[Clan]

Over a quarter of the company changed hands a couple of weeks ago, yet the issue of ultimate ownership is harder than ever to unravel.

A statement like this in the world of corporate business would have the effect of geting the attention of many people, including the authorities.
Yet, in London, it seems to be business as usual at Chelsea Village.
Which, it should be pointed out, was supposed to hold the club up in times of trouble...well, we have now seen the arrival of "times of trouble", unfortunately they are because of Chelsea Village in general and Bates in particular.

At a time when there are any number of alarming revelations flying around relating to the financial position at the Village it is worth remembering that as a Plc the company is obliged to keep the markets fully informed

Well this can certainly be said to not be true.
As usual CFC have remained emphatically quite on anything financial with the exception of a statement about the purchase fall through of the Real Madrid pair.
Interesting to note though that it was Ranieri that offered the real truth on that one.

Heres the whole thing.

http://www.chelseaactiongroup.com/silence.html

[Clan]

You may recall that Swan Management, Patrick Murrin’s Guernsey based Financial Management company, held and ‘spoke for’ over forty-four million shares, in excess of a quarter of the whole company.

The long rumoured supporters and backers of Bates.

Even though they were trading at less than one third of their 1996 value Bates clearly did not think they were a worthwhile investment so he stuck at 29.5%,

But, according to Bates at the AGM the club was "sound" and there was no foundation to the reported financial trouble in the rags.It was just more Chelsea bashing.

For anyone familiar with the manner in which Bates has totally dominated the club since his arrival, the possibility of him being voted off the board is a novel one to say the least. Imagine the possible repercussions of such a change

And therein could lie a very troubled decision for the men that want to see not only the Village, but the club as well succeed.If money men come in it would be with a priority to balance the books.First division footie would certainly be on the very near horizon as all and sundry went up for sale.

One suspects that the Feds will be less easy to brush aside however, and they are very keen to find out the whereabouts of Tollman’s offshore assets. According to every movie I have ever seen they always seem to get their man, and armed with new powers granted to track terrorist funds following September 11th, they look the best bet to tell the rest of us who actually owns our football club

Perhaps the Yanks will be the ones to reveal all...

Anyways heres the latest..

http://www.chelseaactiongroup.com/missing2.html

[Clan]

We are reported to be in hock to the tune of almost 100 million quid.
The Italian club was "only" 15 million quid in debt and look what happened to 'em.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/conti...767458,00.html

[BridgeMonkee]

Libya's president Muammar Gadafy is in talks to acquire a stake in the Greek club PAOK Salonika, only eight months after buying into Italy's Juventus.
The state-owned Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company, whose public face is the son of Col Gadafy, Al-Saadi, owns a 7.5% stake in Juventus.


I wonder IF our mysterious backers are equally as a dubious?

[Clan]

I wouldn't doubt it for a second that there was Arab (read: OIL) involvement with Bates.
Not that that necessarilly translates into BAD....but, the question that begs to be asked of Bates is " why are you hiding them " ?

[BridgeMonkee]

At least we know its not Bin Laden as he is a well known Arsenal supporter.

I was always under the impression that Matthew Hardings widow had a secret stake in the club.

[Clan]

If so it is very small.
It has to be less than 3% of the total shares or it would have to have been disclosed by now.Unless of course she has many 2.9% holding companys.

[BridgeMonkee]

Anyone know the current share price for CFC?

I was just reading about Cletic FC; In the City, Celtic shares closed 0.5p lower at 48p on Wednesday.

The shares have, like those of many football clubs, proved poor performers in recent months, and topped 350p in April 1999.

350p to 48p is a huge drop in 3 years eh. Footballs boom and bust years. We certainly picked a time for our "development".

[Clan]

Yesterday...the 6th of August 2002....they were trading for just over 18p per share.They reached a high of around 23p early last month....after the massive sell and subsequent buy....but have generally been around the abysmal high teens for some time.

Consider that when Gullit was in charge (right b4 he got the sack) we were in the semi-finals of two cups and placed third in the league...and our share price was 162p per share.

Quite a difference huh!

[Clan]

Best i could do is find a graph up to the end of fiscal year 2000...

http://www.chelseaactiongroup.com/share2.html