Wfc Finances

.....but 13m x £0.001 = £13k not £130. The accounts are in k, so there should be a 13 under each column.
The "non A shares" are presented correctly.
Something is wrong based on the accounts as drafted. Maybe the £0.001 should be £0.0001 then the £130 is correct and rounds to less than £1k ?

 

That's what I thought!

 

Not right though is it. Firstly it’s a separate line item. To be less than £1k it must be £130 so either the number of shares is wrong or the nominal value per share is wrong. Minor point I know…..

 

The agents fees are high, but contrey to popular opinon, they are not handed over willey-niley! For example, maybe the agents won't push for a move for players we want to keep should we go down

 

So you’re saying that there must be some hidden benefit to us paying these astronomical fees but we don’t know what the benefit is and there is no way to find out but should just trust that there is one?

Do you have any evidence for this claim (which of course I would love to be true) or is it just your opinion?

 

FTFY

 

He's just being a contreyian.

 

Haha, imagine we were paying the agents of Ken Sema so he doesn’t demand a move. Hilarious!

 

Why do you think our agent fees are so high ? Why do you think Gino pays them ?
Tax scam? Blackmail? Payment for something other than pure player transfers ?

 

Can't help but think it would go something like this:

Mogi appointed as the club's agent for incoming transfers. He's involved in all big money ones but none of the piddly Baah/Pollock type ones. He doesn't get involved in any transfers for any other clubs. It's basically a made up role, you can see on that sheet of agents that there are two for the transfers he's involved in so the players obviously stick with their actual agents and he's only representing the club.

Agent fees paid to Mogi, he gets half of the £12m for his paper role, whilst the players' agents get the other half. So £6m this season. Sometime later, one of Mogi's companies makes a £3m payment to one of Gino's in Luxembourg (secretive and where the parent company of our parent company is based). £3m taken out of the club and put into Gino's pocket. Mogi's got £3m for doing nothing.

Sounds crazy and you'd obviously need a bent agent who was prepared to get up to money laundering, fraud and tax evasion to pull it off so must be highly unlikely....

 

While the fees aren't published, his role in every transfer last summer is itemised here:

https://www.thefa.com/-/media/files...ries/intermediary-transactions-2021-2022.ashx

There's plenty of times he's acted for both the player and WFC in a deal by the look of it. Primarily when it's one of his own players.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as to describe it as a 'made up role' either. The list shows clubs are routinely represented in transfer deals and the 'Club/Player' designation is rife too. The bit I don't have time for is to see if any other clubs have special relationships with certain agents. The only public precedent I can think of is Wolves and Mendes.

Whichever way we look at it the whole business is murky as anything.

 

Can you not bring your facts into this please? I was quite enjoying making this up.

Edit: Seems that for some reason, we've logged Imran Louza twice as an incoming transfer. Maybe something went wrong when reporting through to the FA and they've accidentally double counted the agent fees for our largest transfer which might explain why we are so high - **** up rather than conspiracy?

 

Ha, I humbly apologise.

This year is definitely peak Mogi for Watford. In previous years his name only really comes up sporadically. Kabasele, Okaka, Lukebakio and a couple of others but that's it. The only non-Watford transfer I could see he was involved in the past 5 years was taking Maxime Colin to Birmingham in 2017. He's definitely our man.

 

I’m not sure what everyone is getting so upset about, doesn’t every club have a super agent who’s been arrested for money laundering, match fixing and had their other football club raided working for them?

 

I’m not going to speculate as it would be without evidence. The only thing I would say is the level of fees and concentration level should raise flags for an audit team to at least review the arrangements. It could be we are just getting seemingly poor value of course.

 

The accounts for the parent are now filed and the good news is that Gino introduced another £42m of his own (well his Luxembourg companies the ultimate holding company) taking his stake in our club as at June 21 to £51m-the highest every and he is the largest creditor.

The other debt is ;
£10m to Close Brothers bank -secured by transfer fees due
£24m to McQuarie bank-secured by transfer fee money due
£32m unsecured from Close Brothers
£5m to a director (not Gino)
£20m to XXIII Capital-secured by floating charge

Total £142m at June 21

Since then the £20m from XXIII capital has been repaid.

No mention of the reported £50m loan from McQuarie bank taken out in November 21 (remember this was against security granted by the football club against TV money) -if this was the case then that money could have been used to repay XXIII debt and either some of the unsecured Close Brothers loan or reduce some of the Gino loan.

Overall whilst not a great picture the fact that Gino had £50m of his money at stake is a good thing and even if it was reduced then he has the wherewithal to re-introduce it.

On that basis I am now renewing my season ticket (I was anyway )

 

Thanks for the summary WH48.
I'm being lazy but on what date were the accounts signed ? If recently, then presumably the £50m McQuarie loan (if real) would have had to have been disclosed as a significant PBSE ?
Unless they felt simply replacing one significant debt with another similar debt didn't warrant disclosure ??

 

They were signed just over a week ago (around same date the auditors signed off)

I agree about PBSE but no mention I can find-of course as it was security pledged by the club not the holding company last November it should really be in those but it wasn't.

We all know that its part of the job of directors to show the position in the best possible light and without sounding like someone who will not acknowledge any positive by the owner it presents better to show Gino had put in £51m and we all wait another year to find out what happened post June 21 to either his money or this reported £50m loan from Maquarie last November. Of course the club never comment on this type of thing but the Athletic did- so there we have it-no more news on this for a year.

 

Thank you for taking the time to put this into terms that us financial illiterates can understand.

 

Thank you for this.
If you had to quote a figure what would you say the overall debt is. I've seen £252m banded around but I can't get to that figure.
From your figures would £172m be about right with £50m of that owed to Gino's company. £142m at June 21, minus XXIII £20m plus Mcquarie £50m loan?

 

I think the £252m includes what we owe to other clubs in outstanding transfer fees?

 

I’m glad we don’t have to pay them what they’re owed.

 

It wouldn’t surprise me if the club got the Athletic to run with the £252m figure initially so that people could then say it’s only £150m and that is therefore absolutely fine, because at least it isn’t £252m.

 

That seems a lot of hassle for owners who supposedly couldn't give a **** what fans think

 

I said the debt was £150m.
I was close

 

Don't worry, if all else fails we can give them the Vic. At the last count it's valued at about £3.3bn and rising. That easily offsets the debt and isn't just a sharp accounting trick.

 

As @UEA_Hornet said £252m is the total amount owed by the football club which includes debt (£137m), outstanding transfer fees £62m and then day to day creditors like HMRC another £53m. People worry about debt as those creditors generally have security over the assets -ground, T V contract revenue so its that type of creditor that gets referenced.

This is all 9 months old information but my guess (like yours) would be the £50m loan was used to repay XXIII loan leaving £30m to reduce the loan from Gino, the Close brothers loan and the £5m directors loan (unless it was Duxbury then he should keep that in ) so as the parent/holding company has a little more debt than the club,my estimate is £140m being;

£34m owed to Close/McQuarie for outstanding transfers fees -so self liquidating
£12m Close (unsecured -down by £20m)
£46m Gino (down £5m)-also unsecured
£50m McQuarie-secured

Its a moot point as to whether IMHO the new loan was used to pay down debt now as TV money-£100m (that's what West Brom got) would be just enough to pay last seasons wage bill (we might well be still paying AG and TD) and these "other expenses" so we might be cash neutral this season leaving the debt closer to your £170m.

Overall though we had c£88m in unsecured debt and £50m in secured debt with parachute money next season to help. I have ignored the outstanding transfer fees of £62m as I guess the Sarr and Dennis sales will help reduce that significantly.

A better picture than many, including myself, imagined.

 

Unfortunately this is a very plausible explanation

 

If this was happening at WFC it would mean that money is being borrowed by the club, many millions of which is being transferred to private bank accounts while WFC is still liable for the debt. Straight out of the crackpot dictator's handbook.

 

I'm sure it's all above board and I'm prepared to tell my followers as much, as long as I can get a photo op and interview with Daniel Bachman.

 

https://twitter.com/swissramble/status/1514484507688280064?s=21&t=vI_LBVJ1AFx6JpzK-E9wVQ

Swiss Ramble have now done their annual deep dive of the numbers.

Unless I’m reading it wrong - seems there’s no reason for immediate panic but it is creeping up unless we get debt under control. Suggests overall debt and interest rates, transfer debt and agent fee’s are the biggest cause for concern.

Relegation won’t kill us - but reduced income, when faced with the level of debt, means the race to get back to the PL would well and truly be on.

Seems that if we get mired back down in the Championship for a few years, we are in real trouble.

 

Unfortunately Twitter is a banned site on my laptop so wonder if you or anybody can post what Swiss Ramble has said. If it's pain to do so no worries

 

Its difficult as there's graphics and about 25 odd tweets. Sure its do-able but not sure I know how! Someone vastly more skilled than I will be able to, I'm sure!

 

I do feel that my take over the last few months on here - i.e that things are bad and on a bad trajectory but not apocalyptic (yet) is somewhat vindicated. He thinks that our gross debt is £139m (not the headline £252m) and that the Macquarie loan reported by Leventhal was £65m of external loans with high interests rates paid off/refinanced to £50m with a more reasonable interest at Macquarie. We paid £6m in interest - around twice any other club in the league and six times what Norwich paid out.

No idea what will happen if we don’t get promoted during the two year parachute payment period, though, and I fear not just a) what will happen if we don’t get promoted but also that b) that two year clock will drive more short-termist decision-making.

I found this tweet on owner financing interesting. Pozzos clearly below average for the championship(!) for money put into the club over the last ten years. We’ve spoken on here how they don’t have enough cash to compete with the PL billionaires’ club but they could use an outside investor in the Championship too.

But you can also see how some of the clubs who have stabilised in the Championship following relegation/the end of parachute payments (Stoke, Cardiff, Boro, even QPR) have required a lot of investment to do so. Swansea the exception.
https://twitter.com/swissramble/status/1514486619813855232?s=21&t=fhs7OFU1CxqVn6L0hdvz4g

Definitely a mixed picture (at best) but having read Swiss Ramble’s threads on Derby and Reading, I think it’s fairly clear that we’re quite far from there (for now).