West Brom Fan Buy Out.

[Barrera]

You have to consider the ongoing investment as well .... £100m might buy the club .... but what then .... will need £20m per year for investment in new players etc ..... although once back in the Prem if you invest all TV money it makes it viable....

Would be interesting giving it a crack though ...... having owners who run the club for the fans rather than the owners pockets ...... needs to be modelled around a club that has already done it ..... as there must be some golden rules to follow .....

[DaveP67 is back!]

Lepkowski and Goldberg are looking into this (see the liquidator podcast on Twitter). I think it would require some form of venture capital to buy out Lai then sell bonds/shares back to the supporters, clearly any venture capital investors would want to see a return, however the shares would then be open to all to purchase as little or many as they wanted, with some form of cap to ensure 50+1 rules...

[mickd1961]

My maths isn’t always my strongest suit but in essence,

1: We need 175 people willing to put in a million £ each - unlikely.

2: We need 1750 people winning to put in £100k ( 1749 if you count me as “in” ) but I accept this is probably too big an amount for that number of people.

3: We need 17,500 to each put in £10k - Maybe this is possible especially if some sort of loan could be taken out against each share?

Like I said I’m not an expert but I’m willing to kick around ideas and work with sensible people on this.

[kettering_baggie]

The legal framework would need to be watertight, you wouldn’t want some smart accountant type coming along and trying to gobble up all the shares and then screwing the remaining small shareholders, would you?

[WBA123]

My maths isn’t always my strongest suit but in essence,

1: We need 175 people willing to put in a million £ each - unlikely.

2: We need 1750 people winning to put in £100k ( 1749 if you count me as “in” ) but I accept this is probably too big an amount for that number of people.

3: We need 17,500 to each put in £10k - Maybe this is possible especially if some sort of loan could be taken out against each share?

Like I said I’m not an expert but I’m willing to kick around ideas and work with sensible people on this.

Perhaps the most logical way this would work is if you aimed to raised a few million (rather than the full amount), and then used that as a deposit and borrowed the rest against the asset of the club. In a similar way to how the Glazers bought Man United.

Then only 1k people would need to put in £10k, or 10k people could put in £1k. Or 25k people put in £400 - you get the gist..

I'm not sure whether it would be possible to get the borrowing and I imagine the interest % would be high so it wouldn't be ideal, because the club would have to pay the remaining amount off. Much in the same way as a mortgage on a house.

But at least it would be owned by fans with the best interests of the club at heart.

[Jimb072]

S4A could be a start , David Baker is the chairman’s name I believe.