citizen_maine
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I thought Arsenal had to loan Raya last season because they were too close to breaching to buy him?
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City launch legal action against the Premier League | City win APT case (pg901)
- Thread starter denislawsbackheel
- Start date
halfcenturyup
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- Joined
- 12 Oct 2009
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- 11,492
Don’t leave out @gordondaviesmoustache, he will be upset.
No wonder he called me a wet sponge :)
Yes, of course @gordondaviesmoustache as well. And anybody else I left out because these days I can barely remember what I was doing this morning.
Lord Blue
Well-Known Member
nope you'll have to help me out, i can't see the cheesy punI can see my post has back fired badly :-)
Chris in London
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- 21 Sep 2009
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- 13,271
Cracking post. Deserves more than a “like”!This thread is a bit crazy. By my calculation, there have been around 6,000 posts since Monday lunchtime and I haven't had time to read even a majority of them, let alone all. This one, however, is IMO worth coming back to.
As someone who's also been busy all week in addition to being a bit under the weather and has only just had a chance to read the entire document myself, I enjoyed the above contribution as well as being grateful for it. I've been rather surprised this week, and not in a pleasant way, by the manner in which people who should know better have chosen to score the Panel's determination like a boxing match.
The only way to assess things properly is to examine what has happened in the light of City's objectives at the outset. I wrote on this board back in the summer sometime that MCFC certainly wouldn't be seeking a declaration any form of control over APT infringes competition law. I have something of a background in the field in the dim and distant past (so, while as nowhere near as eminently qualifed to judge these matters than the esteemed panel, I know far more about it than your average punter and a million times more about it than your average football journalist). It was absolutely clear to me that such an aim lacked any vestige of realism. City's advisers will have been fully aware of this, too.
Yet the absence of such a determination by the Panel was laughably painted by some as a win for the PL. Not so. City were seeking to have the APT rules declared unlawful as currently constituted, preferably in a way that would require some kind of significant redraft. Meanwhile, over the summer, we had Martin Samuel - clearly briefed by the club - allege that what had upset MCFC was the treatment of and time taken to process the club's applications under the rules. City have prevailed on whether the rules as a whole is lawful, as well as the manner in which our applications have been processed.
Now, events are clearly taking place in private and for once they aren't yet being leaked, which suggests difficulties for the PL given the way that so much which is to the club's detriment finds its way into the public domain. The Panel's determination has given MCFC a strong position when new rules are drafted. To be lawful, news rules have to cover the previously omitted subject of shareholder loans, which gives City, if we're politically savvy enough to have won over sufficient allies to create a blocking vote, scope to demand concessions to us in return for our reciprocal compromises.
None of this is remotely good news for the PL, despite the way it was portrayed initially by lapdog media commentators and complicit experts who seemed not to be giving proper thought to the issues. Such a reaction just emphasises the sheer otherness of football, which for as long as it has existed seems to have operated under the stultifyingly arrogant belief that it should operate as a law unto itself, in glorious isolation from legal and regulatory regimes applicable in other spheres.
It's beyond me that anyone could look at what the PL has been shown, as a regulatory body, to have done and think that the determination exposing this is somehow satisfactory for the authority. In any other field, there'd be resignations and questions being asked in Parliament urging serious reform of the regulator in question.
I have one final point. Many on here have claimed that the view of City as cheats is to embedded in the public consciousness ever to change and that our reputation will be stained forever in the eyes of many neutral fans. I don't concur. Of course, I may be wrong, but I believe that this week's events have started to bring into the public domain information about the "organised and clear" attempts from rivals to finish City as a serious force at the top of the English and European game.
My guess is that this will be further borne out when we finally receive a decision regarding the so-called 115 charges. If so, and if we're substantially vindicated, I suspect that we'll have a powerful narrative that will be of significant allure to a new generation of fans. We'll be the club that rivals couldn't beat on the pitch so tried to nobble by nefarious means - and failed. Let's see how it plays out, but I'm already looking forward to it.
P.S. I saw a discussion on this thread about the Palace home game in December 1987. That's definitely worth coming back to, but it'll have to be tomorrow as I'm off to spend Saturday evening with my missus.
Source?They apparently chosee one each and the two then chose the third.
Lord Blue
Well-Known Member
me too, i work on the basis that Stefan's reserved views are probably right, or at least not far from the mark.Hey, I resent that. I take everything slbsn says in the utmost good faith, you ****.
Anyway, I am more of a wet sponge.
;)
i consider him a rare anchor in these troubled waters
AlexWilliamsGloves
Well-Known Member
Its life changing!How can any other Bluemoon’r take any of your future posts seriously, after comments like this.
stirlingblue
Well-Known Member
On the subject of Shareholder Loans and the PL's rules and regulations many, like myself, may find todays article in the NY Times' Athletic by Phil Buckingham and Matt Slater a useful summary of the current state of play.
In successfully arguing that shareholder loans should face the same assessments as any commercial deal, they did enough to ensure that associated party transactions (APT) rules could be declared unlawful.
So the APT rules now need to be amended, but can the league get a two-thirds majority of clubs to back the repair job, especially when City’s lawyers scrutinise their handiwork?
What are shareholder loans?
They do exactly what it says on the tin: it is money loaned to a club by their shareholders. They amount to a form of funding, a means for owners to inject cash into the football project without seeking equity in return. Typically these are long-term arrangements, often free of interest payments.
And clubs are certainly fond of them. Fourteen of the 20 Premier League teams in the 2022-23 season had shareholder loans recorded in their most recent set of accounts and City’s legal team were only too happy to highlight the extent of their use during this case. It was cited that £1.5billion ($1.96bn) out of £4bn total borrowings across the division — 37 per cent — were through shareholder loans.
“The main motivation (behind shareholder loans) is that it’s an easier mechanism for an owner getting their money back,” says Chris Weatherspoon, an accountant and financial analyst at the football website Game State. “If they put in equity, that’s them effectively giving up any right to a return, short of paying out dividends, which hardly any club does or even can do, as most are in a position of accumulated deficits, or making their money back when they sell up.
“It’s also more tax efficient. Interest costs on debt — if owners charge them — are tax-deductible for clubs, so reduce the club’s tax burden; dividend payments aren’t.
Why did City raise them as an issue?
City came hard at the Premier League when launching their legal challenge in June, saying the APT rules in place were “discriminatory and distortive”. They also called their existence “unlawful” and set about picking holes in a set of regulations designed to prevent clubs earning increased revenue through inflated commercial deals.
Everything, in theory, had to reflect fair market value (FMV). Only, shareholder loans have never done that. No bank would lend hundreds of millions interest-free, so why should a club benefit from such an arrangement through its owners? It was, City argued, the very definition of an associated party transaction and “at odds with the whole rationale of PSR (the league’s profit and sustainability rules)”.
“The exclusion of shareholder loans from the APT rules distorts competition in permitting one form of subsidy, namely a non-commercial loan but not another, namely a non-commercial sponsorship agreement,” City were cited as saying in the verdict.
And, most importantly, City’s argument over shareholder loans was accepted by the independent panel. That will force a change to the Premier League’s rules, with shareholder loans integrated into the broader APT regulations.
Any money loaned to a club by their owners will need to reflect FMV and see interest rates charged in line with commercial loans. The changes will bring the Premier League in line with UEFA, European football’s governing body, which applies FMV to shareholder loans in its financial fair play (FFP) calculations.
In successfully arguing that shareholder loans should face the same assessments as any commercial deal, they did enough to ensure that associated party transactions (APT) rules could be declared unlawful.
So the APT rules now need to be amended, but can the league get a two-thirds majority of clubs to back the repair job, especially when City’s lawyers scrutinise their handiwork?
What are shareholder loans?
They do exactly what it says on the tin: it is money loaned to a club by their shareholders. They amount to a form of funding, a means for owners to inject cash into the football project without seeking equity in return. Typically these are long-term arrangements, often free of interest payments.
And clubs are certainly fond of them. Fourteen of the 20 Premier League teams in the 2022-23 season had shareholder loans recorded in their most recent set of accounts and City’s legal team were only too happy to highlight the extent of their use during this case. It was cited that £1.5billion ($1.96bn) out of £4bn total borrowings across the division — 37 per cent — were through shareholder loans.
“The main motivation (behind shareholder loans) is that it’s an easier mechanism for an owner getting their money back,” says Chris Weatherspoon, an accountant and financial analyst at the football website Game State. “If they put in equity, that’s them effectively giving up any right to a return, short of paying out dividends, which hardly any club does or even can do, as most are in a position of accumulated deficits, or making their money back when they sell up.
“It’s also more tax efficient. Interest costs on debt — if owners charge them — are tax-deductible for clubs, so reduce the club’s tax burden; dividend payments aren’t.
Why did City raise them as an issue?
City came hard at the Premier League when launching their legal challenge in June, saying the APT rules in place were “discriminatory and distortive”. They also called their existence “unlawful” and set about picking holes in a set of regulations designed to prevent clubs earning increased revenue through inflated commercial deals.
Everything, in theory, had to reflect fair market value (FMV). Only, shareholder loans have never done that. No bank would lend hundreds of millions interest-free, so why should a club benefit from such an arrangement through its owners? It was, City argued, the very definition of an associated party transaction and “at odds with the whole rationale of PSR (the league’s profit and sustainability rules)”.
“The exclusion of shareholder loans from the APT rules distorts competition in permitting one form of subsidy, namely a non-commercial loan but not another, namely a non-commercial sponsorship agreement,” City were cited as saying in the verdict.
And, most importantly, City’s argument over shareholder loans was accepted by the independent panel. That will force a change to the Premier League’s rules, with shareholder loans integrated into the broader APT regulations.
Any money loaned to a club by their owners will need to reflect FMV and see interest rates charged in line with commercial loans. The changes will bring the Premier League in line with UEFA, European football’s governing body, which applies FMV to shareholder loans in its financial fair play (FFP) calculations.
bobbyowenquiff
Well-Known Member
If you did some due diligence on Panja going back to the time when he was based in Manchester you would soon find out that there is no point engaging with him. I enjoy your contributions and, like others, have found them very helpful during this complex legal saga. I just think that some people in the media need a wide berth.Odd take. A journalist who is claiming to be objective (to the extent Panja is) should not try to mislead his audience by pushing a narrative as one thing when it is, in my view, misleading, preliminary and incomplete. He did that by pushing first a questionable summary re the databank (I stand by that he has good sources as does Delaney etc) and then exaggerating Leaf's summary. When I then pointed this out, he made a false allegation that I was punching down on a lawyer. It is not punching down to suggest to Panja that when his chosen lawyer on the subject, says something very different from his initial take, that Panja has a responsibility to broadcast that update to his audience as an objective journalist. You may disagree but it is hardly punching down. I am engaging with him on his journalism and objectivity not his legal understanding.