Over thirty per-cent of Sevco shareholders have rebelled against Dave King.
This morning the club announced that 53.64% of shareholders had followed Mr King’s advice and voted against paying back the £5m loan from Sports Direct that kept the club going last season.
No reasoning is given for the company being removed from the Alternative Investment Market and what efforts, if any, were made to find a Nominated Adviser.
The vote had been expected to be another landslide in favour of the South African based businessman but it seems that a significant number of shareholders are concerned his running of the company.
With no auditor, no platform for trading shares and £9.5m of loans outstanding Mr King has still to outline how he plans to finance the club whose chief source of income is from ticket sales.
Mr King, who was once described as a glib and shameless liar by a South African judge, hopes to bring in £12/£13m from selling 45,000 season tickets but in their last year of audited accounts the League One champions had operating costs of over £30m.
In March Mr King swept up the marble stairway winning the backing of 85.59% of the shareholders who voted.
With just 53.64% of the shareholders backing his stance against Sports Direct it is only a matter of timing before Mike Ashley returns to court to get his £5m loan repaid.
To cover that figure the club would need to sell over 15,000 full priced season tickets blowing a significant hole on Mark ‘Pep’ Warburton’s transfer war-chest.
Significantly Mr King was absent from Warburton’s coronation yesterday, following on from his non-appearance at the General Meeting and both legs of the Premiership play-off final against Motherwell.
The moment that Ashley instigates court action could be highly significant with Sevco short on resources for an expensive legal fight against the London born billionaire. With little in the way of cash currently at the club Ashley is expected to delay any court action until significant numbers of season tickets are sold.
Meanwhile Warburton is believed to have targeted free agent Danny Wilson and a loan swoop for Lewis MacLeod for the first stage of his revolution. The 52-year-old former city dealer is expected to return to a soccer coaching course tomorrow.
