Hearts share issue is ‘first step’ towards fan ownership

By STUART BATHGATE
Published on Friday 26 October 2012 00:02

HEARTS have taken what they see as the first step towards supporter ownership of the club by putting around ten per cent of the shares up for sale to fans.

The Tynecastle team will net £1.79million if the full allocation is bought, which would be welcome income after two months in which they failed to pay all of their staff on time. However, the club see the offer not as a short-term fix, but as part of majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov’s longer-term plan to give up ownership.

“Ubig, the Lithuanian conglomerate chaired by Vladimir Romanov, has approved the offer by the 2012 William Hill Scottish Cup winners that could see the supporters of the club control over ten per cent of the total shares,” a statement on the Hearts website said yesterday. “Priced at 11 pence each, if fully subscribed the share offer will raise up to £1.79m, every pound of which (after costs) will be invested in the club.

“The share offer is the first that provides supporters at Hearts with a chance to invest in the club since the takeover by Ubig in 2005. It is being viewed by the club board as a potential opportunity to test the willingness of supporters to get more closely involved with the club by taking a first step towards possibly becoming eventual owners of Hearts.”

The share offer opens tomorrow and will close on 19 December. Current shareholders, who number around 4,000, have been sent a document explaining the offer. Spectators at tomorrow’s home league match against Ross County will also receive information about the offer, while applications can also be made via the club website.

“This share offer provides supporters of Hearts and other interested investors with a real opportunity to increase their interest in the club while contributing directly to the investment in some of the best young footballing talent in the game,” director Sergejus Fedotovas said. ”It is a very important moment in Hearts’ history where supporters are invited to express their interest and secure the future of the club.

“Now Hearts needs its supporters more than ever and we count on this appeal being heard and supported. If this first share offer is successful we believe that future proposals could be considered that may eventually allow for Hearts supporters to take over the club entirely.”

Those future proposals could extend as far as selling a majority stake to the supporters, along the lines of the set-up at some German clubs. If the fans held 51 per cent and Romanov the remainder, he would still have a major say in the way Hearts were run with the power to veto some changes.

Although some administrative costs are inevitable with any share issue, Hearts aim to minimise those costs and plough as much money as possible into the running of the club. Tynecastle sources also insisted that, as work on the offer began several months ago, it should not be viewed as a response to recent cashflow difficulties.

It is now almost a year since Romanov announced that he had “lost interest in football” and would therefore consider either finding a partner or selling the club outright. If any tentative interest has been expressed since then. It has never been made public, and industry analysts believe that Hearts’ multi-million-pound debt – owed primarily to Ubig – would deter many potential purchasers.

Even if Romanov were to sell the full ten per cent on offer, he would still have a controlling interest, meaning that any potential owners could still effectively take over the club by buying him out. While he remains open to any such offers, Romanov sees no harm in gauging the ability or willingness of the fans to take control from him.

Hearts know that if the sum raised by the offer comes nowhere near to that maximum figure of £1.79m, the initiative will be widely seen as a flop. But their attitude is that, after a year of patiently waiting for offers to arise, the Kaunas-based businessman has rightly decided that he has to start somewhere if he is to divest himself of control.

If somewhere close to the complete ten per cent is bought, the likelihood is that a further tranche of the shares will be offered at some stage. Conversely, if the offer is undersubscribed, Hearts may conclude that they will have to increase their efforts to find alternative investment elsewhere.

Romanov remains a controversial figure who divides opinion within the Hearts support as well as in Scottish football as a whole. For some, he deserves continued gratitude for his intervention to keep the club at Tynecastle after the previous regime had agreed to sell it to housebuilders and play home games at Murrayfield. Others believe he has ceased to serve a useful purpose other than as a guarantor of the club’s debt, and that his admission of lost interest means he should get out as soon as possible. For the latter group, this is at least a chance to show how willing they are to help the club towards new ownership.

However much money is raised, the Hearts board will continue to try to ensure a sustainable source of income from which they can play their employees’ wages.

Taken from the Scotsman