Continuing BN's look back to the summer of 2014 and words from a former Hereford United director.
Former Hereford United
non-excutive director Bob Pritchard has said he is unhappy with the sale
of the club to Tommy Agombar because Agombar has failed to provide the
£300K to clear the footballing debts.
Bob Pritchard who has been a Non Executive Director with Hereford United [1939] Ltd for the past 18 months has resigned.
Bob was appointed when he took responsibility for the commercial
leases that had been sat with solicitors for 18 months prior to Tim
Russon departure, and during his time took responsibility for the
training ground leases, telecom leases, the ground maintenance
programme, service contracts any many other day to day activities and is
now a trustee of UITC.
Bob has had many concerns about the recent take over and feels let
down that he was not involved in any of the discussion with the new
investors during the negotiations, however he made many comments to informal
information that he received from David Keyte.
Bob confirms that both he and David Preedy was against any sale to
new investors that did not materialise in the new investor paying the
£300k suggested by David Keyte and the board that was required to clear
current creditors which include players, staff, managers, youth team,
community trust staff, local suppliers and groundsman and the inland
revenue.
Clearly that did not happen and we now have a situation where the
new investors do not want to pay this amount and are looking at any way
possible to the detriment of the football club.
I can assure everyone that they did know about the leases and held
them to review, together with a report from our agent Savills on the
potential value of the 2 sites
They were informed as always has been stated, that they needed to
put in another £300k for last season and £300k for this season which has
been confirmed in the financial application to the conference that
showed a deficit of £270k, so the other amounts that make up any debt
are director loans that can be called in any time however would have
surely been phased out over say a five year period.
I believe that the terms of this deal is not the selling of shares
for a £1 but some other form of compensation and maybe the payment of
outstanding loans to the chairman which is why the offer from the HUST
was not on equal terms, however I can assure you that the meeting
between the parties was not as simple as the Trust suggest, they opened
the meeting saying they were there to discuss the purchase of the club
for a £1 and the cancelling of the loans, however they stated that they
were always behind the other interested parties regardless of the
pledges they had received.
They wanted to see the accounts however they were unable as a team
to provide confidentuality as they needed to discuss this with their
members so they needed to rely on the same information as given to the
others that to operate they needed £300k + another £300k for this
season.
If they has been smarter then they may have got into pole position
however HUST continued grudge against the chairman did not help.
David Keyte always stated that the preferred investors would wish
to have local presence on the board however this clearly is not the case
as we have seen so with little contact or discussion with any of the
new owners then let them get on with it.
I continue to receive correspondence from contacts so I have copied
these in to both Tommy and Andy without reply or response however Andy
did ask that I go through all the legal issues with him, so I declined
as some of these companies are owed money and are creditors.
The companies chasing me are the council on stadium insurance,
licence to alter buildings, leases at Victoria park, telecom operators,
service companies and creditors such as CRL 23k DLA Piper 36k Savills
7k Mowtech 20k and the council legal fees are due in Aug 14 12.5k
and Feb15 12.5k
They are clearly unprofessional with no class and out of their
depths and how anyone would work for them is beyond me. However the ones I
feel sorry for are the young players who are looking for a contract in
football and what's going on is none of their fault.