Its amazing the stuff you come across when reading publications from the past that have created the present where in the past
a) Rangers were viewed as a single entity corporeal entity much as a human being is thought as such rather than being of mind, body and spirit.
b) Everyone thought Rangers went bust because they could no longer operate as a going concern.
On a) this is interesting from the examination of preliminary issues in the first stages of the LNS Commission.
” The relationship between SPL Limited and Oldco is one of contract. By its membership of SPL Limited a contract was constituted in accordance with the terms of the Articles of Association of SPL Limited (SPL 85) and the Rules of the Scottish Premier League (“SPL”) (SPL 86).
Both SPL Limited and Oldco are companies incorporated under the Companies Acts limited by shares.
Rangers Football Club (“Rangers FC”) was at all material times owned and operated by Oldco. Rangers FC has no separate legal personality but it has an identity which is recognised by the Articles of Association of SPL Limited, the Rules of the SPL, the parties to the agreement at SPL 100 and Newco, see SPL 40. “
So the SPL recognised Rangers identity but the contract between SPL and Rangers was with something else called “Oldco” (how many titles did Oldco win, anyone?
This is where the myth of separation was born, it is apparently part of SPL Articles, an immortality certificate. Rangers FC has no legal personality but does that not mean that legally they never existed at all?
Are TRFC/RIFC finding it difficult to get a credit line from a bank because a bank is not sure if it is loaning money to a corporeal legal entity or an identity formed by SPL rules which is less likely to repay loans under the same identity the SPL Articles recognise?
Would it not have been so much simpler to say Rangers FC were a football club that is a legal entity with membership of the SFA?
Hmm that sounds familiar .. Oh yes. its what Article 12 of UEFA FFP says about licensing applicants that
A licence applicant “may only be a football club, i.e. a legal entity fully responsible for a football team participating in national and international competitions which
(either: a) is a registered member of a UEFA member association and/or its affiliated league.”
(Or (b) which is omitted as it requires a written contract between an operating company and a club under a) as no such contract existed before 2011 – and does one exist now between TRFC and RIFC?).
All this cognitive dissonance caused by the SPL Articles imaking my two heads spin.
Now if you are still with me lets move on Billy Connolly style to the idea we all had that something (we are no longer sure what) went bust.
This is from a summary BDP Report to creditors
” As part of a wider agreement with the Joint Administrators which was finalised prior to the CVA meetings, Newco was obliged to purchase the business, history and certain assets of the Company should the CVA fail. Accordingly a going concern sale to Newco completed shortly after the meetings, which has resulted in the Joint Administrators achieving the second objective identified on the previous page, as a better result for creditors has been achieved than if the Company had been wound up without having first being in Administration.”
A going concern sale??? Of what? It has to be The Rangers Identity, because the only place Rangers FC were going of concern was liquidation.
But how can an identity humph a stadium etc to a new company and can an identity with its history really be sold? Did Duff and Phelps mean Newco would be a going concern, which with the debt dumped on Oldco would be true, but the language suggests the legal entity that was Oldco or is it its identity as Rangers FC, never went bust.
Myths are what happen when you get sophistry merchants involved in the running of our game, like Pharisees* they know how to use words to justify their deeds with absolutely no feel for the ethics, the underlying spirit (in this case of sport) that words are meant to convey.
* The word Pharisee is derived from an Aramaic word meaning, “separated.” They were a group that held to the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and punishment in future life.
How apt.
https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_1316.cfm
Gamaliel, Nicodemus – Regan and Doncaster?
