The Takeover Thread - Duchatelet Finally Sells (Jan 2020)

After 14 notifications it seems I need to respond.

I will argue the posts from sundry parties since my last contribution prove my point. There are so many stories out there nobody apart from those at the negotiating tables can be certain of their information beyond the fact the takeover has not been completed with EFL approval.

I have made no suggestion NLA has an agenda. If I had it would have put me in the same category as the "miscreants" the other night.

My argument is the tone of the message, the persistence of its repetition, the nature of the information/ disinformation, the positioning of the argument indicate to me (as I clearly stated) someone somewhere has an agenda.

I have not even attached any negative connotation to such agenda. Due to the nature of the argument I could but unlike the scenarios faced within 40yrs of the corporate world I am not close enough to the parties to determine the ambition of such an agenda.

Unless you are a party directly involved with the negotiations, bound by NDAs, someone linked to those negotiations is sharing what they believe to be true. I have been to far too many meetings with where people actually at the same meeting walked away with entirely different perceptions all before they added their own influence to the information. It is precisely why people take minutes.

Thus by definition such information is 2nd or 3rd hand and for every layer open to further "interpretation" all of which ignores the point, until the deal is done or not done, people play games.

IF the deal means separation of the ownership of club and ground I will reserve judgement as to what that means for the future of the club until the details are known. I have stressed it is not ideal but it has to be viewed in the context of where we are today and how we get out of this friggin mess. In such event the devil will be in the detail.

In terms of negotiations I lost count of the lendings I declined as a bank manager because the customer was not investing sufficient equity into the deal. It is amazing what people will do when push comes to shove. I would estimate at least 60% came back with a more appropriate application or greater equity investment.

With this level of investment there are no guarantees. In 1993 I spent 6 months on a team working with a US bank to launch a joint venture. We even announced the deal at a conference in NY. The US bank paid for the industry conference and the celebratory dinner. The CEO of the Financial Corporation who owned the US bank killed the deal at the dinner table.

In 1995 I spent 2 weeks in NY thrashing out the same deal with another US Bank. We shook hands on the deal on a Friday. Monday morning we received a letter to buy us out!!!

In 1997/8 I spent 18 months working on a different joint venture with a technology company in Texas. They walked away once. We walked away once. We shook hands on the deal twice and then the bank was subject to a takeover bid and the funding was pulled.

Fortunately I was somewhat more successful with other negotiations or I would have been out of a job.
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For us there is ultimately only one man who knows where he will allow ithe numbers to fall and even he will not know whether he can indeed walk away with what he wants.

Thus I can but repeat the nature of the debate which transpired served nobody.

If the Australians decide to walk away we are left with what exactly?

I have no problem with anyone sharing what they are hearing but at any given point unless you are sitting at the negotiating table 24/7 there is no call to attack or aggressively dismiss anyone.

Such an approach shuts people down and reduces the flow of information. Who exactly does that serve?