joewarkfanclub Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 I think folks just need to show a little patience whilst this all plays out..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelboy Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 On the one hand you have the club chairman Jim McMahon funding a marketing campaign to give the impression that we need an American investor when he was in secret talks with an American investor. On the other hand you have "We believe the fan ownership model has - over the piece - been successful". They can't even bring themselves to say it's worked without adding in a weird qualifier. What does - over the piece - even mean? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewarkfanclub Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 Just now, steelboy said: On the one hand you have the club chairman Jim McMahon funding a marketing campaign to give the impression that we need an American investor when he was in secret talks with an American investor. On the other hand you have "We believe the fan ownership model has - over the piece - been successful". They can't even bring themselves to say it's worked without adding in a weird qualifier. What does - over the piece - even mean? I think it means they accept that mistakes have been made and certain things could have been done better. I dont think anyone would argue with that. Given we were the first club in Scotland to go fan owned, there was no blueprint and we were pretty much making it up ourselves. Then Les came along and moved the goalposts. I dont think the Society has maximised its potential thus far. But Im more confident that the right people are in place now and we should see significant improvement going forward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewarkfanclub Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 Thats not to say that I dont think there is room for an investor I think there is and any additional revenue stream is welcome as long as it fits with the ethos of the club and we remain fan owned. For me its definitely 51% minimum fan ownership. Happy to see how investment works alongside that and if we can benefit from the business acumen of any partners as well as the obvious advantage of additional finance then its a win/win. But lets see what the offer looks like first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbybingo Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 37 minutes ago, wellfan said: I see the society as a member organisation, such as a trade union. Therefore, as a member of a trade union at work, I would expect them to put a position to me (and other members) on important workplace issues. That seems a fair comparison to me, though your opening words, 'I see the society as....' are interesting. I think a lot of people may be asking the question, what should the Well Society board's position/function be in this situation, given it hasn't been tested till now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbybingo Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 22 minutes ago, steelboy said: On the one hand you have the club chairman Jim McMahon funding a marketing campaign to give the impression that we need an American investor when he was in secret talks with an American investor. On the other hand you have "We believe the fan ownership model has - over the piece - been successful". They can't even bring themselves to say it's worked without adding in a weird qualifier. What does - over the piece - even mean? You know what 'over the piece' means. Nothing's perfect. It sounds like you believe they should make an unequivocal statement on this right now. Out of interest, which side do you think they should come down on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mintymac Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 The way I see it panning out is that if the executive board and investor come to agreement then this will be looked at by the major shareholder , the Well Society and from there the members of the WS will be given a vote . This vote I’m pretty sure as with most similar negotiations will come with a recommendation from the Well Society board as to whether they think we should accept or reject and and there reasons for that . However as similar to any trade union negotiations it will be up to the members to have the final say whatever the Well Society Board recommend /say . One thing I’d like to see is a meeting being held by the Well Society prior to any voting of its members with representatives from all interested parties present to allow us a to then make an informed decision . This happened when the Well Society came to fruition with a well attended meeting at the Alona Hotel when all parties were represented and I think it would certainly help any undecided members on how to cast there vote . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joewarkfanclub Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 3 minutes ago, bobbybingo said: That seems a fair comparison to me, though your opening words, 'I see the society as....' are interesting. I think a lot of people may be asking the question, what should the Well Society board's position/function be in this situation, given it hasn't been tested till now. For me, the Society Board are the members representatives within the club and our access to influence. They will clearly have greater insight to whats going on within the club and access to more information than us. I think they also have a responsibility for the security & stability of the club and to the Society model. That should only change if they no longer believe fan ownership is viable. I think once the details of this deal are known and the Society Board have had a chance to examine the proposals, they should put forward the pro's and cons to the members, but ultimately they should take a position on it and give their reasons why. That way we can all decide our own position based on all the information available. Its our club. We should decide what happens to it going forward. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted April 8 Author Report Share Posted April 8 39 minutes ago, steelboy said: On the one hand you have the club chairman Jim McMahon funding a marketing campaign to give the impression that we need an American investor when he was in secret talks with an American investor. I think this reflects the nature of the Executive Board, which in recent times has been almost divided. Maybe "divided" is slightly too strong a term. Maybe operated as two entities. Mintymac is right. When the time comes, a meeting or meetings should be held for members, and probably also for private shareholders. IF the Society makes a recommendation to members, it has to be careful how that is worded and not be seen to rubbish any private proposal. A fine line to tread. I'm sceptical of a "trade union" approach as I had a couple of bad personal experiences of that during my working career. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelboy Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 I've got a feeling if it's a deal which gives away the majority shareholding McMahon will be putting pressure on the Society board to stay neutral. The fact it's apparently going to come down to a Yes/No decision before the Society gets any input at all is absurd. If this guy actually had good intentions he would be coming to the Society and directly asking what concerns we have rather than cutting us out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
santheman Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 13 minutes ago, steelboy said: I've got a feeling if it's a deal which gives away the majority shareholding McMahon will be putting pressure on the Society board to stay neutral. The fact it's apparently going to come down to a Yes/No decision before the Society gets any input at all is absurd. If this guy actually had good intentions he would be coming to the Society and directly asking what concerns we have rather than cutting us out. He's already had some informal discussions with the Well Society board and I believe more are planned as things develop. Jay gave an update over on P&B a few days ago. Fired up another laptop and it appears fine on here - but I thought I better hurry on and post before I'm silenced on this too... Nah, all joking aside - I've been lurking and reading the thread this week, lots of good points, and I know I've been tagged a few times. Don't want to go back and multi-quote everything, but I do want to respond to a couple of points. Firstly, I believe @capt_oats had a few questions about the Well Society's role in the investment video - I'm going to just take the easy option here and just not answer those. It's something that the Society would respond to officially if someone sent in those questions directly by e-mail. In terms of the current negotiations themselves, I'd just reiterate what it's in the Society statement - that the Well Society Board is not a part of those negotiations. I know there's a lot of comments and questions around why that is, and whether that's right or not, but again, I'm going to opt out from responding to that. Essentially, that's what the situation is - the Chairman & Executive Board have been discussing options with potential investors, and one of those has reached a point that all parties currently involved are happy to proceed to a next stage. That said, it's not the case that the Society is kept entirely in the dark. I think it was confirmed at the club AGM that the Society had met with both interested parties at the time. We have also received some updates on progress and some key aspects of discussions, which I would imagine have allowed each of us as individuals to at least start to form some initial thoughts on whether the deal would be good/bad/indifferent for the club and whether members would be likely to think the deal was good/bad/indifferent for the club, but there's no collective position and we haven't had any discussions around reaching one. Basically, it wouldn't be right to do that until we were in receipt of any finalised agreement that the Chairman & Executive Board had reached with an investor and we were able to fully understand what that could mean for the club and for the Well Society. If we reach that point, Well Society members would be balloted and, in order to make a fully informed decision, would be provided with as much detail as possible. I think it's worth flagging that any potential investor will have been told from the off that their offer would need to be cleared by Well Society members, so it will not come as any surprise that extensive details of any offer should need to be released to members. If any potential investor had a problem with that, I'd suggest they'd have been better looking into a club that wasn't fan-owned - so I don't foresee a problem in making sure members are informed when it comes to a vote. I think @StAndrew7 has raised a question about whether Society members are club shareholders or not. The answer is no - the Well Society is the shareholder and Well Society members are exactly that, members. So it's up to the Well Society as the majority shareholder how it would vote in any shareholder vote - and it is the democratic and moral position that the Well Society's vote would be guided by its members. Just on that too - firstly, there's no guarantees we reach a point where there's a shareholding vote or Well Society member ballot, we all know how negotiations work and things might just not reach that point. However, there's also a discussion to be had by the Well Society Board itself around how it conveys its views on any potential offer. There's obviously no automatic assumption that anybody will care what the Society Board itself thinks is positive or negative but the discussion still needs to be had around the communications that accompany any ballot, whether that's remaining neutral, providing a recommendation one way or another, providing arguments for or against, or whatever. The last thing I'd just highlight is that, while the negotiations carry on between the Chairman & Executive Board and the potential investor, the Well Society is just cracking on with the work it needs to do as majority shareholder. No-one would expect the Society just to sit on its thumbs assuming transformational investment is on the way, instead we continue to approach things with October's refreshed Board, and the fresh approach and enthusiasm that has resulted, by ploughing on with a lot of work to ensure that fan-ownership is even stronger in the future, regardless of what happens here. Contrary to what some people seem to enjoy suggesting on Twitter, fan-ownership demonstrably works, the previous years have shown us that quite conclusively. However, it absolutely can - and needs - to be better. The workstreams that the Society has formed have already hit the ground round with some fantastic work underway in comms, governance, events, fundraising and membership. As the comms workstream lead, I'm buzzing about the standard of contributor we've got on board (at the risk of complimenting a P&B stalwart too much ) and we've already done some fantastic work around identifying what needs to improve - a comms strategy will be finalised in the next week or two, and a return to a standalone Well Society website, that provides members with all the actual information they want and need, is already underway. And as a whole, the Well Society Board continues to put together its own strategy and plan, for both the Society and the football club, that it is hoped members can put their faith in should the Society remain as majority shareholder. So I think at our end, we're just cracking on feeling quite positive about what we're doing - the Well Society will grow, members will find that the information and experience they've been deprived or found difficult to access beforehand is soon accessible, fan-ownership will continue to work, and I'm personally very enthusiastic that the new CEO comes into the club with a wealth of experience around income generation, following a recruitment process that the Well Society Board was heavily involved in. So aye, not actually sure if any of that is particularly useful as such. Basically, the Chairman & Executive Board will continue to discuss things with the potential investor, while the Well Society continues the work we'd identified needed done prior to the investment video even going out - work that we're really positive about and work that we think will see growth in the Society, increased income generation in the club, and a platform to take the already-working fan-ownership model at Fir Park, and make it better. Of course, the perfect addition to that is positive investment that works for both the football club and the Well Society, and so if that is what comes from these negotiations, then that will be a further thing to be positive about. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteelmaninOZ Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 Thanks Jay learned more from that than the usual suspects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellfan Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 1 hour ago, bobbybingo said: That seems a fair comparison to me, though your opening words, 'I see the society as....' are interesting. I think a lot of people may be asking the question, what should the Well Society board's position/function be in this situation, given it hasn't been tested till now. Yeah, that's fair to say, as I've always remained a little unclear as to what the WS actually is, how it functions within itself and with the Club, and what ‘powers’ it has. I've paid my monthly DD for years regardless. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stv Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 1 hour ago, steelboy said: I've got a feeling if it's a deal which gives away the majority shareholding McMahon will be putting pressure on the Society board to stay neutral. The fact it's apparently going to come down to a Yes/No decision before the Society gets any input at all is absurd. If this guy actually had good intentions he would be coming to the Society and directly asking what concerns we have rather than cutting us out. He would have to listen to a lot of folk that talk a lot of shite tho. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuwell2 Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 The Society board has a responsibility to the Society members which will involve them doing due diligence on both the final agreement submitted to them and the person involved. After that they will draft a statement to be distributed to the members after it has been cleared by lawyers. Once this has been done and distributed it will be up to the society members to vote on acceptance or rejection by a simple majority. Im not sure if there is a time limit on between becoming a member and being given the right to vote but I’d advise anyone wishing to vote on this who isn’t already a member to join the society now or forever haud yer wheesht . To often smart arses on here and other places seem happy to stir up shite when if they were serious a quick search would have given them the correct answer rather than them posting crap on here. Im not having a go at anyone who genuinely asks questions but those who ask loaded questions to stir up trouble because after winning this weekend they can’t post their usual shite about the manager/team. Rant over and I feel better. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelboy Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 56 minutes ago, stv said: He would have to listen to a lot of folk that talk a lot of shite tho. A load of shite like wanting to secure that no one can ever sell Fir Park for a profit and pocket the cash? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kmcalpin Posted April 8 Author Report Share Posted April 8 I agree with a lot that has been posted on here. I'm still not fully convinced though about the Society making a recommendation to members, although I get why it would. Should the Executive Board of the club also issue a recommendation to the 29% private shareholders? In that eventuality, it would be vital that both messages to private shareholders and Society members are harmonised. Thats not been the case so far, although I'm optimistic that recent changes in the Society and club are improving matters. We don't want differing messages. This will have to be handled carefully. I'm in no rush though - better to take time and undertake due diligence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbybingo Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 3 hours ago, steelboy said: A load of shite like wanting to secure that no one can ever sell Fir Park for a profit and pocket the cash? Talking to folk about their concerns won't secure that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelboy Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 20 minutes ago, Kmcalpin said: I agree with a lot that has been posted on here. I'm still not fully convinced though about the Society making a recommendation to members, although I get why it would. Should the Executive Board of the club also issue a recommendation to the 29% private shareholders? This is slightly complicated by the fact that a member of the executive board, the head of governance of the Society and the largest private shareholder are all the same person. The Society members and private shareholders have different positions. The Society board has to act in the interests of the membership, it shouldn't be giving a thought to private shareholders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steelboy Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 5 minutes ago, bobbybingo said: Talking to folk about their concerns won't secure that. The rumoured proposal is the American taking 51% of the club for £1.5m investment. The question put to the Society members was about losing the majority shareholding. It's fair to assume that's what's going to be on the table even if the money is different. We don't even know if anyone is asking about long term protections in the negotiations. We seem to be expected to trust McMahon to act in the interests of the shareholders when he has already spent a large sum of his own money promoting the idea of giving an American the majority shareholding. Clearly he has a personal interest. Hopefully we will be able to put questions forward to get details about not only what the American wants but also what he has ruled out before any vote but the way things have been handled so far doesn't make me optimistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stv Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 3 hours ago, steelboy said: A load of shite like wanting to secure that no one can ever sell Fir Park for a profit and pocket the cash? Hey mate……. if the cap fits. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
santheman Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 Another day another rumour.🙄 Let's wait until we see whatever's on offer in black and white eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mccus28 Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 26 minutes ago, steelboy said: The rumoured proposal is the American taking 51% of the club for £1.5m investment. The question put to the Society members was about losing the majority shareholding. It's fair to assume that's what's going to be on the table even if the money is different. We don't even know if anyone is asking about long term protections in the negotiations. We seem to be expected to trust McMahon to act in the interests of the shareholders when he has already spent a large sum of his own money promoting the idea of giving an American the majority shareholding. Clearly he has a personal interest. Hopefully we will be able to put questions forward to get details about not only what the American wants but also what he has ruled out before any vote but the way things have been handled so far doesn't make me optimistic. Do you ever get tired of presenting rumours as facts??? You are clearly a glass half full kinda guy.........................said nobody ever!!!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobbybingo Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 48 minutes ago, steelboy said: The rumoured proposal is the American taking 51% of the club for £1.5m investment. The question put to the Society members was about losing the majority shareholding. It's fair to assume that's what's going to be on the table even if the money is different. We don't even know if anyone is asking about long term protections in the negotiations. We seem to be expected to trust McMahon to act in the interests of the shareholders when he has already spent a large sum of his own money promoting the idea of giving an American the majority shareholding. Clearly he has a personal interest. Hopefully we will be able to put questions forward to get details about not only what the American wants but also what he has ruled out before any vote but the way things have been handled so far doesn't make me optimistic. When did he promote the idea of giving an American the majority shareholding? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wellgirl Posted April 8 Report Share Posted April 8 1 minute ago, bobbybingo said: When did he promote the idea of giving an American the majority shareholding? He didn't. That's just a rumour going around from a source. I've seen the same thing tweeted I assume by said source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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