I would just like to make a couple of points to clarify:
1) John's Laidlar's account on the website reflects his observations as a private shareholder. Hence his "passed unanimously in the room" comment. We have not yet released an official report of the meeting - currently I don't know when this will be released but I am following up to ascertain this. There is certainly no intent from the club to conceal the results.
2) The intent is to sell the new share issue in major tranches, in other words to investors who are putting a reasonably sized investment into the club. We have a means to sell shares to those who require a small stake which will not dilute the new issue at all.
3) As I stated last night, in order to deliver on our ambition we need to expand the board. The injection of capital will be welcome but just as welcome will be the injection of new energy, new ideas and new expertise.
4) We have not rolled back on how we intend to use the Sports Partnership. Rather we are still exploring the best way to work with them in the commercial domain - attracting new sponsors and the like - without overlapping with our current initiatives. We will continue to work with them in looking for new investors.
I hope this helps
Bill – Is there going to be a further press release by the football club that people can share within their own professional and personal networks? And can you give us assurance that there will be a better job done of raising external publicity than there was around the original EGM announcement, so that fans don’t have to start sending it out to the media themselves again? This is one of the most important and exciting developments in the club for a generation, and it needs to treated as such with as much publicity and external noise created as possible.
On the positive, and after some of questions being directed at the board last night, it is reassuring to hear you say that there are no plans to dilute the unique and exciting opportunity that is created by having a controlling share in the club being up for sale, and that steps have been taken to prevent this.
It was also positive that the chairman has committed to publishing the details of any purchase(s) once completed. This means that fans won’t be left wondering and speculating, and having to wait for the club to update Companies House before finding out exactly who may have purchased what shareholding.