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PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules
- Thread starter ayrshire_blue
- Start date
Doesn't mention sponsorships."Well, this is the accusation which has come from Tebas that Manchester City have artificially inflated their revenues by disguising money from the owners. I have seen some very, very detailed documents which are not in the public domain relating to this, and that's quite intriguing content. I can't go into any details about it".
supercity88
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Reading a few pages back there, and its the thing that I find funny about this thread in particular.
Kieran Maguire says that he's seen documents that aren't in the public domain on our sponsorship that are "interesting to say the least".
Instead of taking that as a worrying comment in relation to these charges, the vast majority of posters dismiss it and abuse him personally, despite not having seen the documents themselves.
Thats burying your head in the sand behaviour.
I've said on here before, if you aren't 100% confident that we're going to be found not guilty of all charges, moreover if you aren't singing from the hymn sheet that we've done absolutely nothing wrong, you get abused and shouted down.
Just hope some of us aren't in for a shock when the verdict comes out.
City have held their hands up when we've failed to comply with UEFA's FFP rules initially (even though they changed them with the purpose of punishing us). We challenged UEFA's further punishment and won at CAS. We said the APT rules were unlawful and they were. We have said we have the evidence to fight off the PL charges, so I don't see why we wouldn't trust the club.
Throughout all of the above, we've heard so much from other sources and people looking to destroy the club. Each time they've lost and the club has won.
Your other post is right. But this is simply the same the other way.Any time I've heard Maguire on radio interviews talking about us in relation to these charges or the APT stuff he's come across as balanced enough tbh (I'll probably get abuse for this)
Its a worrying development for me.
It is neither a "development" or worrying.
You could say anyone who needs to send a partial document to Maguire is a little desperate that huge processes aren't getting results that they want so would like to up the noise.
City didn’t hold their hands up, they agreed a settlement without admitting any wrongdoingCity have held their hands up when we've failed to comply with UEFA's FFP rules initially (even though they changed them with the purpose of punishing us). We challenged UEFA's further punishment and won at CAS. We said the APT rules were unlawful and they were. We have said we have the evidence to fight off the PL charges, so I don't see why we wouldn't trust the club.
Throughout all of the above, we've heard so much from other sources and people looking to destroy the club. Each time they've lost and the club has won.
Prophet of Doom
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Idiotic comment from Maguire. There has just been a 3 month hearing where thousands of documents, emails and testimonies that are ‘not in the public domain’ have been seen and heard.
There are billions at stake including the future of the PL on this decision and a throwaway comment that makes out he has viewed a smoking gun could come back to bite him on the arse.
Whatever the decision - a lot of clubs and individuals are gonna be spending a lot of time with their legal team very soon.
There are billions at stake including the future of the PL on this decision and a throwaway comment that makes out he has viewed a smoking gun could come back to bite him on the arse.
Whatever the decision - a lot of clubs and individuals are gonna be spending a lot of time with their legal team very soon.
IrishBlueSince92
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I didn't think he was talking about those documents when I read the quotes. Most people have seen themIt's nothing new, it isn't particularly worrying.
There were documents stolen from us, that 'prompted questions' initially, which is pretty much why the investigation and proceedings are going on.
City have said everything can be explained. Unless he's seen our explanation and decided it's not good enough, then it's not worth bothering about.
It's not about having our heads in the sand, it's about filtering out worthless news and waiting for the verdict.
Like most of us that sit glued to Bluemoon all day when we should be working, I feel incredibly well informed when discussing the charges with friends who support the red tops due to the outstanding posts we get on here from our learned legal and financial experts. To be fair to them, my friends are all decent intelligent people, but even they haven't got the first clue about any of this beyond the stupid propoganda. We worry about people listening to the likes of Delaney, Harris etc but the reality with my friends is that they do not even know who these "journalists" are. They are far more likely to trust the BBC and just as worryingly Talksport.
What I find most interesting is that nobody I speak to has ever thought about this from a business perspective and it is in that area that I feel most confident, notwithstanding the brilliant accounting and legal analysis we get on here. The thing is, almost everybody fails to understand just who Khaldoun and Mansour are. The red tops would have us believe that they are a couple of arab charlatans out to dress up their reputation and regime, a couple of mucky operators that need to be removed. But nothing could be further from the truth. Khaldoun regularly talked about "creating value" in his Chairman interviews and just on a simple level that is what they do. The Mubadala fund that he runs currently has over $300Bn under management across many technology sectors and has been heavily invested in the UK for a long time. The concept is not taking fistfuls of cash and chucking it at the wall in the hope that something sticks with a "who cares there's plenty more where that came from" attitude as the red top fans would have us believe. It's about investing in quality to build value and that is something that they are very very good at. Mubadala is invested all over the world in major technology, life sciences etc businesses, the vast majority of which have no roots in the middle east at all. Their link is the desire to work with world class investors to bring real value to help build companies that can compete at the top level.
I recently challenged a few of my friends with the City investment. Including purchase price and net investment into City, at a rough estimate the owners have spent circa £1Bn or at least something of that magnitude. They divested a bunch of stock to SilverLake, who are no mugs (media never mention them) which in the process reduced the capital tied up. That deal valued City at c$5Bn, so the good Sheikh's supposed sportswashing exercise has so far made him about $4Bn. When this case is cleared, that value may well be considerably higher. That is how you build value. If it's sportswashing as the raging element of the journalistic world suggest (that's you Migs), then they are not very good at it!!!
Incidentally as an aside, the Glazers are about $4-5Bn up as well and FSG etc similarly well placed.
All of these Premier League investments are about making money and it's been a very profitable medium with some great multiples and until City came along to ruin their party, owning a team in the established elite of the Premier League was a very safe investment in an otherwise volatile sports market. So when faced with a threat to that safe investment situation, what is the go to approach of American business. They look to influence the rule makers to legislate in their favour and they litigate to maintain barriers to entry and competition. Litigation is part of the American way of life and especially of doing business and protecting your pitch. Winning such litigation isn't actually that important, but often just tying would be competitors up in knots with ever changing attacks is enough to slow down their advance and to either convince them that it's just too difficult and sell up, or in the technology world often force them into a merger/sale etc. By making life difficult and showing the ever increasing height of regulatory hurdles that a would be competitor needs to jump in order to just compete, they also deter others from joining the party. In the land of the free, big business is anything but simple. Once you have a leadership position and influence at a regulatory level, it's about building the defences to cement your position at the trough.
Does any of this start to ring bells?
As so we return to looking at Khaldoun and Mansour, with their blue chip investor reputation for building value and establishing companies as genuine world class operations. Reputation is vital to their operations and whilst City is a small investment for them really, it is very high profile and it is also extremely profitable with the high multiples mentioned earlier. These guys are incredibly well connected and a "conviction" for false accounting would be shattering to them They would survive it obviously, but their standing in boardrooms of companies where their investment is placed would be diminished, so doing what we think they are accused of at City would be an incredibly high stakes game and I don't think that's in their DNA.
About a year or so ago, the UK Government staged an investment forum chaired by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. On the small panel to talk about investing into the UK and deriving value, was Khaldoun. Here we saw our Chairman, with charges effectively for fraud hanging over him still selected as a blue chip panelist. Hunt even congratulated him on the brilliant job he had done with City. Politicians are always careful who they endorse and at the time I thought it was very significant that Khaldoun was selected, despite what was going on in the background. They didn't invite the Glazers or FSG (with their own shady history) and they certainly didn't invite Simon Jordan or Jamie Carragher! Ok i'm joking with the last two, but my point is that sometimes we don't really grasp just who our Chairman is or how he is perceived outside of the halfwit riddled football bubble.
Now given all that we know about Khaldoun and the Sheikh, do we think they can spot a trap? A trap so obvious that it couldn't be more unsubtle if it had the words "THIS IS A TRAP" written on it ten feet high in luminous paint? The trappiest trappy trap ever made? Do we really think they are that stupid, because from the very day that FFP was announced it has had one target and one target only and that is to trap City. I simply cannot reconcile anything that they have done or any of their other behaviour with such a level of stupidity that would be best placed in a road runner cartoon from the 60s/70s. It's inconceivable.
If we follow the money, everything points straight at the market incumbents (G14 and the red tops) protecting their position and revenues at all costs. Regulate and litigate. Unfortunately for them they are up against some of the smartest operators around who, as they have done elsewhere, have sought the best people to do their best work in a world-class business environment. The biggest clue for me throughout this whole sorry saga has been the use of the word "impartial". Khaldoun and co have clearly always believed that the deck has been loaded against then, but as soon as they get an impartial panel, the facts become irrefutable. When the vested interests are removed they say that the facts speak for themselves and given their track record, I have no reason to doubt or disbelieve them.
What I find most interesting is that nobody I speak to has ever thought about this from a business perspective and it is in that area that I feel most confident, notwithstanding the brilliant accounting and legal analysis we get on here. The thing is, almost everybody fails to understand just who Khaldoun and Mansour are. The red tops would have us believe that they are a couple of arab charlatans out to dress up their reputation and regime, a couple of mucky operators that need to be removed. But nothing could be further from the truth. Khaldoun regularly talked about "creating value" in his Chairman interviews and just on a simple level that is what they do. The Mubadala fund that he runs currently has over $300Bn under management across many technology sectors and has been heavily invested in the UK for a long time. The concept is not taking fistfuls of cash and chucking it at the wall in the hope that something sticks with a "who cares there's plenty more where that came from" attitude as the red top fans would have us believe. It's about investing in quality to build value and that is something that they are very very good at. Mubadala is invested all over the world in major technology, life sciences etc businesses, the vast majority of which have no roots in the middle east at all. Their link is the desire to work with world class investors to bring real value to help build companies that can compete at the top level.
I recently challenged a few of my friends with the City investment. Including purchase price and net investment into City, at a rough estimate the owners have spent circa £1Bn or at least something of that magnitude. They divested a bunch of stock to SilverLake, who are no mugs (media never mention them) which in the process reduced the capital tied up. That deal valued City at c$5Bn, so the good Sheikh's supposed sportswashing exercise has so far made him about $4Bn. When this case is cleared, that value may well be considerably higher. That is how you build value. If it's sportswashing as the raging element of the journalistic world suggest (that's you Migs), then they are not very good at it!!!
Incidentally as an aside, the Glazers are about $4-5Bn up as well and FSG etc similarly well placed.
All of these Premier League investments are about making money and it's been a very profitable medium with some great multiples and until City came along to ruin their party, owning a team in the established elite of the Premier League was a very safe investment in an otherwise volatile sports market. So when faced with a threat to that safe investment situation, what is the go to approach of American business. They look to influence the rule makers to legislate in their favour and they litigate to maintain barriers to entry and competition. Litigation is part of the American way of life and especially of doing business and protecting your pitch. Winning such litigation isn't actually that important, but often just tying would be competitors up in knots with ever changing attacks is enough to slow down their advance and to either convince them that it's just too difficult and sell up, or in the technology world often force them into a merger/sale etc. By making life difficult and showing the ever increasing height of regulatory hurdles that a would be competitor needs to jump in order to just compete, they also deter others from joining the party. In the land of the free, big business is anything but simple. Once you have a leadership position and influence at a regulatory level, it's about building the defences to cement your position at the trough.
Does any of this start to ring bells?
As so we return to looking at Khaldoun and Mansour, with their blue chip investor reputation for building value and establishing companies as genuine world class operations. Reputation is vital to their operations and whilst City is a small investment for them really, it is very high profile and it is also extremely profitable with the high multiples mentioned earlier. These guys are incredibly well connected and a "conviction" for false accounting would be shattering to them They would survive it obviously, but their standing in boardrooms of companies where their investment is placed would be diminished, so doing what we think they are accused of at City would be an incredibly high stakes game and I don't think that's in their DNA.
About a year or so ago, the UK Government staged an investment forum chaired by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. On the small panel to talk about investing into the UK and deriving value, was Khaldoun. Here we saw our Chairman, with charges effectively for fraud hanging over him still selected as a blue chip panelist. Hunt even congratulated him on the brilliant job he had done with City. Politicians are always careful who they endorse and at the time I thought it was very significant that Khaldoun was selected, despite what was going on in the background. They didn't invite the Glazers or FSG (with their own shady history) and they certainly didn't invite Simon Jordan or Jamie Carragher! Ok i'm joking with the last two, but my point is that sometimes we don't really grasp just who our Chairman is or how he is perceived outside of the halfwit riddled football bubble.
Now given all that we know about Khaldoun and the Sheikh, do we think they can spot a trap? A trap so obvious that it couldn't be more unsubtle if it had the words "THIS IS A TRAP" written on it ten feet high in luminous paint? The trappiest trappy trap ever made? Do we really think they are that stupid, because from the very day that FFP was announced it has had one target and one target only and that is to trap City. I simply cannot reconcile anything that they have done or any of their other behaviour with such a level of stupidity that would be best placed in a road runner cartoon from the 60s/70s. It's inconceivable.
If we follow the money, everything points straight at the market incumbents (G14 and the red tops) protecting their position and revenues at all costs. Regulate and litigate. Unfortunately for them they are up against some of the smartest operators around who, as they have done elsewhere, have sought the best people to do their best work in a world-class business environment. The biggest clue for me throughout this whole sorry saga has been the use of the word "impartial". Khaldoun and co have clearly always believed that the deck has been loaded against then, but as soon as they get an impartial panel, the facts become irrefutable. When the vested interests are removed they say that the facts speak for themselves and given their track record, I have no reason to doubt or disbelieve them.
halfcenturyup
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- 14,888
Doesn't mention sponsorships.
Revenues generally means turnover to financial people, no? I suppose he could have misspoken. But then he should be more bloody careful how he expresses himself .....
Maybe. I doubt anything new has come up and been passed to him at this stage. If so though, it will be similar in that he won't have the full context and I doubt he would know our explanation.I didn't think he was talking about those documents when I read the quotes. Most people have seen them
I'm beyond getting stressed about what the media says about this at this stage - all of it is ifs, buts, maybes etc, so basically fishing for clicks/listens/views.
What will be will be.
Churchlawtonblue
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Precisely, we would someone leak information now? What's so important about it, that it wasn't disclosed previously. Smells of desperation by someone to me.Your other post is right. But this is simply the same the other way.
It is neither a "development" or worrying.
You could say anyone who needs to send a partial document to Maguire is a little desperate that huge processes aren't getting results that they want so would like to up the noise.
Guilty as charged yer 'onourLike most of us that sit glued to Bluemoon all day when we should be working......
Facts are irrelevant (to a point) in this case.
It was always a shit flinging exercise to damage the brand.
Job done.
When the verdict comes in, unless we get a gold plated and absolute "Not guilty" verdict, without caveats, we'll continue to be fired at.
Even then, i don't think it would stop them. This is football.
If we are guilty of significant fraud, i dread to think what will happen. I think we'll tear ourselves apart internally.
A bit of shit from the galleries will pale into insignificance.
It was always a shit flinging exercise to damage the brand.
Job done.
When the verdict comes in, unless we get a gold plated and absolute "Not guilty" verdict, without caveats, we'll continue to be fired at.
Even then, i don't think it would stop them. This is football.
If we are guilty of significant fraud, i dread to think what will happen. I think we'll tear ourselves apart internally.
A bit of shit from the galleries will pale into insignificance.
Prestwich_Blue
Well-Known Member
There are companies that sponsor us that aren't Abu Dhabi-based but have links to entities there, be that customers, suppliers, joint ventures or other commercial relationships.No one can ever explain to me why, if you're so rich with so many business interests that you can gladly lean on them to sponsor your football club, why you'd go through all the hassle and potential illegality of pretending to sponsor a club. You'd just be like "hey, here's an opportunity, I think we should do that, but we need to be careful we don't break the law as my names all over all the accounts" and the people would do that. Obviously. I've spent two years thinking about this and can't for the life of me why you'd do it the illegal way and produce PowerPoints about your illegality.
No one can ever explain to me why these "artificially inflated" sponsorships looked like they were at the top end of fair market value 15 years ago and look like fabulous value now. Where's the fucking inflation?
Hays & Nexen fall into that category, and there's certainly others. As you say, why risk it with companies like Etihad when you don't need to. And what does 'artificially inflated' even mean?
Nick Harris jumped on this bandwagon without realising that the payments levelled out over a number of years. If we contracted with Etihad to pay us £60m a year, they could pay us £100m one year, £80m the next and nothing the year after.
The CAS documents seem to suggest that's what happened, as they looked at payments in 3 of a 4-year period. Harris divided the aggregate of those 3 payments (c£255m) by three, which gave him a figure he took to mean Etihad had overpaid. But it seems they paid nothing in the third of those four years so it should have been divided by four, which would have given a figure of £65m.
The only way it could be 'artificially inflated' is if they paid us £80m and we paid them back £15m hidden in operating expenses or via another entity (CFG). But I'd hope our auditors would have picked that up.
Why are most thinking intriguing is something negative?
Maybe it’s an intriguing document as it clearly exonerates City?
I’ve only read the transcript on here, so was there more to suggest it’s a document which casts doubt on our innocence?
Maybe it’s an intriguing document as it clearly exonerates City?
I’ve only read the transcript on here, so was there more to suggest it’s a document which casts doubt on our innocence?
supercity88
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City didn’t hold their hands up, they agreed a settlement without admitting any wrongdoing
Missing the point entirely.
The point is, the club have fought any rule or charge they've been unhappy with and won. In the UEFA case we clearly wanted to stay in their good books so didn't fight things and settled even though we had a good argument. It's a clear reveal of how we operate on these matters.
City would have settled with the PL if we were concerned there was a smoking gun or a chance of losing, I've always had that opinion. Others have said we may have been advised to, but chosen not to, but I don't believe we'd risk our reputation through stubbornness or hope. We're far too well run to do that.
With our track record on these matters, if the club are saying we have irrefutable evidence then I trust them. It's a better place to be than trusting the word of those with an agenda against us, or looking to make money from this saga. If the club have lied about the evidence I'll deal with it then.
blue b4 the moon
Well-Known Member
I don't think he'd just be using 'interesting' if that was the case mate.Who's to say this detailed document wasn't provided at the trial and has us bang to rights on a few charges?
No one knows.
Chill believe in Big Khal's comments.
There will be another story along for KM. Always is. He won’t be at all concerned about that.WRT Maguire he won't be happy when his lucrative gravy train commenting on City comes to an end. He knows no more than you or me on the outcome of the case.