West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

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Ironworx
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Ironworx »

****ing hell, and to think that I was happy that BG took over rather than Joorabchian - Could Joorabchian have been any worse....

I suppose its credit to Duxbury that we havn't done worse with transfers than we have
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m-h
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by m-h »

I know we have some great posters on here who hopefully will give their opinions on the accounts when formally published. So couple of questions, could our current balance sheet actually be worse than 2008's, will we need to sell again in January to pay blunts next installment. Also does this basically mean we will not go into administration unless voluntary ?.

Apologies if stupid questions, but just got out of surgery on torn rotator cuff and on meds
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Wembley1966 »

Interesting that the Guardian managed to see a copy of the accounts - they are still not showing up at Companies House - when they do you can get a full copy of them for a quid.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by MD_HM »

Why dont they mention the 40m aprox that we have received in transfer fees in the last year????
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SammyLeeWasOffside
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by SammyLeeWasOffside »

QuintonNimoy wrote:Presumably the failed covenants lie behind our desire to negotiate all these buy to let deals, get owed transfer fees in early at a discount, get SBOBET to advance sponsorship (at a discount no doubt), etc, simply because we are now considered a leper by the banking community and can't get credit under any circumstances.

We should be firmly behind all steps to eradicate debt from the game, because until we prove ourselves to be capable of repaying our debts we won't be seeing a penny in loans which will put us well behind our rivals. Never happen of course.
QN when the banks think of us a lepers is there any lower to go? Maybe MP's will citicise our expenses next :D Can we get a bail out from Obama?
Last edited by SammyLeeWasOffside on Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Liam
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Liam »

don't know what you lot are getting your knickers in a twist about.

unless any of you have actually seen the accounts you should all calm down.

£7m operating loss, did you expect any better given the wages we were paying?
$30m off Player trading loss, again, until you see the exact make up of what this includes and for what exact term i would not be concerned at all.

We knew the accounts were a mess, but they are very very old now. The fact that we have spent money this window gives me a crumb of comfort that we aren't in as bad a situation as most of you are making out, also that we have been able to turn down offers for the likes of Upson means the wolves aren't quite at our door yet!
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Messiah
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Messiah »

Well Duckers said it was going to be bad :|

We should wait and see what the latest Accounts look like before we all become suicidal. The Wage bill must be a lot lot smaller by now with I guess a big wedge of the debt paid back.

We're not out of the woods yet but we have kept hold of Parker, Upson, Cole, Collison, Green and Behrami which means we aren't as bad as Pompey... Yet :cry:
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by MB »

Does this tell us anything we didn't already know?

Our trading in the window and the fact we still have Green, Upson, Parker and our better youth players tells me more about our current state than some out of date accounts.

The club is mortgaged to the hilt, but it has a significant fixed income. The only danger now is relegation, but that appliee equally to half the premier league.

Stay up this season, lose the out of contract players and suddenly the world looks a lot better.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by FDiMcA »

QuintonNimoy wrote: :lol:
You may not have liked him Fdi, and there are rational reasons aplenty, but I didn't realise that BG was Curbs in a latex suit. Is he so uncharismatic because he's a master of disguise leading several different lives at once? Maybe he's decided not to take another job because he wants to concentrate on presenting Strictly this year.

:lol:

But.
I dont get why the plain stupid behaviour of BG or Eggert who signed cheques they couldnt honour takes away from Curbishley.

If The Sheiks backing Hughes turn out to be skint, nobody will blame Hughes for paying over the odds for Lescott after missing Terry, or signing Adebayourn etc. I get it that if a manager is told "spend, spend, spend" he will give it a bloody good go.

The thing is having done so Hughes needs to qualify for the Champions League.
Harry had a spend up at Pompey (Gaydamak and others fault not Harrys you could argue) but he won the cup and finished higher than us.

I can understand Hughes and H being absolved of blame for any later financial crisis, but I cant see them being absolved of blame for results having been given that money.

Igoe has made an official West Ham statyement that having spent all that money a) we finished lower than we should have done, and b) we didnt just buy players who were not good enough, we were over paying players who were not suitable, not fit for purpose. That is on Curbs alone.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by sendô »

MB wrote:Stay up this season, lose the out of contract players and suddenly the world looks a lot better.
Dyer's contract is up next summer is it not? That would save £70k+ p/w. Add to that LBM, Davenport and whoever else and suddenly that's a good few million over the course of a season.

That's the thing that has killed us the most - wages. Hopefully the club will learn from this. Not just now, but in the long term, we have to have a strict wage structure in place in order for the club to avoid getting into this mess again.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by QuintonNimoy »

SammyLeeWasOffside wrote:QN when the banks think of us a lepers is there any lower to go? Maybe MP's will citicise our expenses next :D Can we get a bail out from Obama?
When it rains, the banks will take away your umbrella. Our ejection by force from the materialist world gives us an opportunity to return to grassroots, rediscover our footballing faith and reach a higher plane of sporting existence. Obama can come to watch us safe in the knowledge he won't be charged with glory seeking or decadent self indulgence, in fact he'd be suffering a cathartic new era of austerity along with the rest of us, a bit like visitng the diseased and starving of the world. No chance of a bail out though.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by FDiMcA »

Fionn Kiely wrote: How do you reckon Curbs 'swift removal' saved us then?
Ah got you.

Objectivley from the clubs view:

Igoe describes us concistently buying players who were not good enough.
And that we were underperforming.

Had Curbs stayed we would have had the financial crisis, it was by then inevitable.
So going into a period of player removal (Lungjberg, Anton, and onwards) the attainable level (in the club/Igoes mind) would have lowered.

Lower target, and a manager who delivers bellow target = lower.

Objectivley
Players would have continued to perform under Curbs like they performed "under Curbs", so Cole and Faubert to name two would not have made the leaps that are seeing them hailed as player of the month on KUMB.

Subjectivley IMHO
Zola/Clarke have improved players Curbs had to a level above what they were capable of under Curbs direction, and so its logical to assume that Collison and Tomkins have also done better, progressed quicker under Zola and Clarke than they would have under Curbs.

Its difficult to understand how (given Curbs results/form Jan 2008 - May 2008) anyone would imagine that Curbs would have done better in a time of cuts than he had done in a time of money no object.

The trend with Curbs was downwards.

IMHO Subjectivley - he bailed out to save his CV. History still shows Curbs walked.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by bristolhammerfc »

Good post FD :thup:
SBB
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by SBB »

ashbanki wrote:This is just what Trap, myself and others have been banging on about for so long.It is not whether Duxbury is or isn’t doing a good job – it is that if it is in the best interests of the club.In my opinion anything that perpetuates Icelandic ownership is not. No doubt Duxbury spin will counter these figures with a far more healthy up to date figure.
It’s all very well blaming Eggy and Curbs ,but the fact of the matter is that BG made out that he bought the club and bank rolled the spending from his own personal fortune and even claimed that the money for transfers was being converted into equity in the last published accounts.The truth is he borrowed the lot and did not put one krona of his own money into the club.
Duxbury,Igoe or anyone else privy to these awful set of accounts would have served the club better by leaking them when BG was in moratorium, thus making the job of duping other creditors into believing that WHU was the jewel in the asset crown and thus giving us a fighting chance of being sold on at a realistic price.
These figures, if true, also prove that Duxbury and the Fridge’s assertions that the club was ring fenced from it’s holding company’s debts as yet more lies.
Straumur are intent on screwing the club to within an inch of it’s life with the sole intention of extracting as much for itself/creditors as possible.I know that it was the fear of administration that is being used to justify the present actions ,but that may still happen with the present ownership.
Dont be so naive ash. You havent got a clue what BG's finances looked like anymore than I do and yet you race to generalisations based on summary conclusions of the accounts
No one pays cash for transactions of this size. The financing will have been structured and guaranteed personally. Alas when he went broke, the club was left burdened. I'm not saying its right but thats the way it works. Why on earth would you hand over 85M cash when it can sit in the bank earning fantastic rates (at the time) and use it as a guarantee against cheaper borrowing?

Still dont like the accounts anymore more than you but this is how all the posters on here get a bum steer - by posting accusations and inaccuarcies that you dont understand

Our accts are awful, but football clubs DONT MAKE MONEY period. We just have to survive our way out of an ownership situation that is preventing us from playing football let alon make money.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by QuintonNimoy »

FDiMcA wrote:I dont get why the plain stupid behaviour of BG or Eggert who signed cheques they couldnt honour takes away from Curbishley.
...
I can understand Hughes and H being absolved of blame for any later financial crisis, but I cant see them being absolved of blame for results having been given that money.

Igoe has made an official West Ham statyement that having spent all that money a) we finished lower than we should have done, and b) we didnt just buy players who were not good enough, we were over paying players who were not suitable, not fit for purpose. That is on Curbs alone.
I think that's fair in some respects, he picked the players and they did averagely, and the likes of Dyer were just bad buys. Ultimately if BG had been stable though we wouldn't be where we are now. It seems strange to me that with the club facing serious problems it wouldn't have been possible for him to face reality and do what was needed - some odd internal management choices there maybe.

Having watched a bit of Total Recall (nostalgia purposes only you understand :wink: ) last night, I quite like the idea of him getting stuck inside his BG suit though, only able to say "owner purchase.... owner purchase.... owner purchase... "
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by SammyLeeWasOffside »

QuintonNimoy wrote: Obama can come to watch us safe in the knowledge he won't be charged with glory seeking
The worry of every hammers fan, being tagged as a glory hunter :lol:
I like the Eastern philosophy part, we could all get out chakras cleansed at half time. Pity about the bail out though.
Chekov
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Chekov »

Long time lurker. First post. Be gentle.

I think that a lot of people are conflating the debts of West Ham with Stramur's rather bigger difficulties.

As I understand it we are owned by a holding company, C&B Holdings which is, in turn (?majority)owned by Straumur who are themselves effectively owned by creditors and are in a moratorium. On a pure point of company law then, Dux is correct in saying that the club is ring fenced, as a subsidiary company cannot be held liable for the debts of a parent. Additionally, as Straumur is in moratorium, all creditors processes are stayed so there can be no asset stripping of the club to appease them as things stand.

Evidently, there are ways for profits and assets to be siphoned off up the tree but if the club was only viewed only in this light and the need for cash was urgent then surely we would already have been liquidated with all assets sold off to the highest bidder. Given that the plan seems to be to keep the club as a going concern because, as many have pointed out, its worth in such a state is greater than the sum of its parts, I think it is fair to conclude that the board at West Ham may be trying to do exactly what they told us and balance OUR books.

As it turned out that BG did not put any of his own money in and financed all our spending with loans, it is not surprising that we were in terrible shape but we were certainly not the only company to breach banking covenants during the credit crunch.

I suppose that my main point is that we need to be clear about whether player sales and lack of investment in our squad is because Dux is attempting to reduce West Ham's debt to sensible levels or whether it really is part of a plan to siphon off funds to Straumur.

If it is the former then I'm happy and fairly pleased to have come through the transfer window without losing Zola, Clarke, Green, Upson, Parker, Cole or any of our promising youngsters and indeed to have come through the last 18 months without going into administration. If it's the latter then I am deeply unhappy but I would imagine that the more recent set of accounts will demonstrate which scenario is true.

Anyway, whatever is going on off the pitch, come the Wigan game I'll be behind whoever pulls on the shirt and hoping that nobody hurts Cole.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by QuintonNimoy »

SBB wrote:Why on earth would you hand over 85M cash when it can sit in the bank earning fantastic rates (at the time) and use it as a guarantee against cheaper borrowing?
The simple answer is that you do that when the return from the investment in the club produces more money than the option you outline. This would require the investor to not expect a return until they sold the club at some point in the future, having allowed it to accrue the benefits of reinvesting anything it made internally. Obviously seeing as the club will agree to whatever loan terms BG decides as he controls both bank and club the likelihood of this being an option isn't very high.
SBB wrote:Our accts are awful, but football clubs DONT MAKE MONEY period. We just have to survive our way out of an ownership situation that is preventing us from playing football let alon make money.
This simply isn't true, you allow BG the sophistication to make complex financial judgements when choosing how to put money into the club, but then make a gross simplification about whether it's possible to take money out of the club at a personal profit. The fact is the debt model you describe is one of a number of ways to make money from a football club. There are plenty of others, the club doesn't have to show a profit on the balance sheet for someone to make money from it.
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Porfirio »

Chekov - can you post more often? :thup:
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Re: West Ham accounts reveal loss of £37m

Post by Richard WHUFC »

Great post, I think it is obvious that they are trying to balance the books because if not the players you mentioned would already be gone.
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