TRVMP

Now that the Champions League final is out of the way: tomorrow night at 2am UK time is the final of the Mexican Clausura. Pachuca, 2-0 down from the first leg, host Atlas. I want Atlas to finish the job because a few weeks ago I booked a trip to Mexico City, expecting Club America to be in the final, but Pachuca beat them. I was going to go to the game at the Azteca. (I don't support America, but it's much easier to get to than Pachuca.)

His successful season was the third tier, not the Championship. Edit: after typing that I doubted myself. You're right, Championship.

The back of that is absolutely honking. Front looks great to me but the back is a dealbreaker. Looks like that Half Pounders monstrosity of a few years ago.

Blues is a hard worker and seems to have a good attitude. Seems to enjoy playing for the club. I have nothing against him at all as a person. But a two-year deal is madness to me. He has improved from when he first arrived, no question, but he's not a raw young lad anymore and it's very difficult to see him kicking on further from what he is now: an alright squad option. He can have moments of effectiveness but he can also go missing for weeks at a time. We don't create enough and we don't score goals, and despite his improvement in the 21-22 season Blues is a major reason for that. In Imrie we trust n'at but this seems to me more about rewarding a player's attitude and effort rather than ability.

The QP fan I know has not been complimentary of McHugh at all, and that was at League One level. While being very realistic about our chances of signing a 25-a-season man, we really need to aim slightly higher.

It's a judgement call. I don't think it's guaranteed to be a bad thing. I do think that it throws the fan ownership model into doubt if the ownership then can't override veto. There is of course the opposite view, that scrutiny and consensus can help, but it's not clear to me that interest on the part of the fans can be sustained if they can be ultimately overruled.

They've got to be Europe's biggest second tier club by a mile. Hilarious that they're making such a hash of it.

The current arrangement is fine. It's not optimal but it's fine. The existence of this 75% safeguard in the articles of association is exactly what we need for situations like this, bearing in mind we had no such safeguards at all during the Raes' tenure.

That's getting bought. Pisser that you have to email the club to secure delivery though. It says a tenner for delivery but I'm assuming that's domestic? (It's steep for domestic, but it doesn't say anything about international.)

The email with the EGM notice says this: Skipping over the extraneous apostrophe, it is terrible practice for them not to contain the Article to which they refer. I include it here: (The Company in question here is Morton Club Together Ltd.) The board just wants to exercise the right of clause A. (It also says, further down the mail, that they won't drop below 51%, which is different from not falling below 50%, but we'll just take that as a colloquialism. That means they're not calling a meeting - yet - for exercising the right to exercise clause B.) The important part, which answers your question, is that any sale that doesn't cause MCT to fall below one of these thresholds of GMFC ownership is at the discretion of the directors of MCT, not at the discretion of the members. The directors could, today if they wanted to, dispose of about 14% of GMFC's total shares and still remain in compliance with this Article because we'd still be above 75%. They could sell to a ghostly consortium led by Fred West and Hugh Scott* if they wanted to. This is just about selling more than 14%. As for the meeting itself, MCT have said that a Zoom link will be made available to those who request it from them. If you can't make it, they want a proxy vote made by email no later than 5pm BST on Monday 6th June. (What they haven't done - so far as I can see anyway - is formally publish their proxy notice. This permits members to nominate a proxy to attend and vote on their behalf, with such a notice being acceptable to the published recipient as long as it arrives at least 48 hours before the meeting. Such a notice should have accompanied the EGM invite, according to the articles of association.) *subeditor: check if dead

You need a vote of 75% to pass special resolutions and issue new shares and - in the case of most companies - approve a buyback of issued shares from company capital. So a 75.01% owner can do all these things without a vote. The other way of putting it is that any shareholder - or group of shareholders - with 25.000001% of the shares can act as an effective veto on any special resolution.

I agree, but as a member of MCT I balance that agreement against what MCT's stated aims and objectives are and what community ownership means for MCT and GMFC. My opinion is that diluting community ownership below 75% but still above 50.1% is, at this time, not an appropriate course of action. We surrender an absolute ton of freedom of movement in exchange for the same amount of liability. The identity of any given investor is immaterial to that: a 50.1% stakeholding is a poisoned chalice for us at this stage.

That is indeed the big question, isn't it? Particularly since MCT's current shareholding - 89% - is more than sufficient to launch a share issue without relying on other shareholders voting for it. (The Raes, when they ran the price, carried out a few share issues of this kind, which diluted the GMST holding, among others.) Is there maybe something about pre-emption at play here? I have no idea.

The more I read it the more I think the 18k for 5% would just be the price set for the shares and not some ongoing payment because otherwise I can't think of how it could be enforced. Not encouraging if the aim is ongoing investment (as MCT members are expected to provide.)

Perhaps I'm thick today but I don't understand the correlation between the amount MCT members contribute and the percentage ownership of the club. The example given is this: MCT shareholding drops to 50.1% MCT annual contribution *remains* 180k (same as now - *remains* is the key word, and used in the example) 38.9% was for sale (this being the balance of the 89% currently owned by MCT) To buy those in tranches of 5% - seven such tranches in total - incurs a cost of 18k annually. It is not clear how this 18k is calculated, given that it's 10% of the total of MCT's contribution, for 5% of the club's shares. But this is the example MCT have given so that is the one that I'm going to use. This doesn't track for me because as MCT shares become scarcer - that is, as MCT becomes less of an owner - if that 180k remains in place then the contribution has actually *increased* on a per-share basis. That is, if we're paying 180k for the benefit of owning 89% of the club, that's cheaper on a per-share basis than paying 180k for the benefit of owning 50.1% of the club. As such, the cost of buying these tranches of shares should *increase* as more of them are sold: By the time we're down to 55.1% of club ownership, if the 180k contribution *remains* (as it did in the example), the buyer should instead be asked to contribute significantly more. If 180k contribution at 89% ownership maps to a charge of 18k for 5%, then let's simplify it slightly and call that 200k annually for the full 100% Then our *remaining* 180k contribution at 55.1% ownership maps to a charge of around 325k for the full amount of 100% of the club shares. According to the 18k calculation - 5% of the club's equity mapping to 10% of the MCT contribution, prorated by ownership, the buyer of the final 5% would in fact be on the hook for 32.5k. The alternative is that MCT is not prorating its ownership in this calculation, and that it's being treated as a static figure, and MCT's valulation and the worth of its membership is considered the same whether it owns 100% of the club or 1%, which is a complete absurdity and counter to the articles of association.