The Takeover Thread - Duchatelet Finally Sells (Jan 2020)

harveys_gardener said:

I can't imagine an NDA preventing say, Murphy announcing to the press, our valuation is £30m. The owner wants more.

I can. 

You don't spend £1m on DD that tells you the club is worth say £25m and then offer £35m.
The DD money is a sunk cost, but effectively saves them (whoever 'they' are) from overpaying.
Spend £1m to save wasting £10m? Bargain!

Credit goes to Oohahhmortimer for this link

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-08/josh-harris-david-blitzer-said-to-seek-sale-of-u-k-soccer-club

and on a separate note.. look at Murray's comments when RD took over.. what a load of bollocks that was.... How the heck did Murray decipher thar Roland was good for us:-

Henry Irving said:

A completed DD is a valuable commodity.

Muir can offer it to other groups as a way of speeding the process and getting membership of new groupings.

And he can share the cost with those newer bidders.

You are not the first one to suggest here that a due diligence document can be traded, so I am not having a dig, but in my area of biz this would be a totally bizarre idea. Each buyer has its own idea of what is sufficiently "due". You could be thorough, like WPP, and take several months to go through a business with a smaller turnover than CAFC, or you could be like RD and rush through an entire sale in 4 weeks. There is no standard process for due diligence, even if generally it will explore the same areas. I'm trying to think of an analogy, and came dangerously close to a house purchase. But it isn't as uniform as a survey. It's what each buyer thinks is important to that buyer in assessing the viability of the business in relation to an agreed purchase price.

Positive news on this thread is a custom more honoured in the breach...

Addickted2TheReds said:

Scoham said:

https://twitter.com/dodgercafc/status/1103928270070796289?s=21

https://twitter.com/sjopinion10/status/1104051471954464768?s=21

Kind of respect that to be fair - quite funny haha.

Not everyone is going to actually like Charlton, least of all Simon Jordan, but at least he's honest! Bit weird saying that but hey ho.

At least he doesn't pretend to like Charlton, like Richard Murray,  who is actively involved in running the club in to the ground!

Jordan doesn't like Charlton, says so, but also thinks we deserve better... respect!

*Finds bucket to be sick in*

Actually Murray does like Charlton.....and very much too.
Made some god awful blunders along the way and has now backed himself slowly but surely into an horrific corner.
His heart is in the right place but sadly his head isn’t.

MuttleyCAFC said:

but not as much as he likes himself I suspect! 

Who knows.....an easy thing to say about him.....or anyone who you don’t particularly like come to that.
It’s a kind of throw away catch all put down that one can’t really prove one way or the other.
Met him many times (mostly at Bromley Addicks) and I never had the impression that he loves himself.
Sure, he’s a confident smooth operator, with an assertive character, as I’m sure many who have met him would agree......but to describe him as someone who loves himself is not something I would say about him.
I’m sure he’s sick as a pig at what’s happening at the club and hates it all to the back teeth......especially as some of it is of his own making.
I’d say it’s become a love hate scenario from which he can’t (at present anyway), extricate himself in such a way as to find peace of mind.
Some people say why doesn’t he just walk away.....well I can think of 3.5 million reasons why he doesn’t.......indeed, would you?

Stu_of_Kunming said:

SoundAsa£ said:

MuttleyCAFC said:

but not as much as he likes himself I suspect! 

Who knows.....an easy thing to say about him.....or anyone who you don’t particularly like come to that.
It’s a kind of throw away catch all put down that one can’t really prove one way or the other.
Met him many times (mostly at Bromley Addicks) and I never had the impression that he loves himself.
Sure, he’s a confidently smooth operator with an assertive character, as I’m sure many who have met him would agree......but to describe him as someone who loves himself is not something I would say about him.
I’m sure he’s sick as a pig at what’s happening at the club and hates it all to the back of his teeth......especially as some of it is of his own making.
I’d say it’s become a love hate scenario from which he can’t (at present anyway), extricate himself in such a way as to find peace of mind.

Sorry SoundAs, I don't buy any of that. He's one of the few people in a position to actually do something, yet sticks with self-preservation, if he was really against what is happening there is nothing stopping him from doing something, his money would not be put in any more danger than is currently is.

He can **** off back to supporting Wolves for all I care.

Sure l am damned annoyed at him for some of the things that have gone on.....particularly his spat with Varney which seems to be irrevocably beyond repair.....together they might have steered us down a very different path.
His silence these past months is indeed curios.
He’s ’danced with the devil’ on a number of occasions, maybe it’s once too often and he’s just simply had enough of it.
He’s been quite ill, lost his lovely wife, under the most tragic of circumstances, and is no spring chicken either. I have an idea that he no longer knows which way to turn.
Maybe his family have had a say in things.....we just don’t know.

StigThundercock said:

Henry Irving said:

A completed DD is a valuable commodity.

Muir can offer it to other groups as a way of speeding the process and getting membership of new groupings.

And he can share the cost with those newer bidders.

DD not worth much to a subsequent party. 2nd party wouldn’t necessarily be asking all the same questions but more importantly there’s no chance the report writer would be liable to 2nd party for errors omissions or worse. Report worth 0 if writer can’t be sued. 

Going back a bit, I wasn’t originally talking about selling on the whole DD as such.
But GM’s group spent a lot of money sorting out legal matters from the past (to do with who actually owned the club I believe), issues which arose during the Jiminez court case.

No one else is likely to want to spend the same sorts of money again, not to mention spend the same amount of time on it, but would they require the information GM’s lawyers gleaned, in order to progress their own bids? You would think so, knowing what lawyers are like, (assuming bidders wanted to complete proper DD, unlike Roland). 

I have no idea how that would work in practice. Is that info now in the public domain somehow? Or was it shared with Roland’s lawyers, so they can now answer all the questions pertaining to historical ownership complications without anyone paying anything?

Or is Stig T right that the info would be useless (and valueless) without the lawyers’ liability issue being resolved?

But at the end of the day, if new bidders were happy that the ownership legal issues were conclusively resolved (if that really was what the Aussies spent all this money on), couldn’t they just say fine, we’re not worried about that issue, and move the purchase process forward, possibly against the advice of their lawyers?

SoundAsa£ said:

Stu_of_Kunming said:

SoundAsa£ said:

MuttleyCAFC said:

but not as much as he likes himself I suspect! 

Who knows.....an easy thing to say about him.....or anyone who you don’t particularly like come to that.
It’s a kind of throw away catch all put down that one can’t really prove one way or the other.
Met him many times (mostly at Bromley Addicks) and I never had the impression that he loves himself.
Sure, he’s a confidently smooth operator with an assertive character, as I’m sure many who have met him would agree......but to describe him as someone who loves himself is not something I would say about him.
I’m sure he’s sick as a pig at what’s happening at the club and hates it all to the back of his teeth......especially as some of it is of his own making.
I’d say it’s become a love hate scenario from which he can’t (at present anyway), extricate himself in such a way as to find peace of mind.

Sorry SoundAs, I don't buy any of that. He's one of the few people in a position to actually do something, yet sticks with self-preservation, if he was really against what is happening there is nothing stopping him from doing something, his money would not be put in any more danger than is currently is.

He can **** off back to supporting Wolves for all I care.

Sure l am damned annoyed at him for some of the things that have gone on.....particularly his spat with Varney which seems to be irrevocably beyond repair.....together they might have steered us down a very different path.
His silence these past months is indeed curios.
He’s ’danced with the devil’ on a number of occasions, maybe it’s once too often and he’s just simply had enough of it.
He’s been quite ill, lost his lovely wife, under the most tragic of circumstances, and is no spring chicken either. I have an idea that he no longer knows which way to turn.
Maybe his family have had a say in things.....we just don’t know.

Then he should step down, rather than supporting RD. His money would not be at risk

JamesSeed said:

StigThundercock said:

Henry Irving said:

A completed DD is a valuable commodity.

Muir can offer it to other groups as a way of speeding the process and getting membership of new groupings.

And he can share the cost with those newer bidders.

DD not worth much to a subsequent party. 2nd party wouldn’t necessarily be asking all the same questions but more importantly there’s no chance the report writer would be liable to 2nd party for errors omissions or worse. Report worth 0 if writer can’t be sued. 

Going back a bit, I wasn’t originally talking about selling on the whole DD as such.
But GM’s group spent a lot of money sorting out legal matters from the past (to do with who actually owned the club I believe), issues which arose during the Jiminez court case.

No one else is likely to want to spend the same sorts of money again, not to mention spend the same amount of time on it, but would they require the information GM’s lawyers gleaned, in order to progress their own bids? You would think so, knowing what lawyers are like, (assuming bidders wanted to complete proper DD, unlike Roland). 

I have no idea how that would work in practice. Is that info now in the public domain somehow? Or was it shared with Roland’s lawyers, so they can now answer all the questions pertaining to historical ownership complications without anyone paying anything?

Or is Stig T right that the info would be useless (and valueless) without the lawyers’ liability issue being resolved?

But at the end of the day, if new bidders were happy that the ownership legal issues were conclusively resolved (if that really was what the Aussies spent all this money on), couldn’t they just say fine, we’re not worried about that issue, and move the purchase process forward, possibly against the advice of their lawyers?

If you were committing to spending nearly 100m over the next 10 years or so, would you trust someone else's lawyers?

happyvalley said:

1570, The Whitechapel Bell Foundry begins casting. It managed to keep in business until it sadly closed in 2017.

I hope this thread isn’t still running when we reach the sort of page numbers/years that @SE7toSG3 and I can comment on!