The Takeover of PAFC By James Brent

The key person in the story of the takeover of PAFC would be the man who eventually took over; Devon-based businessman James Brent. This is intended as a brief overview of his role and actions since he first came on the scene back in February, and to try to consider what could be expected for Argyle during 'the Brent era'. Due to the nature of any business transaction on this scale, naturally some of this will be opinion, some will be supposation, and sadly some of it is entirely reliant on things we've been told over the last year or so!

We first heard about Brent during the initial bidding process. He, along with other bids from Paul Buttivant and a short while later an unknown 'Irish' consortium, put forward his case to administrator Brendan Guifoyle take ownership of the club. These bids were assembled by acting chairman Peter Ridsdale, with the administrator irking fans by later admitting that he never bothered to market the club on the basis that Ridsdale would do so for him (here). A natural distrust of Peter Ridsdale given his appalling track record at football clubs meant that, whether or not others may have come forward, we were whittled down to the above three regardless. Of these, the simple fact that Brent was based in Devon, unlike Paul Buttivant and the mystery other bid (who's base had moved from 'Ireland' to 'Gibraltor'), immediately struck a chord with local fans. A quick google showed that James Brent was owner of the Akerron hotels group and had recently taken over struggling Saltrock. There were a few quiet murmurings about his links with Citibank and thus acting Argyle chairman Peter Ridsdale, but this was never really substantiated.

Brent also performed this Q & A (here) with the Argyle Fans' Trust. All in all this was viewed as fairly positive piece of PR for Brent, and, although most wanted to see what the other bids had to say as well, the self-imposed tag of 'reluctant bidder' would also later work in his favour. It became clear that Brent was a much better media and public performer than rival Paul Buttivant (who also provided answers to the questionnaire here) and the Irish consortium (who did not reply to the Trust).

The bidders were asked to provide to Guilfoyle proof of funds necessary to buy Argyle. Whilst Brent and the 'Irish' were able to meet this requirement, Buttivant was not. Buttivant's poor reputation garnered from Wrexham fans and the local media sources, along with his previous handling of the Trust's questionnaire, meant that he was granted little sympathy when he publically queried (here) why his written 'proof' was not accepted whilst the other bids were. There was an implied suggestion that Guilfoyle's relationship with Peter Ridsdale, plus Peter Ridsdale's links with the other two bids, might have been responsible. Buttivant never publically showed his proof of funds, so this matter became something of a non-issue and he was henceforth sidelined from the process.

However, the 'reluctancy' of Brent's bid was proved when the other feasible bid on offer, from the Irish/Gibraltan bid now by the name of Bishop International Ltd, was granted 'Preferred' status in exchange for some cash whilst they performed due diligence and tried to sort out the legal/financial sides of the purchase. BIL were prepared to match the terms Brent had offered to unsecured creditors as well as fund the administration process and the running of the club in the meantime. The proposed amount BIL put in to do this, £200k for the first month and believed to be somewhere between £300k and £500k, was something Brent was not willing to do. He was prepared to buy Argyle, but only on his 'reluctant' (cheap) terms.

When the wheels looked to be coming off the BIL bid (in short, the head of the bid was 'outed' as Truro FC chairman, and somehow more importantly the financial backing behind the bid withdrew), Brent was tapped up by fans worried about the eventuality of the deal collapsing and the administrators being left with no option but to liquidate the club. Brent himself has since stated (here) that the role of the fans on the contingency group was crucial to getting him back into the process, although this strongly contradicts his previous 'reluctant bidder' comments where he was always ready to step in if needed (to paraphrase - "I won't rival other bidders, I will rival liquidation"). Perhaps he had walked away, and perhaps he really was influenced by those fans in on the Contingency Plan, perhaps he did 'catch the bug' (like so many middle-aged people fail to do so on their first ever trip to a football match), or perhaps he is simply good at marketing his intentions to fans. Whatever is believed, at the end of the day he ended up taking over, rescuing the club as he stated he would do in March, and the club did not go bust (as he'd always stated he would not allow).

Of course, the frequency of clubs the size of Argyle being liquidated, and especially with the number of financial interests Argyle held, is very low. With the rival bids rendered obselete, Brent could finally drive the cost of the purchase to an acceptable level using the simple 'accept this or the club goes bust and you get nothing' technique. The cost had already fallen in the 8 months since Brent initially expressed his interest in buying the club - although he remains liable for the wages of those affected in the time where they had not been paid, he was able to set the time-frame for the repayment of those payments, thus will save himself vast amounts of money on the interest alone.

Brent took over his original repayment plan to the unsecured creditors, paying back just 0.77% of what was owed - the smallest percentage settlement thus far in English professional football. It took just over a month after BIL's bid was publically rebuffed for Brent's bid to be completed. The offer to the staff of PAFC was that they were to be paid over the course of the next 5 years, with just 17.5% of what they were owed by the club to be paid back up front. This contradicted Brent's words back in May, when one of the most positive aspects of his bid was based on the staff being repaid in full and up front. One of the former employees of the club had this to say:

"I can confirm I will now be signing the agreement letter. I do so despite the fact that I still have serious concerns about the way the whole sale and purchase process has been conducted and how the staff and players have been treated and intimidated throughout the last 9 months." (Herald).

Dissent from any of the creditors unwilling to accept Brent's terms was quashed, with Brent using the fans Trust Leader Chris Webb to stir up the fanbase ("Unleash the Dogs") on the basis of evidence Webb would show when 'the time was right' (still not yet, one could suppose), resulting in (primarily email) campaigns against former directors, notably Tony Wrathall, Paul Stapleton and Phil Gill. Whether or not this actually swayed any variables key to the purchase is debateable (Brent was already in an advanced position, certainly too far down the line to abandon the purchase due to these relatively small obstacles), though perhaps it at least helped Brent get the cheapest deal available to him (and could be re-written (here) as a great joint victory with the fans).

The last hurdle Brent had to overcome was the negotiation of the administrators fees (repeatedly reported at £200/hour). By now, P&A and Guilfoyle had exhausted all the other options available to them including a last-gasp bid from Ridsdale to get maligned former Oxford chairman Kassam involved, so Brent was able to drive the administrators fees to less than half the £1.2m they were asking for (here.

Quite how much Brent actually spent on taking over Argyle will probably remain a question unanswered. Aside from the £1.6m injection his bid got from the council (in return for selected parts of Home Park - here), it is worth recounting he paid back less than a fifth (17.5%) of the staff wages up front and was able to significantly reduce the administrator's costs, on top of the 0.77% agreed to the unsecured creditors. This just left the 'secured creditors' - including several former board members. In comparison to the strife some of these creditors put the staff through, one would hope that they received a similarly low percentage back, if not worse. However, to give an indication of the scale of the possible repayment to these, it was rumoured that one of them - Mastpoint (Gardener, Todd and co) - had struck a deal with Heaney's bid to be repaid via any future TV rights (as debated in Parliament here). In reality, no-one will ever know the exact terms of the deal they actually got, which possibly is just as Brent would prefer it - given the touchiness of the details and the inevitable comparisons made with the deal forced on the staff.

tbc...

Very good thread, Mock! For me being out of the area its good to read aboutsome of the issues surrounding the sale of Argyle. I look forward to the next part.

One thing I am interested in is what was the circumstances that ATD was set up. All I know is it had something to do with P****i and IN.
He does talk some crap sometimes and I take the IJN at the bottom of his posts means 'inverted jobby nozzle'.

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

Very good thread, Mock! For me being out of the area its good to read aboutsome of the issues surrounding the sale of Argyle. I look forward to the next part.

One thing I am interested in is what was the circumstances that ATD was set up. All I know is it had something to do with P****i and IN.
He does talk some crap sometimes and I take the IJN at the bottom of his posts means 'inverted jobby nozzle'.

Once upon a time there was a large minority that did not support the agenda of those that ran Pasoti and they argued against one or two that insisted that the backing of the old board of Stapes and Co. was the only route that a genuine fan should take.

Over a period of time those that opposed the views of one or two found they were unable to post or banned from Pasoti so they created their own site, argyletalk.co.uk. It was a small site with few regular users and with little or no advertising and that’s how it remained. Newell was also a member of this site as was Ponty and probably a few other Pasoti moderators. , their agenda seemed to be to antagonise and cause mayhem, they contributed nothing of value.

The regulars on argyletalk.co.uk contributed to the cost of the site to keep it running but unfortunately one of the owners decided it would be a good idea to secretly provide Newell with the password for the Administration of the site, why we don’t know, but we know that his membership on Pasoti was reinstated.

Newell, Ponty and others posted the worst foul language that can be imagined and were posting extreme personal abuse, sharing accounts and generally creating mayhem. However, the old owner did do us one favour, he also gave a couple of us the password for the Administration of the site and we managed to show that Newell and a few of his friends were the ones creating mayhem and posting extreme personal abuse.

Once we realised what was going on we knew that our time on the old argyle.co.uk site was going to come to an end as we couldn’t remove Newell and his friends from administering the site so we created this site, ATD. It was just as well that we did because shortly after the old site was closed down, we assume that this was shut by Newell despite our financial contributions to run the site. We also had/have serious concerns that Newell had access to our personal and financial information as well as gaining access to our private messages.

Following the setting up of ATD Newell joined this site using many different aliases but has been rumbled by the moderators on ATD. He also continued his vindictive crusade on Pasoti but to be frank, without him this site wouldn’t exist and it wouldn’t be so popular.

Newell wasn’t alone in the campaign to restrain the views of those that opposed him and he invited his friends to join him in creating mayhem., some of which I believe are GT’s, hence a few of us being very cynical when it comes to dealings with Newell’s friends, including his friends that were once Trust leaders.

In a nutshell that’s it, but I expect others will have plenty to add regarding personal vendettas and abuse.

PS Maybe the mods would like to split this? I know that Mock has quite an interesting story to tell and is worthy of its own thread?

Nice OP. I think it was Brent who proposed the 0.77% to the unsecured creditors and not BIL?.

It's probably also worth remembering Guilfoyle had no intentions to market the club as he believed he had already met the future owner (or words to that effect). We'll never really know whether there were any other interested parties (aside from those known) as it was a closed shop from day one.

I look forward to the continuation.

Coxside_Green wrote:

Nice OP. I think it was Brent who proposed the 0.77% to the unsecured creditors and not BIL?.

It's probably also worth remembering Guilfoyle had no intentions to market the club as he believed he had already met the future owner (or words to that effect). We'll never really know whether there were any other interested parties (aside from those known) as it was a closed shop from day one.

I look forward to the continuation.

That's right, in all the clamour to beatify Brent, it's forgotten that it was he who offered such a pittance to the out of pocket in the first place. The North Koreans would be proud of this blatant re-writting of history. As a result the supposedly 'independent' PASOTI is now completely devoid of any original or thought provoking content, merely Chris Webb bellowing at a supplicant audience.


Happy New Year.

Thanks for the interesting summary of some of the bidding process. It must be remembered that less than 1% was paid to the unsecured creditors. He may be a nice bloke. He may have so far done all he said he would do and for that we should give him support. But the less than 1% should be remembered. He is a businessman and a successful one but he is also a hard-nosed one - maybe that's how he has made his millions. Let's hope he transfers this ability to the successful running of a football club.

I'd also say that, if the level of grammar used by whoever wrote Buttivant's messages is anything to go by, we are well rid of him.

I have to say that I have never been in "awe" of anyone and the drum beating on behalf of Brent on PASOTI convinced me that I did not want to be a member. If I give a view on something and others disagree then fine, no problem from me on that one, and lets have a discussion where if it is constructive may even make me change my mind. The only time I have supported Brent as anything other than a businessman making a bid was when the Administrators said there was no plan B when clearly there was.

When you lay out the facts as known in an orderly fashion it becomes clear that this was solely a business decision by Brent in the same way it would have been for any of the bidders. He is not St. James anymore than he is a sinner. He has a canny knack of saying the right thing at the right time which says to me his PR machine is top notch. Given that we the supporters were being given little or no information from anyone else of note, the fact that he was open about some things made it seem very refreshing. So far as far as I can see he has kept his word pretty much on everything he said so I'm not going to knock him or even say there might have been a better option out there somewhere if the Administrators had bothered to look. Simply the proof of the pudding is in the actions yet to be taken. If the wheels come off and Argyle go down then what will be done then considering he has stated we are too big a City not to have a professional club. What would he do if he looked like losing money and how much would he be prepared to lose to provide the City with a club. I take the sugary statements like "has become a fan" with a pinch of salt to be honest. That is pure PR in my view and nothing else. Once the Development money comes through and there is no more to be had will he still be the supporter he states he is now? Only time will tell and all we can do is hope he truely is a man of the people and keeps his word. Lets re-visit this in say 5 years time when the real character is bound to be known. Lets see if he is prepared to fund our drive back to the Championship at least or we are still bouncing about in this league with no investment at all. I reserve all judgement.

That or he spotted somewhere nice to put a hotel up and worked out that if he looked like he was doing everyone a favour he'd get it for peanuts.

Everyone wins, except those who lost, but who cares about them?

Thread split by me.

Nothing sinister, I just think that Mock's excellent post deserves its own thread. As does Jock's dilemma.

Love Frank

Frank Bullitt wrote:

Thread split by me.

Nothing sinister, I just think that Mock's excellent post deserves its own thread. As does Jock's dilemma.

Love Frank

Agreed from me.

Not that I matter.

To Mock sorry for causing your thread to go off topic and to Frank sorry for any hassle!

I think the most important point missed out is that Brent has not yet put a pound of his own money into either the take over or the running of the club, still at least Webby and Napoleon are having a good time in hospitality.

Lord Tisdale wrote:

I think the most important point missed out is that Brent has not yet put a pound of his own money into either the take over or the running of the club, still at least Webby and Napoleon are having a good time in hospitality.

Fore shore, though no-one really knows this much.

The second part will address this as well as rectifying the part which Coxside pointed out.

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

To Mock sorry for causing your thread to go off topic and to Frank sorry for any hassle!

Do it again and I hunt you down and bite off your nose.

3 more paragraphs added and the link issues hopefully cleared up as well as the error pointed out by Coxside (amended the timeframe issue at the same time, the admin fees with P&A were settled last not first as I originally stated). Does it read ok so far?

A very good read, Mock.

For some reason the title makes me think of the film title The Asssassination Of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Mock Cuncher wrote:

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

To Mock sorry for causing your thread to go off topic and to Frank sorry for any hassle!

Do it again and I hunt you down and bite off your nose.

OK mock, maybe we can have a beer afterwards.

Nick wrote:

A very good read, Mock.

For some reason the title makes me think of the film title The Asssassination Of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

What was his username on here then?

seadog wrote:

Nick wrote:

A very good read, Mock.

For some reason the title makes me think of the film title The Asssassination Of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

What was his username on here then?

Wyatt Earp?