be sold to the highest bidder (for tipping) should the Bulls fold

This should mean that if the club enters administration and a buyer could be found who was prepared to pay a nominal amount a sympathetic view would be taken by the other clubs and the RFL.

With no bank involved and hopefully no major problem with HMRC any money paid would be used to buy out the existing shareholders.

It may then be possible to hold on to the lion's share of the playing talent and still keep membership of Superleague.

The timing of this is also interesting. Right now all clubs are committed to spending up to the cap or their own budgets so they will not be in a position to cherry pick our best players.

It is in everyone's interest for a Bradford club to carry on in Superleague so lets see what happens.

[Bullseye]

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 8:59 am  

Cibaman wrote:

I'm still not convinced though that staying out of Administration will lead to us retaining our better young players. Even if the pledge is successful it only averts the immediate crisis. In the complete absence of any meaningful information from the Board, I would fear that we'd still have to offload Bateman, Whitehead and a few others to keep going.

Unfortunately that's where I am too. I think the club really need to sell their business plan, why will it be a success? What's to stop us being in this situation in 6 months, all £100 plus worse off, having already tapped all the goodwill from the RL family and lost our better players anyaway?

Having spoken to a few people a lot have serious doubts and this is making them reluctant to pledge the full amount they may be able to afford. I think most will pledge something but they have serious reservations.

I think the club need to address this group rather than playing on fear without providing any concrete plans for the future. Simply saying we have a business plan moving forward isn't enough.

I'd love to know what's happening behind the scenes and if we have any genuine new backers in the pipeline!

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:18 am  

As a lifelong Widnes Vikings fan, but first and foremost a lifelong Rugby League fan, I just wanted to offer my sympathies for the situation you find yourselves in as fans, through none of your own doing. It sounds like your board, as ours did at the time, have an awful lot to answer for!

We've been there ourselves, very recently, and I consider us very fortunate that we managed to come out of the other side, rebuild and regroup and build our club back up.

I sincerely hope that Bradford come out of this as a stronger club, in whatever form that may take, as I feel that the loss of any professional RL team would be a sad loss for the sport as a whole.

The selfish Widnes fan in me says that the best option may be administration, which may allow us the chance to capitalise on your misfortune, however the RL fan in me who wants to see this seasons SL competition continue as normal feels that it's perhaps best for the clubs immediate survival to be secured and the deeper issues addressed once we are sure that there will continue to be a club.

For this reason, I have pledged and also urged other Widnes fans to do so. I will also continue to push #savethebulls on Twitter as much as I can. @Hull_Viking


Best of luck to you, and looking forward to hammering you guys in a couple of weeks!

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:44 am  

Cibaman wrote:

If the club went into Administration, wouldn't any new owner be able to negotiate a good deal on the lease? Who else would rent it from the RFL?

This is assuming a new owner, which imo is a big assumption.

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:53 am  

Adeybull wrote:

I doubt it would revert to the council, since the parties to the head lease are now the RFL and the council.

Whether a new entity could negotiate a sub-lease with the RFL on better terms than the present one (which, make of it what you will, I was assured was a good deal for the club...) can at this stage only be a matter for conjecture, I guess.

We had a long long debate at the Bullbuilder board meeting last night about the advantages, disadvantages and consequences of going into administration. It obviously helped that some of us have experience in this field. In short, we concluded that any protracted period of administration would probably (there can never be any certainty, so you have to look at the balance of probabilities) lead to the club in an ything like its present form never rising again. In particular, the administrator would have to start selling off assets pretty well immediately to generate cash to continue operating. You'd have to assume you would lose the very young, upcoming players that the club is depending on for its future.

The only way we could see an administration working would be if there was a 24-hour prepack - i.e. the new vehicle and financing is already in place when the administration order is granted by the High Court. Administrator is appouinted 3pm Monday, 9am Tuesday he announces he has sold the assets etc to NewBulls Ltd. Creditors are presented with a fait acompli, and (as with most prepacks) scream merry hell that they have been shafted (which invariably they have). BUT...such a prepack is invariably fronted by insiders - usually some or all of the management, sometimes a major shareholder. Without detailed inside information, it is very hard to put everything in place before getting your hands on the books and records and staff.

The prospective new owners will already have lined up all the necessary stakeholders (in our case those would have to include the RFL, the Council, the new players' union and maybe the GMB, maybe Sky, maybe Stobarts, maybe existing sponsors, the more important of the various other quangos and bodies the club engages with - as well as any external financing) before the administrator is appointed. And, of course, carried out the necessary due dilligence. We concluded it must be highly unlikely the existing management would be entertaining this option, and there has been no evidence that Caisley (the only other credible "insider") is well-advanced with such a project (although that could change, obviously). So, again on balance of probabilities, we have to assume at this stage that there is no "quick fix" on the horizon.

Speaking personally, as for what caused this disaster, it is obviously easy to point the finger at an inept and untruthful board. That is certainly what probably most people would conclude from how this all came out. And indeed, many many fans have made their views on this subject abundantly clear. For my own part, my immediate reaction was one of incredulity, and of feeling very badly betrayed. Followed shortly afterwards by anger at how we could be assured in January that everything was fine, and in March that we are two weeks away from being fed to the fishes. You could not make it up, could you?

But are things always as they first seem? So far, as we manage to piece together more facts and "information", a picture is starting to emerge that suggests that in January the club WAS confident that the situation was OK; but that events that they could not have anticipated (or have planned for) in the interim period have changed all that. Certainly that is the story coming out of the club, and at this stage, to me it seems to be stacking up. That situation could change, obviously, and whatever happens it seems Hood personally has lost the confidence of many of the fans by the manner of his communication and explanation over recent months. The extent that this is down to the man not the necessity of the circumstances may never be known.

But, as far as I personally can see, OK going into administration could lead to a new ownership and management, and certainly a resolution of the shareholding situation that Maislebugs so rightly points out is an enduring impediment to our future progress. Equally, it could lead to oblivion. But IMO it would very probably lead to the loss of the young talent we have coming through on which the future of the club needs to be built, whatever the outcome. And that is something I really cannot subscribe to. And in any case, even though I know others may not agree, I remain strongly of the view that Hood would stand down if a suitable successor would manifest himself. And it may well be that this will happen, if (as the club are suggesting) the commitment from the fans helps encourage a new investor to come on board. Guess only time will tell!

How is the story stacking up? Correct me if I'm wrong, RBS have taken away £1million overdraft with immediate effect for no reason? The reason they have given and reiterated by Ryan Duckett is actually bogus. The consequences of this action will almost certainly mean administration and further losses for RBS? I've seen HMRC and banks behave extremely aggressively but I don't believe that story. Even if there is no charge on the lease there must have been reference to the lease in written exchanges, otherwise what is the overdraft secured against? The Bulls themselves say they didn't expect the RFL to take all the money from the sale so I'm guessing that they promised a significant chunk to RBS to reduce the overdraft. When it didn't arrive, they thought we're being had over.

Again, what we have is Ryan Duckett explaining one thing in public whilst in the background the story is finessed and put out through non-public channels. It's extremely irritating and causing a massive loss of trust.

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:54 am  

Bullseye wrote:

Unfortunately that's where I am too. I think the club really need to sell their business plan, why will it be a success? What's to stop us being in this situation in 6 months, all £100 plus worse off, having already tapped all the goodwill from the RL family and lost our better players anyaway?

Having spoken to a few people a lot have serious doubts and this is making them reluctant to pledge the full amount they may be able to afford. I think most will pledge something but they have serious reservations.

I think the club need to address this group rather than playing on fear without providing any concrete plans for the future. Simply saying we have a business plan moving forward isn't enough.

I'd love to know what's happening behind the scenes and if we have any genuine new backers in the pipeline!

This was precisely the consensus of us all at our meeting last night. We have all spoken to (or been approached by) numbers of people saying precisely that. We spent a long time debating whether Bullbuilder could act as a sort of "go-between", seeking to obtain more assurances from the club to then relay to those with reservations. Indeed, a number of members and otehrs have expressly asked that we do this. Our eventual conclusion though was that this route is fraught with potential problems, ranging from it being blamed as an excuse for people delaying pledging, to holding ourselves out to be some kind of auditor of the club's proposals! (as if they would allow that anyway).

What we ARE doing though is asking to meet the club very urgently, for a full-and frank discussion as far as is possible, to try and get some more clarification, at the least, on the sort of issues that are concerning so many fans. The sort of issues that concern me! We ought to have enough expertise, from people who have been round the block enough times in business, to get a clearer idea that it all stacks up. The likelihood is, of course, that - as with some of what various have already been told - confidentiality and commercial sensitivity comes to the fore. Which I am sure is part of the reason why the club has been circumspect about much of the background to the current situation.

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 9:57 am  

I have just emailed the Lord Mayor, Ian Greenwood and my local councillors. It wouldn't do any harm if everyone did I don't think, just asking for help. http://www.bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/governm ... mation.htm "Dear Sirs/Madams, As no doubt you are all aware, the Bradford Bulls have a serious financial crisis and in a very real danger of going under. I am sure you will all agree that this would be almost unbelievably tragic and can not be allowed to happen. The Bulls have always been a shining light in our sometimes much maligned city and have brought positive press and pride to us on many occasions. I am writing to you to appeal for your support for the club at this present time. I urge the council to please offer help to Bradford Bulls to avoid the desperate possibility of their administration. Bradford Bulls are part of what makes this city great. Please help to keep them. Thank you for your time. Best wishes."

I have just emailed the Lord Mayor, Ian Greenwood and my local councillors. It wouldn't do any harm if everyone did I don't think, just asking for help. http://www.bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/governm ... mation.htm "Dear Sirs/Madams, As no doubt you are all aware, the Bradford Bulls have a serious financial crisis and in a very real danger of going under. I am sure you will all agree that this would be almost unbelievably tragic and can not be allowed to happen. The Bulls have always been a shining light in our sometimes much maligned city and have brought positive press and pride to us on many occasions. I am writing to you to appeal for your support for the club at this present time. I urge the council to please offer help to Bradford Bulls to avoid the desperate possibility of their administration. Bradford Bulls are part of what makes this city great. Please help to keep them. Thank you for your time. Best wishes."

Re: Peter Hood says Bulls on brink of going bust. : Thu Mar 29, 2012 10:00 am  

Ewwenorfolk wrote:

Search bradford bulls montage on everyones favourite video site for another reason to pledge. first one. great memories.

Is that the one that that plays along to "run with the bulls"