Takeover latest....

A very interesting post from Henry Irving on Charlton Life (not to be confused with the Twitter troll HenryIrving10) yesterday that throws some much-needed light on the 'Spiegel takeover' and some good perspective as well as respected common sense. 

"The China Syndrome. Part 2

At the time of the Roland Duchatelet takeover of Charlton Athletic back in January 2014 I wrote an article, which I called the China Syndrome, about the Chinese word for change being made up of two characters, opportunity and danger.  https://forum.charltonlife.com/discussion/59079/new-article-the-china-syndrome

Nearly ten chaotic and largely depressing years on for Charlton, I could have changed a few names and used almost the same article to greet the new Marc Spiegel regime that appears to be on the last leg of their takeover of the Addicks.  

Again, we have a name but very little indication of strategy and no clear indication of who the Atlanta based businessman’s partners are although rumours abound.  Nor do we know his wealth and more importantly how much he is prepared to invest (for which read “lose”) into a league one club with relatively high overheads that is dropping something around £8m per season.

Strong rumours, and before you say, no it’s not on the official site yet, suggests that what I’m going to call the Rubicon group after Spiegel’s recycling firm, have completed due diligence.  That the inspection of Charlton’s finances, licences, etc  was carried out by Deloitte, one of the “Big Four” global accounting firms suggests that Rubicon are serious and wanted it done thoroughly.  It also suggests that they were willing to pay to get it done properly and so avoid some of the errors of Duchatelet, who managed to overlook the £7m former directors bonds and Sandgaard, who didn’t realise his deal didn’t include the Women’s side.

Due diligence would also have been helped by having an experienced CEO, Peter Storrie, in place. I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds it difficult to believe that current owner Thomas Sandgaard had even heard of Storrie or had any willingness to appoint an experienced CEO, given he had avoided doing so ever since he bought the club. Sandgaard knew better and despite being based thousands of miles away and having never run a football club insisted on doing so himself, with disastrous consequences.

Technically, Storrie may be employed by Sandgaard as the Danish-American still owns the club but the West Ham fan is working for the new owners, of that I have no doubt.

So is the deal done? No, not yet and until it is done 100% it is done 0% but the process has moved on to the EFL, so the grapevine says, with the four new directors now undergoing the Owners and Directors Test.  This may take up to a month given that three of the directors are American, which will slow the gathering of information and confirmation that none of them are bankrupts, criminals or human rights abusers.  Slowly, far too slowly, the Football League have tightened their regulation of potential new owners, in part because the fiasco they allowed with Matt Southall, Lee Amis and Tahnoon Nimer’s purchase of the Addicks.  No more secret transfer embargo’s and no transfer of the golden share (effectively league membership) until every "T" is crossed and every "I" dotted.

If rumours are to be believed, and that is always a dangerous thing to do, alongside Marc Spiegel is likely to be his business partner Nate Morris, a 42 year old Kentuckian with a higher online profile than his friend that you will be searching for, probably before you finish this article.  There is supposed to be a third, unnamed, American but who is also a long term friend of Spiegel.  If true, that suggests that this isn’t a consortium of random investors cobbled together solely to buy Charlton, as appeared to be the case with the failed Charlie Methvan bid, but a group of existing friends.  Optimists will say that means that Rubicon are more likely to be a cohesive group with a common purpose and better able to work together to reach decisions.   There is also said to be a 4th, British, director. Some people have suggested that this could be former “Super-Agent” Jon Smith and the Arsenal supporter’s long time friendship with Peter Storrie adds to that theory but a theory, for now, is all it is.

So let’s make a big assumption that the gossip is true and that the four all pass the O&DT, what then?

Thomas Sandgaard wants to retain 10%, possibly in the hope of future success allowing him to recoup some of his loses. Or maybe he has to stay because he is the guarantor of the lease on the Valley and Charlton’s training ground at Sparrow’s Lane in Eltham.   I hope it isn’t so Sandgaard’s son gets to continue playing football manager as the club’s Director of Analysis, a role for which he is uniquely unqualified and which he wouldn’t even get an interview for any club not owned by his father.

That leaves 90% for the three American owners, with Smith perhaps having a small slice of that or maybe just working on a consultancy basis.

Storrie is also employed on a consultancy basis, already extended twice, now to the end of 2023.   An experienced CEO with good contacts (he even negotiated Charlton’s short spell at Upton Park when he was with West Ham) he will be a safe pair of hand to oversee a transition but he is 70 and has other roles so I’d expect a handover to a new younger CEO before the year is out. The name of Mal Brannigan, the former Wigan CEO, has been mentioned but only by me.  Charlton haven’t had a proper CEO since Steve Kavanagh left in 2012 and it shows, nowhere more so than in how a bullying culture has been allowed to thrive at the club. Katrien Miere had the title of CEO for a while but as I say we haven’t had a proper Chief Executive since 2012.

But the key questions from most Charlton fans asked of the new owners will revolve around how will they get the men’s team back up the divisions, how much are they willing to spend to do that and when will they buy back the Valley and Sparrows Lane?

Some fans will see men’s team building as the priority and will be happy for the club to continue to rent the ground and training facilities in the short to medium term. Many others will see buying the assets now as both essential to the club’s long term security and also as a key indicator the new owners commitment and their relative wealth. Again the rumour mill gives you any version of the potential owners wealth you want. Some say they have “no money” or at least that the $300m that the internet tells us both Morris and Spiegel are individually worth isn’t enough in an era of multi-billionaire owners but other rumours say that all three owners are individually as rich as Thomas Sandgaard.   That glass in your hand, is it half full or half empty?

While nearly all Charlton fans will welcome the end of Sandgaard’s poor and destructive ownership that became a text book example of “over promise, under deliver” the new owners, because of a succession of bad owners going back over a decade and more, will not get a ticker tape welcome.  Worn down by years of failure and dodgy occupants of the board room, many fans will be hard to convince and the default position for many will be “I’m not interested in promises, let’s see some action and positive results, then I’ll get excited.”  At least, that is where I am.

What Charlton doesn’t need now or ever is another set of owners who think, despite never having owned a club before, that they are smarter than everyone else and can buck the system to get huge success while not spending much money.  Spending money well, something Sandgaard and Duchatelet could rarely do, is vital but any owners have to realise that they will have to spend, and so lose, money for a number of seasons regardless of the division we find ourselves in.

So, like it or not, we roll the ownership dice again, hoping for better times but knowing that as the Chinese word tells us, the coming change may bring both opportunity and danger."

(Reproduced with Henry's agreement 😁).