A bit of help for Adey. The guarantees are to repay the overdraft out of their own pockets in the event of there not being funds available elsewhere, ie in insolvency. Really a last resort by the bank, as messy and time consuming to get at the cash.

Hoods statement as Adey says elsewhere is pretty clear about the directors understanding of the security of the facility though you do have to make an assumption about what is the lease and what is the Coral Stand in the assets section of the balance sheet. But it is the lesser part of the £1m, which seems to be made up of an unexpected tax bill for the Iestyn Harris settlement image rights (which is why its better for me to write this as Adey would not have enough time this decade to write his thoughts about those!!!) plus the RFL wanting their dosh back much sooner than thought.

So in my opinion, 1) Hood etc have been done over by the bank on teh overdraft, that is todays environment and it can happen to any company. 2) the tax bill appears to have been a bolt out of the blue (HMRC are being much more aggressive about tax evasion schemes as you may have seen in the news recently) but 3) I cannot get my head around the RFL thing.

Harsh? On the contrary, he is kindly explaining a lot of things and answering a lot of questions that he knows a lot about, only to get some pretty rude third-degree, mostly from people who (understandably) have little clue about commercial lending and legalese, yet prefer to berate Adey for their own lack of understanding, as if it was his duty or his job to educate them?



As for the overdraft, my understanding from what I have read is that it has not been called in, but reduced. the Bulls had seemingly asked for a small increase which presumably triggered a review and the answer was presumably: "No, oh and BTW we are reducing it to £X with immediate effect".

What that money was needed for is still unclear to me but seems like for some reason we need to pay a big lump to RFL to repay a loan, and we need to stump up tax.

In the T&A this was the account attributed to Hood:


That account didn't mention tax, but another one released separately which I can't this second find definitely did infer that there was a big tax bill impending. But this "bits and pieces" method seems to be how the information is destined to be squeezed out. And even then, likely to be contradicted by t'other side. That is not the fault of any poster on this forum.

What I haven't read anywhere is any comment from the RFL as to why we suddenly have to pay back moneys due to them straightaway, which we "hadn't expected". This baffled me since in the case of any commercial lending I've ever seen, both parties know, from the loan documentation, to the hour and to the penny, what must be paid and when. Then I read somewhere else that seemingly the Bulls had not paid any of the payments due to the RFL for this loan for some time. If that is true, then what did the RFL do to precipitate the situation? I.e. why the deadline? Why the urgency? Where's the fire?

I speculated that somebody may have served a Statutory Demand or threat to wind the club up. Surely, the gun pointed at our head isn't being held by the RFL? Is it? Or is there more than one gun? If anybody has seen an explanation as to SPECIFICALLY what is so goddamn half-a-millon pounds in a fortnight desperately urgent, please tell me as I don't know, and would like to.

Further, the original blurb (and I speak only from memory) pretty clearly stated that if we raised a million then we would be "debt free". Does that then equate to
a) the RFL are insisting we repay them £700K instantly (loan); and
b) the Revenue demand £300K in very short order (by inference, tax or VAT on what compo we paid Leeds for Harrisgate)




Are BOTH the RFL AND HMRC threatening to close us down? Or neither?

IF the RFL are waving a big stick, how does that square with their seeming support for the club, and encouraging people to help us? I bet they would, if any money raised as a result goes into their pocket! Surely not?

I think we should be told. Not by personal enquiry but by public announcement to everyone in the world, who are stumping up their pledges which will be used to pay off the pressing debts.

Oh and finally Adey another one for your list. If the tax due on Harrisgate was totally unexpected - how can that be? Surely whatever advisers were involved in agreeing the settlement with Leeds should have had that one covered? How can it be a surprise?

Not read much on this but have the bank cancelled (or reduced to the point of the current amount outstanding) the overdraft?

What is the reason for the bank doing this? I would assume if they had PG's in place that there would be no need unless the guarantors were asking for them to be cancelled? As to the value of the "assets", in reality they are worthless unless someone is prepared to buy the lease to odsal, which seems unlikely

I've worked in commercial/corporate banking for the last few years and the longer this week has gone on, the more it looks like there's been some crash courses being given by the Dicky Wright School of Spin!

I'm sure the Bradford Bulls will survive, but have grave doubts about the limited company running it being around for much longer.

And I've been dealing with commercial and corporate bankers for the last 30 years, and I have seen any number of examples of umbrellas being demanded back once the sky darkens.

And, in amongst some shining exceptions, I've seen any number of commercial and corporate bankers who know so little about how businesses actually work, and how to assess risk (other than let their credit department punch some numbers into Moodys or whatever and rely on what falls out) that it is embarrassing.

Big banks are greedy capitalist scum who should be put up against a wall & shot. Why does it therefore surprise anyone when they simply do what they are here to do?

So who the hell do we owe money to?

The RFL
The Bank
The Taxman

Or all three?

By the sound of it we owe the taxman and possibly the RFL and we have no cash to pay upcoming bills.

Adey, I'm not saying that the banks are always right. I think that Hood & co AND the bank are spinning their respective views as much as possible. As you & I both know, the only way people can get a true understanding is that if people are told the plain facts of what the key debts actually are, how long they've been outstanding and how Hood & co will make sure this won't happen again.

If that clarity doesn't come out, how on earth can anyone be reasonably be expected to contribute towards a £1m pot that could actually be "good money going after bad".

Wrong Adey. They are the greatest intellectual corporate minds that we have & woe betide anyone criticising or daring to fairly tax them. They will take their great minds abroad & our economy will collapse.

OK, I'll go along with that. And respect for not allowing yourself to be provoked by my aggressive response.

None of the bankers I was referring to worked for your bank. (which bank do you work for, did you say...?)

That is "investment bankers". The corporate equivilent of the hyena, but of rather less value.

Your run-of-the-mill commercial banker is as pìssed off with those Masters of the Universe as the rest of us, cos they get tarred with the same brush and tens of thousands of them have lost their jobs as as result.

Do you think we have paid the RFL back?

Couldn't agree more Adey. If I'd had the salary of the "Bankers" that I'm accused of being one of over the last few years I'd be able to bail out the Buulls on my own with change to spare!!!



I didn't take it as being aggressive. I used to work in Yorkshire for the other bailed out bank but am now with a smaller bank based in London.

If the RFL got wind of the image rights issue and didn't think we could deal with it, surely they wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't take the oportunity to get their money back? Rest of SL would rightly be angry if we went to the wall owing the RFL £700K after they'd just given us £1.2m. Not good for us but not a poor decision by the RFL in those circumstances.

Maybe the RFL and Bulls assumed the other £500K would cover the image rights but then the bank got wind of the image rights, gets all nervous and takes the oportunity to get their money back. We are left with nothing to pay HMRC.

Hypothesising over dinner...

PG's given by guarantors are either supported by additional security or unsupported. If unsupported this means it is a signature on a piece of paper to say you will pay it back if company cant. If supported, in most cases it is backed by a charge over their residential property. If the debt lets say was £50k and the PG was £100k but unsupported this would be deemed as unsecured lending. It would be no more secured thsn me asking for a £5k loan to decorate my house

The log book loan referred to earlier would see the debt secured directly against the vehicle thus giving a tangible asset securing the debt

I think this must be how Wakey are surviving, saw this on a streaming site. perhaps rah rah money would be use?



17:30 London Irish - Wakefield Wildcats

Spot on - if the PGs are unsupported then the bank can really only see them as a tool to keep the guarantors committed to the business. The bank won't actually consider them to be of significant financial value.

Hood claims that RBS still have security value in the "land & buildings" - realistically he will see the majority of this value to be the main stand and the hospitality block. From the bank's perspective, they will consider two key factors when working out how much security value these actually provide. First is how easy it would be to sell these assets and second is how much money they would raise.

In a doomsday scenario, given that the RFL own the land RBS may not even be able to get easy access to the land in order to claim possession of the buildings. Even if they could, unless there is a buyer moving into Odsal the value of the buildings would be severely reduced because there'd be a substantial cost in dismantling the buildings to sell of the main parts (such as the plastic seating).

It's exactly the same scenario that Wakefield's bankers had to consider after the land was sold leaving the "Benidorm flats" as an asset within the debenture. The club's management at the time considered these to have a value of something like £750k, but once their bank had taken "disposal costs" into account the security value as considered to be less than £50k.

All very well, but the Coral stand wasn't built yesterday, and if it was the disposal of the head lease that upset RBS then they seem to have got upset over something that viewed at from ANYBODY's angle was worth in actual cash terms jack schitt. It is my experience of banks at this level that the bean-counters who decide a business's fate really not only have NO CLUE how a business operates, but actually don't care, not in the slightest, they go entirely 100% by numbers, there is no talking to them, and if their decisions mean they take a massive hit, when by supporting a business they may have not done, that is of zero importance to them. They punch their numbers into whatever number machine they use, it tells them what to do, they do it like Pavlov's bleedin dogs.

The irony of the fact that they have history for ruining thousands of small businesses in precisely this way whilst trading hopelessly insolvently themselves and but for us taxpayers, going spectacularly to the wall, is lost on them.

To those banking apologists who are making woeful excuses about how the banks in these days post-banking crash need to "tighten up on lending" - what planet are you on? Do you actually believe that the banking crash had even 0.0000005% to do with mismanaged lending to small businesses??? FFS. And here's a case in point; unless benefactors can unfeasibly raise a million pounds or so to pay off debts, the Bulls will fold, and the bank, which would otherwise have continued to make money from the Bulls for the foreseeable, will do its bollox in on the deal. And this - even if you don't factor in the negative value of the appalling publicity for RBS if they collapse a hundred year old community sports club - to me just shows how out of touch with reality they are, and how they really are not in the slightest bit interested in the business, or in the wider picture. Utter ba5tard5, I detest them.

Not sure which is 'head office' and which is subsidiary but I'm sure they are the same outfit.

As someone who had a very similar experience with the same branch of the same bank last autumn and had it not been for the fact that I could quickly access some emergency funds, would have been on the streets. I wholeheartedly echo those sentiments.

They weren't in the slightest bit interested in how successful my business was, the fact that I asked to extend a facility was enough for them to decide to withdraw it.

Natwest was bought by RBS some years ago.

So basically selling the Odsal lease was a mistake as the bank sorts their overdraft length (and amount of money loaned out) based on what assets the club has, so in theory we sold our biggest assets to the RFL, the bank saw us selling this big asset and reduced our overdraft as we didn't have that asset anymore?

For about the hundredth time, there is no way the Odsal lease from the council was ever any significant asset for security purposes. Ask RBS how much they believe a liquidator could have realised it for?

So why did the bank reduce our overdraft? Dumb it down please because tbh i dont understand whats been written before. Sorry for being a nuciense (sp) :/