Quote Cripesginger="Cripesginger"I think posters like you and TRB bring well informed expertise to this topic.
However I do not think Mr Carter et al had a gun to their head when they took over the club. If they did not like the contract with BoI then they did not have take over the club. To accept the contract and then have people whinging about the terms being unfair is infantile. If the rent is too high so be it, try and negotiate it down, but don't whine about unfairness.
BoI are a multi billion euro organisation. Drive around Dublin and other parts of Ireland and you can see multi million euro projects that have been abandoned. several will be BoI financed projects. A few thousand pounds in Wakefield being spent on an empty stadium will not perturb the BoI. Also Richie Boucher the CEO is a tough smart sob who has set the tone for the recovery of the bank. If Mr Carter has plans B,C etc it is safe to assume BoI will also have a variety of plans.
If BoI 'roll over' on a small deal like your stadium it may send the wrong sort of message to people owing far larger amounts of money. They may also conclude that the rents received so far could cover the costs of an empty stadium for a few years.
The 'brinkmanship' is fascinating. Yet it is a dreadful notion that a few senior BoI executives - with no commitment to the area - could meet one afternoon and decide to have an empty stadium and 120 years of tradition comes to a stop.'"
Thank you... I think! However, lets address your points.
They did not have a gun to their heads but equally the lease was one small part of the club as an overall entity and business, and thank god they did take it on... or it would already be dead! They did not sign or agree the lease and the question is do you not take on the club and let it die because it was so burdensome making it not worth taking any shot as saving the club? Well, given they have been paying it since they took over then the answer is clearly no, but that still does not mean it was ever fair and reasonable!
I don't think they have whinged about it being too high, they have said it is too high because it clearly is (that is not hard to see) and indeed they have tried to negotiate a reduced fair new rent. They have made two very fair and reasonable offers to the BOI and O'Hara (trust me, they are reasonable, they are not trying to take the proverbial) and assume they had hoped for negotiations to continue, but as of this morning, they had not heard from either O'Hara or the BOI about the offers. So, I think is feeling that the club has brought on a game of brinkmanship with the BOI is not strictly true, I think it is the BOI that have done that and not the other way around.
Today was the day you either keep paying the lease into next year or give notice to quit, there were only two choices and one of them had to be taken! I don't think anyone on this thread and any others on FB etc has posted what I consider to be a good enough reason to keep paying what is a very large lease cost for a poor facility for the money being paid!
I also think that your opinion of the BOI, who are still up the creek with no paddle, is over-simplistic! I know someone who is a very good friend of the BOI CEO and he is indeed a very smart man but like my friend, he is a banker, and if this ever got as far as his door I am sure he would want to know why asset on the BOI books, albeit one that is showing as a negative asset, that was generating a very good income in the circumstances is now suddenly costing the bank £5k a month it doesn't need to spend and adding to that negative asset value on the books? He will not give two figs about what it has made him to date, he will want to know why it is now costing him money when it didn't have to! I think the BOI plan is simple, don't spend money when you don't have to... they can play the long game and while ever some money is coming in and they still own a negative asset, that negative value continues to head towards the positive, you don't want it going back the other way!
I think the BOI executives will only want to know, is this the best deal we could do under the circumstances, did we draw out a potential bluff? The answer, unless you know different, it going to be yes, we did and we are still getting an income and if of course a better offer comes along in the meantime, we will reconsider our options.
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