Quick sale of Hearts is a real possibility

HEARTS’ administrators BDO believe it could take several months before they have a deal in place to sell Hearts and are budgeting accordingly.

The aim of selling 3,000 season tickets over the next two weeks, they explained yesterday, is designed to raise £800,000 – comfortably more than the sum required to keep the club going into the autumn.

But significant movement is expected well before then. Trevor Birch of BDO said yesterday that he had already spoken to two parties who were interested in buying the club. One – the only group so far to have gone public with its intentions – is the Foundation of Hearts, the umbrella body for every supporters’ organisation. Birch would not reveal the identity of the other.

“There are three or four interested parties and I’ve spoken with two, both of them UK-based,” Birch explained. “The Foundation of Hearts are credible, yes. I’ve dealt with supporters’ trusts at Portsmouth and it’s an example of how it can work. It’s definitely achievable.

“Ian Murray from the Foundation has spoken to me,” Birch said. Asked whether the other group was based in London, he added: “I can’t really say any more about [the other group], but it’s not necessarily London-based.”

Murray, the Edinburgh South MP who is chairman of the Foundation, said last week that his organisation could make a bid for the club by the end of the month. The initial intention is for the offer to be for complete ownership of Hearts, but, with at least that one other party also interested in making a bid, the Foundation remains open to a joint approach.

“We’ve said quite clearly that, if there is another bid which we judge to be in the best interests of the club, we’ll absolutely back it,” Murray explained, “and we are also open to a hybrid model, along the lines of what happens in Germany, where clubs are 51 per cent owned by their fans with the rest of the shares being held by one or more companies.

“But we would also urge anyone who has a serious interest in making a bid to get in touch with us and discuss it. We are fast closing in on having 6,000 supporters making pledges of financial support.”

For such a model to work, of course, dual consent is needed. What does look probable, however, is that at least one viable offer will be made for Hearts. Those staff who are going without their salaries and are currently classed as creditors will clearly be hopeful that an offer will be accepted as soon as possible.

“It is never easy in any situation, particularly in a football club,” Birch said of the job he and colleague Bryan Jackson had yesterday of addressing the staff en masse then speaking individually to those who were being made redundant. “People tend to treat it like a vocation, but the passion and commitment they have for the club always seems to be that much greater than a normal employee, so it is always incredibly difficult to lay people off at football clubs.

“We spoke to them collectively then individually, and everybody was incredibly resilient. There was no anger, but everybody was incredibly upset and resigned to the fact. It has been going on for some time and in some 
situations it is better to have some certainty.

“They are within their rights to walk away if we do not pay them and it says everything about them that they have a fantastic loyalty to the club and they should be applauded for that.”

Birch, a former chief executive of Chelsea, has substantial experience of being an administrator of football clubs, including a particularly memorable stint at Portsmouth. “Nothing can be as complex as Portsmouth – it was 14 months in duration,” he recalled.

“It’s a desperate situation, but at least Portsmouth had cash in the bank. We’re coming forward again to make a plea to Hearts fans, even though they have been milked time and again.

“We have to be optimistic. There is a sustainable business here, but we just have to get through the short term.”

Two main objections to the prospect of Hearts’ survival have been raised in recent days, not always by those with the club’s best interests at heart. One is the fact that UBIG’s assets have been frozen by order of a Lithuanian court, meaning that as things stand the group cannot sell its 50 per cent stake in the club. The other is the possibility that BDO would agree a deal to sell off Tynecastle separately – the 
implication being that it would be to someone who wanted to use the ground for another purpose than playing football, thus leaving Hearts homeless.

Birch dismissed the first objection out of hand, and said that while the second could not be ruled out entirely, BDO’s aim was to preserve Hearts as a going concern, which meant selling the club and ground as a package. “Unfreezing of UBIG’s assets are not a key factor,” he said. Birch declined to elaborate, but the simple answer is that the assets were frozen to prevent Vladimir Romanov from selling them off. With UBIG now on the verge of going into administration, proceeds from the sale of assets would no longer go into Romanov’s pockets, but would help pay off any creditors. The Lithuanian authorities would therefore have no reason to block such a sale, and need only issue a simple decree to “unfreeze” the assets.

As for the prospect of selling the stadium, Birch admitted it would be beyond his remit to rule it out entirely, but suggested that a deal for club and ground together made more sense. “You would entertain bids for it [the stadium] as a stand-alone as well, because you would then come under attack if you didn’t do that. People would say you hadn’t marketed it properly.

“But the belief is that as a combined asset with the football club it will create and hold more value. So we will try to sell it as that.”

Taken from the Scotsman