Green ever the showman as he
Rangers chief executive takes his charm offensive to the City
Friday 12 OctOber 2012 engage with the concerns they had in the past of who we were and what our intentions were well behind us now”.
Green has curried their favour by shamelessly dissing any persons or group that the Rangers faithful believe have driven them to their lowest ebb. It is a required tactic because, whatever he might say about fund managers and institutional investors being ready to buy into his club, they might ultimately think better of it with the reputation of Rangers pre-Green likely to be trashed in the weeks ahead. Firstly, by the first-tier tax tribunal outcome into their allegedly mishandled Employee Benefit Trust avoidance scheme and then by the ruling of the Scottish Premier League’s independent commission into the improper driven by altruistic imperatives. “I never veer,” he said. “I did a presentation at Murray Park that somebody leaked to the press and it was published back in May. That said I would float Rangers this year, not in two or three years’ time, when we will be back in Europe and then people would have to pay a higher price. That wouldn’t be fair. I made that promise on the 13th of May and I will put Rangers back on the AIM market. I would be disappointed if a bomb went off in America and stopped the markets. Barring that or another international disaster then this football club will be listed before Christmas, with the money raised.
“That is what I promised to do and that is what I am doing. If I was doing it for the benefit of the original investors then I would wait for three or four years when we do reap massive profits and the share price would be a lot higher and we would be worth £100m but it would be more expensive for the fans. The club belongs to the fans. The investors rescued it so are entitled to profit. They’ll have now, based on the figures we talked about earlier, made a profit of 100 per cent and if they’re not happy with that then tough.”
Green accepts that the timing of the share issue, just at the onset of the festive period during the most prolonged recession in the modern day, isn’t ideal for hard-pressed Rangers fans to find a spare £500 to invest in their club. “I made this statement in May. I didn’t just drop it on someone’s toes in the run up to Christmas,” he said. “If someone wants to buy £50 or £100 worth, that’s fine also. This is not just for high net worth – it’s for everyone. The meetings we’ve had outwith the country and at the presentations we did last Thursday and Friday, have been really positive. Fans have been saying they will buy shares.
“One of the best things for Charles Green has been fans shaking my hand and thanking me for saving the club but more importantly engaging with them. One of the criticisms I’ve picked up is previously fans didn’t have access to the board or the executive and were left out in the cold. If fans want to put their money in a collective pot and ask for representation on the board we’ve said we’re happy to consider that. There will always be a few doubting Thomases but they are few and far between now. There were issues in the past when people tried to raise money and didn’t succeed but that’s not what will happen this time. If we don’t raise £20m then I’ll buy whatever shortfall there is.”
Ah, the old fan on the board issue. Green throwing the faithful some more toffee. He is the sugar daddy that can seem all too sickly for the tastes of outsiders. But if his genuine hope is that long term Rangers can be a stand-alone business making a profit whatever league it is in, as he claims, he might ultimately need more sweeteners than Willy Wonka. CHARLES Green, chief executive of The Rangers Football Club, talks a good game. He will need to if he is to get institutional investors and fans on board for what looks to be a high-wire new Stock Exchange float of the club.
That is not just to do with the pantomime of ownership and corporate governance that Rangers has become in recent times. It is the whole question of the suitability of football clubs for stock market membership.
There has been a far from glorious history of football clubs taking the stock market’s shilling. Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur, Millwall and a host of others hardly set the world alight or became more profitable, thriving businesses through having a public listing.
In the mid-1990s one investment bank in the City even launched a football fund to try and ride the fad. It proved to be an own goal and was swiftly discontinued.
The problem is that football clubs and the supporters’ passion they inspire are the exact opposite of how most publicly listed companies are meant to be run. That is for the medium to long term and for profit, rather than for allimportant glory on the pitch and paying nearly as much in player wages as revenue comes through the door.
It often resembles a ragtag madness: an attempt to yoke tribal loyalty and the need for instant bragging rights on results to pin-striped conventional financial prudence.
Manchester United eventually gave up their UK listing because they weren’t doing the job the then-boss, Martin Edwards, wanted, ie, providing a tailwind of shareholder backing to accelerate business expansion away from the turnstiles. The club has since relisted on Wall Street under the Glazers to largely pay down borrowings.
There was little chance United would have got the float away with any degree of success in this country, and even Asia was shunned. Well, they do say the Yanks don’t understand ‘soccer’ so maybe there was a reason there.
But the Rangers float faces significant credibility issues on top. Most businesses would not tend to try to attract City money when they have just been banned from their main field of action (the SPL), fined for not disclosing their owner was previously disqualified as a director (Craig Whyte), and gone into administration to boot.
That sort of ‘baggage’ tends to raise institutional eyebrows even when the amount Rangers want to raise on the AIM market