Dave King’s stalling tactics over the 20p per share offer to those outside of his concert party have been rejected by the Takeover Panel Hearings Committee.
The South African based criminal breached UK takeover rules in 2015 when he worked in concert with others to obtain more than 30% of the shareholding in The Rangers International Football Club which started off life in 2012 as Sevco 5088 before becoming Sevco Scotland.
For three years King denied working in concert with George Letham, Douglas Park and George Taylor despite a mountain of paperwork detailing their correspondence and co-ordinated approach to purchasing shares.
The former Rangers (IL) director has failed to deliver on almost all of his promises since taking control of the Blue Room in March 2015 but has kept the gullible on board with a number of gimmicks such as a new orange strip which was announced today.
King’s appeal to the Court of Session in Edinburgh was booted out earlier this year with the latest excuse being that he thought he could set up a South African based escrow account to deal with the share offer.
The TAP rejected that request with the Hearings Committee backing that move in a ruling today.
It was Mr King’s obligation as a resident of South Africa and as the party obliged to procure a Code compliant offer, to ascertain at an early stage what if any exchange control difficulties he might face in publishing an offer and then promptly to start the process of dealing with them having first consulted the Executive. Mr King was alerted to the requirement of cash confirmation on 27 March 2018 before announcing his intention to procure the making of an offer. He was told on 6 April 2018 what cash confirmation would in practice involve.
On 11 April 2018, Mr King appears to have agreed to instruct Investec with a view to the bank opening a UK sterling account and giving the necessary cash confirmation, yet it was not until 23 April 2018, after chasing by the Executive, that he raised the problem of exchange control approval. Even then, he appears not to have instructed Investec to obtain the necessary approval with a view to giving cash confirmation.
Having regard also to the wider context and the fact that Mr King had previously failed to comply with the ruling of the TAB and failed to publish a Code compliant offer announcement in accordance with the interlocutor of the Inner House, it seems to me highly unlikely that a review by the Committee of the Executive’s decision of 26 April 2018 would be successful. Such a review, in my view, would stand no reasonable prospect of success. 45. Accordingly, for this reason also I reject the request to convene the Committee.
King’s latest broken promise was made at the start of May when he told selected reporters that Sevco would hold a £6m Rights Issue in June to fund Steven Gerrard’s war-chest. At that ‘media conference’ King discussed the money that he had already invested in the company, despite apparently not having a UK bank account.
It’s believed that only Club 1872 have came back with funds to support that ‘Rights Issue’.
