City launch legal action against the Premier League | City win APT case (pg901)

Prestwich_Blue said:
I think someone posted earlier that Mai Fyfield is a non-executive director of the PL, so what was she doing spending hours valuing deals? Did she do this regularly for other clubs' deals or was it just the EAG deal? Non-execs sit on the board and exercise oversight of the executive, not roll their sleeves up and get dirty.

And looking at the PL board, there's another thing I noticed. Company boards should have a mixture of executives and non-executives. Back in the mid-2000's, when I got involved in setting up a Supporters Trust at City, one of our key campaigning points was that the board didn't meet good corporate governance standards.

The reason was that there was just one executive (CEO Alistair Mackintosh) and just a handful of non-execs (Chair John Wardle, Mark Boler, Dennis Tueart and Brian Bodek). And we were a quoted company at that time so should have had a better board composition.

The PL is a multi-billion pound organisation yet has a chair, three independent non-executives and a CEO, so exactly the same as City pre-Shinawatra. Where's the Finance Director or the Marketing Director? Corporate Governance guidelines require "an appropriate combination of executive and non-executive directors...such that no one individual dominates the board's decision making".

How the hell are the PL meeting this requirement?

There's also an existing requirement that if 20% of stakeholders vote against a resolution, the organisation should seek to find out why they did. This seems to imply that if 4 or more clubs vote against something, the PL has a responsibility to investigate and understand the reasons.
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are the one missing just arsenal directors
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
The APT case has confirmed what the Commons Select Committee told Masters last year:”That he doesn’t know what he is doing.” How long is this farce going to continue?
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bobbyowenquiff:
Is there any video of that so it could be posted here on Bluemoon ?
I’ve never seen it.
 
Albeeeert said:
We've had our eyes wide open to the cartel for years. There has been discussion of there being a cartel on newcastle-online dating back to at least 2006. Newcastle took the PL Competition Appeal Tribunal on the basis that the PL was acting in an unlawfully anti-competitive way on behalf of the cartel and tens of thousands of us watched the live stream of the case.
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If you knew about the cartel in 2006 why the fuck did your club write a letter with the cartel asking UEFA to ban City in 2020? FTM
 
Think it’s clear we scored a huge win here, unexpected in some quarters but overall a very good outcome.

The red cartel clubs and their mouthpiece masters are on thin ground here and it’s clear we are starting to get the message out that maybe city is not the evil club we have been portrayed.

It always reminds me of political fiscal issues. We know a lot of dodgy shit goes on but no one goes after “doners”.

The league has been up to all sorts of illegal and discriminatory shit now since Mansour rocked up. As City fans, we have a ringside view leaving us well equipped to deal with what’s next.

Football is not above the law but it is heavily protected. You only have to look at how this victory is being reported.

Out of the cartel teams I can actually see the rags being the one that moves closer to City than the rest. Radcliffe is no fool and will have worked with our owners in the past.

The fight for the leagues future is underway.
 
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Platt Lane 59 said:
Reading this morning's Guardian report (how does Jamie Jackson keep his job ?), you would think they "are back".
I read that Martinez was booked again - another liability they signed on a huge wage packet, that is never mentioned...
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manimanc said:
I don't mind Ian Wright either but as of the last 18 months he has done nothing but show his arse about us.
Us pipping Arsenal twice has really brought out the mardarse in him that I never knew was in there. I thought he was this geezer who loved his football but he's turned into a proper little cry baby.
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He a tarquin ****
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Sorry to hear you've been under the weather. You've never been the same since you died have you. :-)

I've just put together a piece for my blog about the case, funnily enough, and I wrote this, which took the position you outlined above. What were our objectives and what was the result of those. Here's the relevant part:

"The details of the outcome of the arbitration over City’s case against the PL, over some of its financial rules, were published recently. This set off a flurry of claims and counterclaims over who won and lost. I’m not a lawyer, bar taking a Commercial Law course as part of my Economics degree, so I’m not going to get into complex legal arguments over this. It seems even the lawyers don’t agree, partly because the decision leaves key questions unanswered. Hence why it’s a ‘partial’ verdict.

But, for me, if you want to understand who came out of it more satisfied, you need to look at (a) City’s reasons for bringing this case and (b) the outcome. I think this is pretty clear and I’ll explain why.

In the 175-page document that the 3-man panel produced, paragraph 4 on page 4 in the Introduction says: In this arbitration MCFC seeks, inter alia a declaration that Rules E.55-79 of the Rules which concern Associated Party Transactions are unlawful and an order that two decisions of the Board of the PL concerning APTs to which MCFC were party should be set aside. The APT Rules were introduced in December 2021 and were amended in February 2024. The challenge is to both the APT Rules and the amended APT rules

The two decisions referred to above involved the rejection of two commercial contracts, with Etihad Aviation Group (EAG) and First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), on the grounds that they were evidently above Fair Market Value (FMV). There was a third deal, with Emirates Palace Hotel, which was initially rejected as being above FMV, but that decision was later rescinded after consultation between City and the PL.

There’s a number of things I want to explore in this article beyond the question of who ‘won’ so skipping ahead to page 164 of the document, where the three panel members sum up their findings, it says:
  • That the APT Rules are unlawful on account of being in breach of sections 2 and 18 of the Competition Act 1998, as they exclude from their scope shareholder loans, and for no other reason.
  • That the APT Rules are unlawful on account of being in breach of sections 2 and 18 of the Competition Act 1998, as they exclude from their scope shareholder loans, and because of the pricing changes in Appendix 18 of the Amended APT Rules and for no other reason.
  • That the APT Rules are unlawful on account of being procedurally unfair because a club is unable to comment on the comparable transaction data relied upon by the PL before the PL determines whether a transaction is not at FMV and for no other reason.
  • That the PL’s decision with regard to the EAG transaction was reached in a procedurally unfair manner and must be set aside because the PL did not give MCFC an opportunity to respond to the [redacted] Benchmarking Analysis prior to reaching its decision and for no other reason.
  • That the PL’s decision with regard to the FAB transaction was reached in a procedurally unfair manner and must be set aside because the PL did not provide MCFC, prior to the PL’s final determination, with the [redacted] Databank transactions entered into by other clubs, which the Board referred to in its final determination and for no other reason.
  • That in making its decision with regard to the FAB transaction there was an unreasonable delay of about 3 months and thereby a breach of rule E.64.
  • That in making its decision with regard to the EP transaction there was an unreasonable delay of about 2 months and thereby a breach of rule E.64
In summary, City sought a declaration that the APT rules were unlawful, and they got that. They sought the setting aside of the PL’s decision that the two contracts with EAG and FAB were above FMV, and they got that. That looks like a significant win to me."

Enjoy your evening with Mrs B.
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My man.
 
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