Dean Hoyle wants his £63m back from Huddersfield
Huddersfield Town chairman Phil Hodgkinson has broken down the club's latest set of financial accounts and explained why they show the club are set to repay £76m of loan debt over the next few years - £31m in bank loans, and £45m to former chairman Dean Hoyle.
The accounts referring to the 2018/19 season were released on Thursday and the details of the loan repayments caught some fans by surprise despite Hodgkinson acknowledging back in September that Hoyle's loan debt would be repaid.
Speaking on the latest episode of podcast And He Takes That Chance, Hodgkinson said: "It's pretty straightforward and there's really four or five things that sort of box it all off in a nutshell.
"First of all the acquisition of the 75% of the shares in the football club is separate: you don't buy the shares in the football club from the football club, you buy them from whoever owns the shares.
People are talking about 'this loan has been used to buy the football club' – it's a totally separate thing. The football club accounts and the acquisition of the shares in the football club are two separate transactions, so the acquisition of the shares and what I paid for them, that was a transaction between me through one of my businesses and Dean [Hoyle] individually, so that money doesn't go in or out of the football club.
"When the accounts for my business are filed, which will be later next year, people will be able to see how much money has gone into that company and out of that company and they'll be able to put two and two together and see where it's gone.
When you look at the accounts you can see that over the two seasons in the Premier League our employee costs alone were £127m – that's just employee costs, it doesn't include what we paid for players; I don't think it includes the bonuses we paid at the end of the promotion season, which was significant; it doesn’t include work we did on the stadium.
That's all in the accounts and when you go through them you can see how much we spent, and when I did the first pod I said the money we got in the Premier League you spend it and more, if I'm honest with you, to try and stay in there because we're competing
The important bits are the repayment of the loans to Dean. I'm going to give page numbers to make life easy: page three of the accounts, the important bit to note is that at the time the football club owed Dean £61.4m. They were loans to the football club, which is a business, and like any director you're entitled to take your loans out providing that the money is there.
"On that same page, next one down, it confirms that as at the date of the end of the accounts [30th June]…I bought the football club after these accounts, it was in July, so we'd exchanged contracts but I actually took over ownership of the majority shareholding after this year end, that's quite important to note, so I didn't take out a £31m loan to by the club.
"What you can see is that at that time the amount owed to Dean had come down to £45m so he'd already been repaid in that previous financial year £16.4m. People have missed that.
"It then goes on to confirm that we then exchanged contracts for me to acquire a 75% shareholding in the company and that went to Pure Sports Consultancy Ltd which is an independent company owned and funded by me and the transaction completed shortly after the year end. So it's not a football club transaction, it's a company-to-person.
"As of 30th June Dean had been repaid over £16m of those loans and that's what everyone has missed. So when you go back to page 37 and it says there is that £15m is repayable by within five working days of the last day of the summer 2020 transfer window.
"We've actually already repaid £11m of that this season as well as Dean having over £16m just prior to year end.
"So actually there's only £4m of that £15m due to be paid after this summer's transfer window, if there is one, and Dean will be flexible on that anyway. Dean will never do anything that puts this football club in jeopardy, so if we're in a position whereby there's a delayed summer transfer window, Dean won't call in that £4m to the letter because the last thing that we want is to have to have a fire sale.
It then goes on to confirm there's another £10m repayable by 31st August 2021 and 2022, and then there's another £10m that has no fixed repayment date and repayment is subject to future events taking place, and you can imagine what they are.
"So in reality the club owed Dean £61.4m, he's had £26m of that already, and there's another £24m that would mean Dean has been repaid £50m of the £61.4m that he in essence loaned to the club. It's as simple as that.
"The [bank] loan will have been a forward funding of parachute payments, because when you're in the Premier League you do your best, but as a club if you look at the accounts and the money that's gone out the door, we spent more than the £200m, so you eat into that first parachute payment already because you've got deferred transfer fees.
"So it's actually not as complicated as people make out."
He added: "The most important thing in all of this is there's a much bigger picture. We've got to all get through this together and it just need putting to bed now.
"There's nothing behind the door, there's nothing untoward, it's all there in the accounts, the acquisition of the shares is a separate transaction, the loan hasn't been taken out to buy the football club or any of the other stuff that's bouncing round."
