I am not sure that this is exactly what is being proposed here but consider a company that issues 2 classes of shares, to two different parties. Say 100 class A shares to investor 1 and 900 class B shares to investor 2. Profit entitlements are divided equally per share (so 90% goes to investor 2, as holder of the B shares) but only the class A shares have any voting rights. Very clearly in that case investor 1 controls the company (as they are the only party who has any votes) but investor 2 is entitled to 90% of the profits of the company. I think that in our case SSC is buying a new class of shares which entitles them to the agreed share of economic interests but doesn’t have full (or possibly any) voting rights.

If they can't say the DT will own 50.1% in HoldCo then how are they defined as the major shareholder or how has the terms of the authority they have been given to ensure no more than 49.9% is sold has been respected.

They will start with 34% in HoldCo. This will eventually increase to 90%. I appreciate owning shares does not necessarily confer control if there are different classes of shares. The document refers to it as economic interest but for our deal it is shares in HoldCo. If that is not 90% ownership, then what is? If they sell their economic interest of 90% to a third party they would expect to be paid the market value. Why would a third party pay for 90% of something when they are only receiving 34% of it? They wouldn't. So where would the cash for the 56% difference come from? It wouldn't come from anywhere because that is not what they would be buying.

Let’s put it this way… if every pound promised (£86m) comes in over 5 years and thereby SSC owns 90% of our “economic rights” and they say “we’re done here” then what happens to our ground?

Is that what you did? ;)

Trigger I dont know how to reword it to make it any easier to understand. It's quite a simple concept that you can have 90% of dividends but not own 90% of a club or have 90% of the vote. Maybe feed it into chatGPT or something.

Remember this time last year we had Maverick, Hoody and Ninja all super active on here?

Russ that’s nonsense mate can you write that in plain speak? Or at least explain what “economic rights” means? Because no one else can regardless of which way they want to vote.

I think my simplistic take is that, for all the flowery language, this is just us selling out completely. One can logically assume that SSC do want it to work, as their best chance of a return on investment is surely to ultimately sell us on for even more money (and there must be easier ways for them to make money than tricking us out of a ground…). So, I suppose if it all pays off, we can invest in the team etc that’d be great. If it doesn’t, we’d be screwed and have no control at all, but in the same boat as every other failing club. Pretty much the only thing 100% clear to me is this is the end of fan ownership.

I’m sorry 6MDM but no, it doesn’t prove your point. They can have 90% economic rights without owning 90% of the holding company. Similarly someone could own 99% of all available shares and have no voting rights and no control. It’s not as simple as 90% of shares or 90% of ‘economic rights’ mean they have control.

tGG - Prof. Alice coming to Wimbledon, according to this [Link]

Price and Fox must know that this question would come up re ownership of the ground. Would like to hear from them as to why they felt this deal was presentable let alone recommendable in the current state.

HoldCo will own 90% of the stadium. We've not been told how our protections will work. I don't trust the DTB and just rely on them saying it is. Anybody who believes Mir is a philanthropist is more charitable than me. I've never known a philanthropist to purchase titles to make himself sound good and be so opaque about himself.

Given where we're at, I'd be prepared to grudgingly give up ownership of pretty much everything else about the club as long as we kept ownership of the stadium freehold (actual ownership, not just 'control', which, as seems clear, is pretty worthless when the withdrawal of money gun is held to our heads). And any so-called philanthropic investor should agree to that, as they'd never have a thought of selling off the ground so it's effectively worthless to them.

I'm not sure where you copied and pasted that from Russ but you're making my point. The issue is not share of profits. It's ownership. SSC will own 90% of HoldCo. How does that translate into minority voting rights for them? It's not about dividends. If they only owned 49.9% but received 90% of profits as a reward for funding us then fair enough. But that isn't what is happening here. That's my concern.

How to Structure Share Classes for Higher Dividends - To pay a larger dividend to a specific shareholder or group, you must outline the distinct rights of each share class in the company’s Articles of Association and Shareholders' Agreement. • Alphabet Shares (Class A, B, C): You can assign Class A shares to founders and Class B shares to investors or family members. When declaring a dividend, the directors can vote to pay a £5-per-share dividend to Class A, but only £1-per-share (or £0) to Class B. • Preference Shares: These are a dedicated class of shares that explicitly give holders a preferential right to dividends. They receive a fixed or variable dividend amount before any dividends can be paid to ordinary shareholders. • Tracking Shares: A more complex class of shares where the dividend amount is tied directly to the financial performance of a specific subsidiary, department, or revenue stream within the company rather than the business as a whole.

Fofana's penalty just landed in Birko Park

OI: the freehold would not be valued separately to the stadium. We got the land for free.

Pens just got interesting at anfield

Hashtag United 0 AFC Wimbledon 0

I know you weren’t :) it was a preemptive post

I wasn't TF. It is a reasonable question to ask whatever your view of the DTB members (but I have no views on them).

Nice point about the auditors.

OI - I agree, which is why this vote will succeed and I will get to see whether I was right or wrong. I really hope it turns out to be the latter.

Don’t have a go at me about that post OI 🫠 My whole relationship with the trust disintegrated when I flagged that the then Chair had been given the login details to the election system by the ESG, locked everyone else out of the system by mistake and then was allowed to keep those login details anyway for the rest of the campaign. And then lied about it despite proof that it had happened and the ESG admitting it. That’s when the attack puppies came a-wailing.