Duff & Phelps have been found guilty of a breach of duty and ordered to pay £3.4m in compensation to BDO over their handling of the administration of Rangers in 2012.
Rather than acting to protect the interests of the 276 creditors of the club it seemed that putting a competitive team on the park was their priority.
Unlike Motherwell, Hearts, Dundee and other teams that went into administration there was no large scale redundancies at Ibrox following the Valentine Day announcement of administration.
Cutting costs to the bone should have involved ditching stars on expensive contracts to field the cheapest 11 players to fulfil fixtures while looking for a buyer. Bizarrely under Duff & Phelps the club tried to add Daniel Cousin to their wage bill while creditors from Her Majesty to florists, newsagents, taxi drivers and a face painter had to whistle for their money.
Duff & Phelps refused to sell stars like Allan McGregor, Steve Davis and Kyle Lafferty, once Her Majesty refused a CVA the assets were presented to Sevco 5055 for a knock-down £5.5m just a decade after Ibrox and Murray Park had been valued at over £100m.
Later on in 2012 Charles Green raised £20m from a share issue in the newly formed club with the values of Murray Park and Ibrox featuring heavily in the prospectus.
This afternoon The Herard reports:
A SENIOR judge has ordered administrators of Rangers to pay £3.4m in compensation over “breach of duty” after deciding that Ibrox and Murray Park should have been put up for sale after the club collapsed.
Lord Tyre has made a judgement after former club administrators Paul Clark and David Whitehouse of Duff and Phelps were accused in court of a seriously flawed strategy in raising money for thousands left out of pocket by the club’s financial implosion in 2012.
The award is a fraction of the £47m liquidators of Rangers oldco BDO were claiming from Mr Whitehouse and Clark over the way they handled the insolvency of the club.
Evidence provided to the Court of Session revealed that while the business and Rangers assets such as Ibrox, the Murray Park training facility, trademarks and the players were bought by the Charles Green-fronted Sevco for £5.5m, a fair value assessment to the group carried out on the day of the Sevco purchase was put at nearly five times that – £27.2m.
It further emerged that while just ten of the star players including striker Steven Naismith, goalkeeper Allan McGregor, midfielder Steven Davis, and defender Steven Whittaker were valued at £21.35m after the club went into insolvency – they ended up being bought for just £2.75m as part of Sevco’s £5.5m purchase. BDO’s representatives described that as “some way short”.
Greegsy, Naisy, Fleckie and Lafferty refused to TUPE over- walking away to lucrative deals elsewhere to the anger of Charles Green.
Ally McCoist refused to walk away. The media funnyman insisted that his contract was TUPE’d over to Sevco then handed in his notice in December 2014 shortly after being drawn against Celtic in the semi-final of the League Cup. He then spent 12 months in the garden.
I was under the impression they were sold for £1. What manner of bawbaggery are we hearing now? HH
EDITOR: Dave Murray accepted a pound coin from Sir Craig Whyte in May 2011, sadly no one offered a coin for the club a year later. RIP
Dave king also rejected the cva joe
Yep, that’s what I thought too…poundklub fc aka wangers!
Seems a bit incongruous Clark and Whitehouse get millions in compensation. The firm who employed them to do the job get fined by a law court judge.