peasepud

That's very little information If I'm going to commit to an investment of thousands of pounds. I'd like a little more info before seeing a financial advisor. I had thought the trust were going to turn the club into a pensions provider sort of deal which meant we as fans would make a regular payment that would give the club ongoing working capital. But I can't see anything to suggest it's much more than a way the Trust suggest I come up with the money to invest initially. This offers no provision for cash injections required down the line. It's along the same lines as suggesting I take out a loan to invest my initial contributiuon. Am I wrong? Then Wiki says.... I assume that means NUFC becomes an "Investment trust subject to FSA regulation". Is that right? I'm not sure because.. So only 15% of funds collected by NUST could go to NUFC. Apologies for the wording as its taken from a bigger reply from our financial bod: The club will not be a pension provider, the provider will invest in the club and it's tangible property, ongoing capital will be sourced from natural income, investment income and further contributions from new members. Regarding the permissability of investments. Rest assured NUFC is a permitted investment as long as the operating capital is sufficient to allow the club to operate normally...ie we must raise enough to buy and operate and deal with contingencies. Torquay and Ebbsfleet have similar models, the revenue are ok with it as long as the rules are kept. 100% of what is raised is ok to fund the project.

Again, I dont know the definite answer to this as both methods were muted originally. If it was the latter though then people who wanted to go down the Pension route would replace your stake rather than cash buyers.

So anyone commiting with the intention of using their pension, needs a £2.5K deposit. Of which we'll lose £125 if it falls through? Or does the 5% of 10% only apply to cash pledges? I havent got the answers on the rest yet but in this case its no, those with a pension dont put down a deposit, I believe we will need to provide proof that the pension exists and is transferrable but thats it.

Thats not a bad idea

See this is what boils my piss. The likes of the Chronicle, Journal etc should be supporting this (save our club stuff) with free advertising. Im sure NUST will have looked into this but there are First class national marketing firms, such as Robson Brown, based in Newcastle with owners who are passionate Newcastle Fans. Im sure they would help out if asked. And how do you know they havent? how do you know that the Ronnie isnt running ad campaigns for this?

I believe that one or more of the companies involved have paid for the campaign, companies linked to it obviously get good exposure and free advertising as such. Six weeks is the time we've set aside to gauge how successful this will be (the first stage as such), we need to have a closing date on the campaign otherwise we'd end up in the situation of always saying "lets try another week, maybe we'll get more in then" and it would become a joke. Thats the point where we say "ok we've got x millions lets give Ashley a call and start negotiating".

The difference here is that all of those other clubs were purchased at a time when they were on the brink of disaster, clubs with small scale support, in addition they were doing it all via cash investment. What we are looking at as the thing to sustain the club is this whole pension investment. Its not been tried before but as Ive said elsewhere its seen as workable by those involved in the Pensions industry. Take Notts County out of the equation as that was a bad move on behalf of the voters, to go with big cash before finding out just who they were and what they actually had. Due Diligence works both ways tbh. I met the lads from Exeter a few weeks ago at the Supporters Direct AGM, they love it, its working well and the club is being sustained without a problem, in fact its going from strength to strength. I think its important to see that taking a club in huge debt and trying to run it based on supporter handouts will not work which is what a lot of those other clubs have done, having a strong structured plan in place beforehand which covers the future running costs is a different thing altogether.

Id be tempted to stick something into this as well.

aye please mate

Think people are letting it sink in. It will also take a while to sort out, at present its just a statement of intent which i'm sure we all hope captures the imagination of the support. On the technical side, i dont have access to one of the financial advisors where i am. Having stopped paying my UK pension at the end of 2007 (there are 12 years with two seperate pension funds from two employers), can i go down the pension route? I would need a phone number for someone i could speak to about this. Out of interest: Is there a reluctance to reveal details of how the scheme works because those behind it are worried about it being public and it being copied? Are you working with the people who were banging on about this idea a few months ago? I look forward to reading the outline structure and detailed plan, as there will be some who need more detail to answer their concerns. Some people may need that before they take the time to see an expert. Stuff like, are you guaranteeing a minimum return? What is the downside risk if the club, for example, went into administration? could be concerns for many. Look forward to reading more. Our financial advisors will be more than happy to take calls not just seeing people in person, the details of those advisors will be available shortly. From what I know though the pensions you talk about seem to be the ideal sort of thing. A pension thats currently sitting doing nothing. As I said on N-O there is no reluctance to reveal further details, we've simply done as you pointed out at the top, told people the basics on day 1 and give it a day or two to sink in before moving into the more in depth stuff. Discussions are still ongoing with some of the partners and bits being ironed out, for example the question asked about payment portals, thats been raised with the solicitors handling the escrow and they are looking into ensuring thats in place. If we can iron out things now before we need to release certain bits of info then we reduce some of the questions/ issues later. We are working with some of those from a few months ago, with one or two noteable ommissions. We're guaranteeing a return of 2% for first two years after that it would be dependable on what was happening on the pitch and how well the club was doing.

I'm torn tbh- I think it's got the potential to be a fantastically positive change , not just for our club, but for football in general.The prospect of it coming off in the near future leaves me excited,very excited, The torn bit comes in because I haven't got two beans to rub together right now. The nearest I can realistically predict being able to invest anything is next summer. I sincerely hope this works, so that I can(invest). I have to say that I'm not in the least surprised at the negative posts- worrying about selection processes for Presidents???? lets get the club bought first ffs. Exactly, I agree that the process has to be developed before we buy the club but it doesnt need to be worked out fully and notified to everyone on day 1. Some of us are working on these details now, how Presidents are voted, what happens in the meantime ie from the day we buy the club to the day the President is installed etc.

I got 3 on the account I originally registered for something to with NUSC and another 3 on the account that I actually joined with Im on the committee I only got two

George Caulkins take on it: http://timesonline.typepad.com/thegame/200...r-campaign.html

The best way to be frankly and any questions that dont get answered, bung them on here and I'll attempt to get a full answer for you.

Cheers for that As Trophy says and Ive posted elsewhere, the importance and scale of this cannot be underestimated. This is something huge in British football, if it happens then we will be the first club of any real size to be owned by the fans, in fact theres only one in the Football League, the mighty Exeter City. Its going to be a long hard struggle, Im not going to be an Acca and say we'll piss getting the money because we wont. Im not going to do a Stevie and say that this is only open to Geordies because its not, its open to any Newcastle fan, anywhere. We are all in this together and we need to ensure that we all pull together. Im, as much as anyone aware of the current financial position of many of you (myself included), I dont expect that everyone will run out and sell their first born to raise the minimum stake (which we've listened to early comments and reduced to £1500). What I would hope every single member of this message board will do is read the stuff fully, if you've got questions then ask them on here, lets have this one thread though and not bring it into every other thread. Read the information with an open mind, forget any preconceived views you have on the NUST/NUSC because I can assure you everything that is and has been done in the past has been with the best intentions. This is being done with one intention only, to bring the football club out of its current dire situation and start something incredible within our football club. Read the info, ask your questions and if you are in a position to invest then take financial advice, there will be a city centre shop opening for people to walk in and discuss with Financial experts, use them or use one of your own. If you're not in a position to invest yourself then you could look to set up a group of people, get ten of you with £150 each, 20 with £75 or even 1500 together at a quid apiece. What the hell, lets have a toontastic share! You can even just donate any amount into the Trust who will then group those donations into tranches of £1500 and buy additional shares for the trust. If you've read it, agreed it but cant donate or invest then please pass the word around your mates, sit in the pub and ensure everyone you know understands what its about. Ive said it once, I'll say it again, this is the best chance that our football club has to go forward, another season under Ashley is unthinkable. The future under fans ownership could be the best thing to happen to this football club.

I said we were launching this week (tbf I may have incorrectly said Monday but I think it was decided to hold until Tuesday to see what went on at the weekend, protests etc), its tomorrow the official launch and even then though I wouldnt expect to see a nice big list of names and amounts, its not really something you should do, publish details of who has given what. Anyone pledging cash though has to pay 10% of it to the holding solicitors as "Proof of Funds", this way we remove those that are talking crap and have no intention/ no funds.

And why the fuck would you? Do you want us to start listing the people who've pledged? we havent even launched yet. Those that want their names known will no doubt come out and say.

These arent random pledges from nameless people on the internet, these are genuine, big name individuals or businesses, the sort of people that have that money as spare cash and more importantly wont really just deny making the agreement.

With a pessimistic head on you could worry that we are playing above our level while they are below theirs, we need to hope that we dont drop to form whilethe rest up their game.

where do I say it is cos we are not there? where do I say it is cos it has smaller clubs in it? What I'm saying is it looks shit this year. If you do not agree ok. I'm also asking would we have fared ok if we had stayed up, we would not have had a clear out. And, how would we fare with the team we have now playing the standard they are now. By the way I'm pleased it fucks you off cos thats where should be Fucked off I agree it appears shit from a look at the table. How shit would we feel if we were sitting bottom of that lot though? It somehow seems better that we're top of a shit league while teams we know are inferior are sitting in the one above. I still think a lot of those up there would rip our current team apart (many will do come January anyway, those clubs will be looking to buy their way out of that position and be eyeing up our lot).

I understand everything you say and I have to say that I dont have all of the answers here, plus even the best laid plans can go to shit but I'll attempt to give some overview, all of the full info will be available tomorrow at the launch. Basically, the ideal scenario is to raise a total of £300m, that sounds fanciful but as I said in a previous post elsewhere, that is only 12,000 investors world wide who stick their £25,000 pension investment in. That to me seems a realistic number of people who dont ever actually pull any money out, its not taking food from kids plates and its not meaning people take out loans or sell their cars to fund it. In its simplest form (I make it sound easy but obviously theres more to it) its a case of saying I want £25,000 of my current pension fund to be moved to this other one. Thats not taking into account the actual cash investments from fans, businesses, workplaces etc, a lot of these are the £2,500 minimum some could be £500k, £1m £10m etc (and there are already pledges in the hundreds of thousands upwards). So lets say we do get the full £300m, thats £80m to buy the club and £220m to run it. Each year we would be paying out a total of £6m in interest to everyone on their investments, compare that to the fact we were paying £4.8m on an overdraft of £40m (12%) and you can see straight away a financial benefit. An extra £1.2m outlay on what we were paying but an additional £220m to run the club, a large chunk of which would obviously be available for players. Year on year theres nothing to stop new investors joining, every 40 of which would mean an additional £1m income however obviously theres a break point, each one of those 40 people would be getting £500 per year paid out, somewhere down the line you need to weigh up just how much is coming in and going out. Otherwise we could hit a point in 10 or 15 years time when we're paying out pensions and interest which exceeds our income. Thats where the financial and pension experts that are working on this come in, they know whats what and how to run it. As we all know though, a successful, well run team will reap the benefits through the turnstiles and in merchandising. Link that team to the community and you could maximise the benefits to the club, the fans, the community and the city as a whole. Theres always a risk nobody would deny that, theres a risk that this fails miserably and people dont invest, theres a risk that we buy the club, dont receive a great amount more and have to run it on a shoestring (but would that be any worse than Ashley? I doubt it!). At the same time theres the risk that the person currently running your pension fund does a Maxwell or even just cocks up totally and loses it all. At least this way we have some say over what happens. Theres no better time to do this, in fact Id go so far as to say theres never going to be another chance like it. What I do know though is that theres no knight on a white horse rushing in, no Sheik with billions to spare going to pull us out of the shit. Its ourselves or Ashley, stark reality. What I can say is that the world of football (and finance) is watching with baited breath to see what happens here.

Hes class personified is Mikey.

80m is too much for a championship club, however 80m for our championship club if it is no strings attached is a necessary evil. fyp I dont see £80m as a bargain at all because this club isnt what it was two years ago. Its a shell of its former self but it can be big again and it can be worth a lot more than that however thats the price and its down to us to i) raise the purchase price, ii) raise additional funds to get it back on its feet, and iii) ensure it never again gets into this kind of mess.

Is that true though? No add-ons, contingencies, repayments of Ashley's loans? Allegedly yes, I only have this on what we're told but like I say, its from people well connected and involved. All along Ive been the one shouting that its not 100m once you add on the loans etc, now it appears that hes got to the point where he just wants out and I was wrong.