Interesting piece, with the Yorkshire Post getting some quotes from Roland whilst looking at the leeds takover
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/sport/football/leeds-utd/cellino-s-deal-delayed-further-but-charlton-owner-is-proof-things-can-be-settled-quickly-1-6462544Charlton Athletic were taken over last month by Belgian businessman Roland Duchatelet, who made his fortune in electronics.
He owns a number of clubs across Europe including Standard Liege. Duchatelet, who bought the London club outright, passed the League’s Fit and Proper Persons’ Test just four weeks after first showing concrete interest in Charlton.
To gain an insight into the process that Cellino and Leeds are currently embroiled in, the Yorkshire Post spoke exclusively to Duchatelet about his own experiences of satisfying the criteria laid down by the governing body.
Fresh from his club’s impressive FA Cup win at Sheffield Wednesday on Monday, the Charlton chief last night said: “The process was actually quite straightforward, as long as you have the answers to the League’s questions. None of them were particularly difficult. They (the League) just want to understand whether you have got the money to finance the club’s business plan, as they don’t want their clubs to end up in administration a few months after they have approved a takeover as it would be very embarrassing for them.
“Nearly all Championship clubs need extra funding to help them balance their books. So, the League doesn’t sign off any takeovers unless you can show them that you have got enough money to meet the club’s financial commitments, as well as showing them where that money has come from.
“This meant us providing financial details of all the companies involved in the group so that we could prove that we could meet the financial projects we gave to the League.
“We also had to provide letters showing that we could call upon that funding, as and when the club needed it. You have obviously got to meet the fit and proper persons’ test too, but that’s essentially self-certification against published criteria.
“As long as you haven’t got anything in your background that would lead to you being disqualified, it is relatively simple.
“In our case, we could supply everything the League asked for pretty much straight away and the takeover was approved in around a month.”
Comments
I'd have thought the Mysterons in BVI would have found that something of a nuisance, otherwise they wouldn't have been Mysterons.
"Dutch billionaire Ronald McDonald creates managerial uncertainty at Charlton, who scraped past Oxford United last week in the League Cup, by picking a team made entirely of loan signings from his other football teams Club Belge, Dynamo Kiev and Real Madrid. These include Spanish goalkeeper Alan Thuram, Razor Goonihad and Astrid Evic. The North London club is currently bottom of League 1, having played 3 games more than any other team in the division."
The other quote was something we already knew/feared - two clubs cannot play in European competition if they have the same owner.
Obviously, in the short term it isn't likely we will see the Premier League for at least 4-5 years even by optimistic standards. It is even less likely we will have the chance to play in Europe in the next 10-15 years (barring non-League routes to Europe). So we're looking at the long-term - if Charlton are denied our rightful place to Europe in 2030 due to finishing in the top 5/6 of the Prem because the owner ushers through his pet team SL, then the fans cannot rightly stand for it and there would need to be some effort to either change the UEFA rules on this front, or else petition the owner to sell us or Liege.
Obviously a lot of what ifs here, and it is unlikely we will get to that stage, but it's worth thinking about now. I imagine the most likely scenario is that RD will sell us long before we even sniff European competition. However, it would appear RD's main goal with Charlton is to make us into a team that can have a serious stab at promotion, and to stay up. He isn't going to do this quickly, and he isn't going to do this by forcing our best players to play for Liege. But what we do need is a balanced team, rather than having 2 or 3 game changers and 12 other players who would struggle to make the team sheet for any of the other 23 teams in our division. That will take time.
We also have to be mature about sacrificing players that our owner feels would be better placed elsewhere in the Network - we can't have it both ways, since we will benefit from this network by receiving the talent of our fellow clubs. It's early days to say how this will turn out, and considering we looked like drop candidates well before RD sniffed in our direction I would be cautious in throwing the blame his way if we do end up in League 1 next season. My expectation would be then for us to have won League 1 before April 2015.