The Daily Record’s political editor today published information obtained from the Scottish Government by a Freedom of Information Request, where Police Scotland note Newco “actively engaged” supporters to break lockdown rules in March this year.
Following Newco’s game with St Mirren on 6 March, Police Scotland received assurances from Newco that they would encourage fans to stay at home. The Police memo stages, “Whilst assurances were given this did not materialise.”
The Police go on to stage Newco made “numerous statements encouraging celebration, including from the manager (Steven Gerrard).”
“Both the Manager and players actively engaged from within the stadium with fans gathered in disgraceful displays of encouragement, in solid opposition to the public safety issues arising, to their responsibilities given the privileges under which football operates, and to the commitments they had made around public communications.”
The Government should have acted on this information in March. Football privileges were being actively flouted by one club but it took further incidents this month before Nicola Sturgeon felt it necessary to take on Newco. This is in stark contrast to her grabbing the mic. when Celtic followed her own rules during their trip to Dubai.
You will see not contrition from Newco. Instead, they will deflect and distract. Let them sink in their own sewage.
Gangster clubs operate across Europe. They stir-up identity sentiment among brutish fans and intimidate politicians who need to fish in the same identity waters. It takes brave political leadership to stop the rot.
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Im watching the excellent Western film ” SHALAKO” with Sean Connery, Stephen Boyd, Bridget Bardot, Honor Blackman and others in an all star Cast. I think it was on show around 1967/68 ?
I can remember my rather ” Old Fashioned/ Strait Laced” Grandad and Grandma taking me to see as a young Bhoy while we on holiday in Saltcoats one Summer in the Local Picture Hoose.
I KNEW Both of them were embarassed etc, in any Sexy scenes in the Film involving Ms Bardot and Ms Blackman as we watched in the Cinema darkness…..I was enjoying it aged around 11 or 12 ?
This was the very same Granda and Grandma who when watching the great Movie ” PSYCHO” at home one night on our old Black and White Telly for the very 1st Time, were somewhat Embarassed etc, when in an Early scene…the VERY lovely and Sexy ” Janet Leigh” is in a Motel Room with her lover, and she is seen in her skirt and White Bra……My old Granda immediately rose from his comfy chair to CHANGE channels on the Telly, using one of the Old round Knobs…and uttering words like…” Nair Mair of this”…..as he homed in on the Telly…………
I was so DISAPPOINTED and I almost said… ” Whats the Granda doing………. TOM/Granny” ? As he tuned into another channel, leaving me without the Vision that was Janet Leigh in her Bra !
I sometimes wondered how this lovely couple my…. ” Granny and Granda”…EVER managed to have THREE WEANS of their own ?
LOL.
HH.
FRIESDORFER on 22ND MAY 2021 4:03 PM
Congratulations to St Johnstone. The 2nd most decorated club in Scotland in the last decade.
————————————
Indeed, not something you will ever hear or read about from the SMSM!
Gerrard was awarded The Manager of the Year last week.
Calum Davidson has just guided St Johnstone to TWO Cup wins in the same season.
I wonder why they couldnt wait to give Gerrard the Award ?
IF Neil Lennon had guided Celtic to Ten in a Row this season…I would WAGER that No matter how great an achievement it would have been for Neil Lennon…. there would have been a delay in announcing the Manager of the Year Award…….Just in case Calum Davidson managed to win the Scottish Cup for St Johnstone Today ?
Ive no time for Calum Davidson, but its a disgrace that Gerrard got the Award before him.
HH.
Well done on the Double Saints
Really shows up the mad dash to make Seething G manager of the year before he was shown up by a guy with a fraction of his budget and a fully audited set of accounts!
LETS ALL DO THE HUDDLE on 22ND MAY 2021 5:05 PM
………….
What IF there were an ANTI Lock Down Protest held on the same Day and Time as an PRO Lock Down Protest…
Whit a Punch Up that would NEVER be, with ONE side….too busy running away from their opponents ?
LOL
HH.
Watched todays final poor game but congratulations ST JOHNSTONE quite an achievement cup dble what about their fans must be scunnered
Some posters suggesting this was a criminal conspiracy against football
Aye one we couldn’a qualify for
Roll on next season
HH
What IF there were an ANTI Lock Down Protest held on the same Day and Time as an PRO Lock Down Protest…
Whit a Punch Up that would NEVER be, with ONE side….too busy running away from their opponents ?
—
the cops would try to kettle the pro-lockdowners
even though they werent there cos they had stayed in their hooses
shouldnt laugh
anything is possible here!
La Liga latest
Both Madrid sides 1-0 behind at HT
If AM win at Valladolid they are champions.
If they don’t, RM win La Liga with a home win v Villarreal
Bundesliga
Werder Bremen relegated after home defeat to BMG, Koln overtook them on final day beating already relegated S04.
Lewandowski has set new Bundesliga all time record beating G Muller 1970-71 with 41st league goal of the season.
Bundesliga 2 finishes tomorrow, Hamburg out the reckoning completely 😃👍
well done St johnstone
hh
Squire – hope hamburg stay down.not my fav club
hh
V
Both Madrid clubs now 1-1
AM still in control of their own destiny with a win
Big Jimmy, that’s my view , if one group can do it so can I , GENE and others, sorry didn’t realise it was anti lockdown rally, apologies, but to be fair there was a few saltires on display!Marspapa 😂 there was plenty of jacks lying about from last week! hope you’re good bug fella
Jinkyredstar on 22nd May 2021 5:23 pm
Well done on the Double Saints
Really shows up the mad dash to make Seething G manager of the year before he was shown up by a guy with a fraction of his budget and a fully audited set of accounts!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Excellent!
HH
marspapa! apologies, should be big fella!😂
Looks like athletico’s title
Will never forgive them for 74. As good a Celtic team as 1967?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpxoTiKkvw8
spectators allowed into all sorts of sporting events on tv today around the world
english horse racing
us pga golf
monaco F1 qualifying
show jumping in madrid (yes, it’s live on sky sports now!)
European rugby final from Twickers
english league play offs
but no spectators allowed at the Scottish Cup Final
just stating facts
spectators allowed into Hamilton racing on wednesday though
so better times ahead hopefully
Let’s all
English county cricket 🏏
The ref was on big money that night.
ERNIE LYNCH on 22ND MAY 2021 12:41 PM
The liquidator v the administrator court case is receiving surprisingly (or maybe not) little coverage.
Maybe there’s too many other things going on at the same time.
john clark over on SFM keeps a timeline
hh
Let’s all
English county cricket 🏏
—
forgot about that
also on the telly earlier
Congratulations Moussa Dembele
hh
BIG JIMMY on 22ND MAY 2021 5:07 PM
Going to the pictures when you’re on your holidays – a lost delight.
Stephen Boyd played Messala in Ben Hur and his performance still impresses me 62 years after the movie was released.
His real name is William Millar & he was born & raised in Glengormley, N. Ireland. He adopted a mid Atlantic accent for career purposes back in the days when a regional accent was a handicap.
He opted for a quiet life in California & preferred playing golf to making movies. He died of a heart attack while playing a round in 1977.
Hope you’re feeling better.
HH
Talking of movies & such…I admired Band of Brothers when it was released.
This clip features a well documented skirmish when Lt Ronald Speirs took over command & swung things in favour of the attackers.
His run & return through the German lines actually happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14i_1xx4u3I
Ronald Speirs was born in Edinburgh & emigrated to the US with his parents.
After the war he served as for a time in the 50s as Governor of Spandau Prison, Berlin where ex Nazis Albert Speer & Rudolph Hess were imprisoned.
HH
what a goal that was
and not just cos i need both teams to score
😄
SCULLYBHOY on 22ND MAY 2021 6:47 PM
Will never forgive them for 74. As good a Celtic team as 1967?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpxoTiKkvw8
***********
Always felt I would feel the same. Utterly brutal match. Was actually sick on way home, although the converted fishing boat and the booze may have had something to do with it. In Lisbon, however, Fred Colon’s brother assumed us that Franck’s Real are the real huns of Madrid and Athletic the good guys until that Argentinian manager filled his team with Argentinian grade A thugs. Still took another 4 years before I came around to wanting them to win anything but happy today that they’ve scuppered Real’s and Barca’s pomposity.
WISHAW TIM
Hope you had a good day.
As for the bug fella, that’s quite apt as I bug quite a few oan here 😂
If……. FAIRHILL BHOY…… stops galavantin we could grab a beer furra chat n that.
Take care fella.
Scaniel on 22nd May 2021 8:15 pm
SCULLYBHOY on 22ND MAY 2021 6:47 PM
Will never forgive them for 74. As good a Celtic team as 1967?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpxoTiKkvw8
***********
Always felt I would feel the same. Utterly brutal match. Was actually sick on way home, although the converted fishing boat and the booze may have had something to do with it. In Lisbon, however, Fred Colon’s brother assumed us that Franck’s Real are the real huns of Madrid and Athletic the good guys until that Argentinian manager filled his team with Argentinian grade A thugs. Still took another 4 years before I came around to wanting them to win anything but happy today that they’ve scuppered Real’s and Barca’s pomposity.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Until recently I sort of comforted myself by thinking that Atlético sort of opposed Real, but I read somewhere that they (despite being founded by 4 Basque students?) were Franco’s team!?!
Could be wrong – often am.
HH
Still loved the Cellic of 72 and 74. We often debate if they were better than 67 and 70 (I go for 70 – or 74 or 67 and then again?????).
The thing that amazed me then and still does, is the crowd’s behaviour that night
Although only 14 @ the time, attended with my dad and was situated in away end,and memory is not crystal clear,but my abiding feeling , is one of disbelief at what was taking place.
Surely the Jungle must have been ready to explode
SHAUN, that’s where I was and you are right, the crowd in the Jungle were going APESHIT. I had never, ever seen anything like it, other than the Racing Club thugs back in ’67. Despite that I was hoping they would beat Real Madrid to the title tonight!?
I was playing for Dennistoun Waverley at that time and our manager ended the training early so we could get down to the ground.
Got in just after half time and was shocked by AM’s brutality.
Do any of you also forgive Vienna Rapid?
Not me!
Serbia lookin’ good.
Oh, just found out that they did! ‘Royal’ Madrid just doesn’t sit comfortably with me.
Who cares if they canny sing!
I have lived a long life and buried both parents, and two of 6 brothers (both died in awful circumstances) yet I can honestly say I went to bed that night feeling as if I had suffered a bereavement – the innocence of childhood.
FAIRHILL BHOY
Happy birthday pal!
Hope you are having a great day! (In Edinburgh?)
I was in the Celtic end, right behind the goals and kept seeing images of Jinky flying through the air as another thug set about him. GBH all night long.
******^
PHILBHOY at 8:39
Do any of you also forgive Vienna Rapid?
Not me!
********^^
Never. No redeeming factor whatsoever.
Rangers were just one of the companies within this portfolio & suffered as a consequence,most famously with the quote,”for every £5 Celtic spend, we’ll spend £10″…….For the avoidance of doubt, Ian Fraser is an award winning financial journalist & not connected to any Scottish football team
The Fall of the House of Murray
As tycoon David Murray’s once-thriving business empire folds with a barely audible whimper, Ian Fraser picks apart the disastrous sequence of seemingly limitless borrowing and bad decisions that precipitated the downfall
Sunday 18 January 2015
Sir David Murray’s metals-to-property conglomerate Murray International Holdings (MIH) died last week, going out not with a bang but a whimper.
MIH and eight subsidiary companies – Premier Property Group, PPG Land, Premier Burrell, GM Mining, Murray Group Holdings, Murray Group Management, Murray Outsourcing and MMH NSS – are to be liquidated by Deloitte.
The insolvency practitioners will be seeking to retrieve as much cash as they can from the firms’ assets and debtors before shutting down the companies for good.
Since the credit crisis blew a massive hole in Murray’s business plans six years ago, his bank, Lloyds – which completed its disastrous acquisition of HBOS in January 2009 – appears to have treated him with kid gloves.
It had few qualms about pulling the plug on other HBOS customers who had built up massive debts with HBOS, such as John Kennedy’s Kenmore, Jonathon Milne’s FM Developments and Ken Ross’s Elphinstone Group.
But Lloyds was prepared to give Murray five-and-a-half years to disentangle and dismantle as much as he could of his business empire, as well allowing Murray Capital, a new private concern of Murray and his son, David junior, to cherry-pick some of his most cherished assets.
The reason for this unusual leniency from Lloyds was ascribed to Murray’s tough negotiation skills, and highlighting the number of dependent Scots employees in a diverse group.
In his pomp in the 1990s and early 2000s, David Murray was viewed as one of Scotland’s most successful entrepreneurs. He caught the eye of Bank of Scotland’s former treasurer and managing director Gavin Masterton, and the bank first lent Murray money in 1981.
Bank of Scotland went on to lend him the entire £6 million he needed to buy Rangers FC in 1988. By 2008, as part of HBOS, it had provided him with £900 million of debt to bankroll his wide-ranging business operations, which once encompassed commercial property, coal mining, metals trading and football. This was despite the fact that, even at its peak, the turnover of Murray’s group holding company never exceeded £550m.
HBOS senior bankers including chief executive of corporate banking Peter Cummings and the late Ian Robertson, managing director of corporate banking, gave Murray what amounted to an open cheque book.
Together, Murray and HBOS formed a complex web of joint-venture companies into which hundreds of millions of pounds of the bank’s money were poured. In most of these property deals, the bank was effectively lending up to 40% of the money to itself.
Robertson, nicknamed “Robbo”, was infamous for “Robbo rollovers” – deals by which the bank rolled over existing loans into newly created special purpose vehicles, effectively making bad debts disappear in a puff of smoke.
One banking analyst said: “Property assets that ought to have gone into insolvency, or into HBOS’s intensive-care unit – which would have required the bank to book a provision for bad debt – were instead rolled over.”
The roll-overs are said to have compounded Murray’s situation after the credit markets crashed, complicating his business empire’s problems. However, one of Murray’s more astute moves in the past decade was to sell his Murray International Metals business for £119m in 2005.
From the mid-2000s onwards, having witnessed the success that the likes of Sir Tom Hunter were having in commercial property, Murray massively boosted his group’s exposure to commercial real estate, snapping up provincial shopping centres and office buildings from Edinburgh to London.
The number of deals accelerated after Robbo’s successor, Ray Robertson, former head of real estate at Bank of Scotland Corporate, assumed day-to-day responsibility for his affairs at the bank. Both Robertsons had such faith in Murray and his Premier Property Group they seemed willing to lend millions with few questions asked, though it was the worst of times to be investing in and developing commercial properties.
Things started to go badly awry when Murray moved away from calculated risk-taking and started using HBOS’s loans for what looked more like reckless gambling. This coincided from 2005 onwards with the adoption of what HBOS insiders call “kamikaze lending to the great and the good” as it sought to grow its corporate loan book by some 20% per annum to compensate for a slowdown in other aspects of its business.
Even after property markets weakened, Murray seemed impervious to the risk of a property crash. One month after the global financial crisis started in August 2007, PPG had some £500m of development projects under way, including a 175,000sqft speculative office development in Glasgow’s Bothwell Street.
MIH was going to be able to defy economic gravity thanks to what Murray described in the 2008 annual report as “the breadth and depth of the group’s diversified portfolio and management team”.
When HBOS collapsed under the weight of massive bad debts and a short-sighted funding model, and the bank succumbed to Lloyds TSB in September 2008, the game was up for Murray.
He and other tycoons had been used to picking up the phone to HBOS and receiving hundreds of millions of pounds within hours. That all changed after Murray’s accounts were transferred to Lloyds’s non-core business support unit (BSU), whose goal is to maximise value from distressed borrowers.
One of the BSU’s first goals was to persuade Murray to offload Rangers, partly because the club was such an obvious drain on resources and partly as it was seen as a distraction for the hands-on Murray.
One ex-bank insider said Lloyds simply wanted out of football clubs: “Rangers was just soaking up cash. You can’t build a football business on overdrafts and borrowing, but that is what Murray seemed to be doing.”
Two-and-a-half years after ceasing to be Rangers’ chairman in October 2009, Murray sold his 85.3% equity stake in Rangers Football Club to Craig Whyte for £1. The club subsequently collapsed into chaos that continues to this day.
Lloyds continued to allow Murray to do two massive debt-for-equity swaps which, given the fact that MIH’s equity was by now as good as worthless, were essentially free gifts. The first, in April 2010, saw Lloyds write off £150m of debt in exchange for an additional 12% stake in the company.
Conditions included that Murray must liquidate three-quarters of MIH’s commercial property portfolio by 2015; introduce greater transparency into his business dealings; and stop using cross-guarantees, by which healthy and profitable parts of his empire were used to support more anaemic parts like Rangers. Such cross-support makes it more difficult to hive off businesses to third-party buyers.
A string of disposals, including that of oil and gas business Premier Hytemp and three shopping centres (sold for less than half their purchase price), followed. Unusually, in what seems to have been a sweetheart deal, the bank allowed Murray to personally buy back his private equity business Charlotte Ventures, partly because the assets within it, which included a stake in bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis, were seen as too high risk for the bank.
Murray said the purchase of the unit, later renamed Murray Capital, was “done arm’s length, at market value”. A second £118m debt-for-equity swap followed in March 2012, the negotiations for which are said to have been extended and heated.
Murray claimed the deal – which took the amount of debt that had effectively been written off by Lloyds to £268.5m – did not dilute the Murray family’s 70% voting power over MIH.
Talking about the winding-down of MIH, Murray said: “This has been a consensual approach with the bank, and it has been an orderly, managed process. It’s not been easy – it could have been easier to walk away and not do it – but it was decided with the lender that we would work this out, and we have.”
There are major assets which remain unsold, including Response, the call-centre business. It lost a contract with BSkyB, but has since won one for Scottish Power. In another unusual move, Lloyds let Murray and his family, through Murray Capital, buy Murray Estates, which owns about 1200 acres of prime development sites across Scotland’s central belt for just £13.9m. In addition to Murray Estates, Murray Capital also snapped up other unwanted MIH assets.
The Murray Estates portfolio includes a 13-acre site at Ratho Station on the western edge of Edinburgh, a 26-acre site near Edinburgh Airport, a 300-acre site at Torrance Park in North Lanarkshire, the 135-acre Kingdom Park site in Kirkcaldy and the 675-acre Garden District on greenbelt land adjacent to the Edinburgh City Bypass near Gogarburn.
The latter offers scope for a £1 billion development of 3500 homes, a showcase garden project called Calyx and a new community stadium. For many years Murray has been piecing together so-called “ransom strips” to the east of Edinburgh Airport’s approach road, with a view to galvanising a wider development project called the International Business Gateway.
Things are already moving fast for the some of Murray Estates’ development sites. In November, Fife Council granted planning permission for the construction of a £500m residential district at Kingdom Park over 20 years. The same month, pre-construction work got under way on a £60m mixed-use development for phase one of Torrance Park in Holytown.
In its 2013 annual report, MIH said funding difficulties meant it was unable to develop the Murray Estates sites itself. MIH added it had considered selling the land in a piecemeal fashion to other developers but then “received an unsolicited approach from the Murray family in spring 2013 to acquire the majority of assets in the portfolio of Murray Estates”.
A spokesman for Lloyds said the Murray Estates deal included an “anti-embarrassment clause” which enables the bank to secure a share of the upside should Murray Estates’ projects come good, but declined to give details.
The MIH 2013 accounts noted: “The transaction completed after protracted negotiations and was supported by advice from two independent firms of chartered surveyors … plus significant potential additional consideration based on profits realised over 10 years.”
Intriguingly, even though Murray Capital (formerly known as Charlotte Ventures) also banks with Lloyds, Murray made clear Lloyds did not fund the £13.9m acquisition. He added that the non-embarrassment clause is geared to enable the bank to get a bigger share of gains if projects are sold or developed quickly, saying: “It was put in place to stop us flipping things for a quick gain.”
Overall, Murray has been shown far greater leniency than other failed property tycoons after Lloyds/HBOS was bailed out and commercial property prices crashed. One ex-HBOS insider has suggested that it was because he was “one of the great and good, like Tom Farmer and Tom Hunter”.
All three have been knighted, with Murray receiving his – for services to business in Scotland – in June 2007. The source added: “Sir David never had the great fall, the humiliation that some of the other over-leveraged property tycoons were made to feel.”
His businesses’ outstanding debt to Lloyds stands at up to £346.7m, and the bank has, to date, written off £268.5m through debt-for-equity swaps, which suggests that the collapse of his business has left a £615m hole in Lloyds’s accounts, and that two-thirds of the money Murray’s businesses borrowed has been lost.
And because of the 2008 bailouts, it is effectively taxpayers who are picking up the tab. Meanwhile, he has walked away from the wreckage of his failed group with some of its most promising assets under his belt.
It is perhaps unsurprising that Murray presents the winding-up of his erstwhile business empire as a sort of triumph. Writing in the MIH 2013 accounts, he said: “In the prevailing economic conditions since 2009, the delivery of the numerous asset disposals and debt-reduction programme represents a significant achievement and a very credible performance.”
He said: “It’s not been without some casualties but we’ve done the best we could. The proceeds from the disposals have been optimised, enabling us to secure continued employment for more than 95% of the group’s 2008 workforce and minimising losses to other stakeholders and creditors. One of the reasons we have come through this as well as we have is that we had some prime assets and some good trading businesses. All the small creditors have been paid in full and everyone’s been paid their redundancy.”
Lloyds refused to comment “on the grounds of customer confidentiality”, but others might see Murray, along with bonus-crazed bankers in rescued banks, as the ultimate pet of the sugar daddy state
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ArchiveCsc:-)
hh