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Portsmouth FC on the brink of liquidation

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15th Aug 2012
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PKF’s administrators thought that they had done what was necessary to save Portsmouth FC by offloading first-team players, but matters took a turn for the worse this morning when Balu Chainrai withdrew his bid to buy the club.

Chainrai had been expected to complete the deal this week after PKF’s Trevor Birch spent the past few weeks offloading first-team players in order to push through a sale of the troubled club.

However the Hong Kong businessman released the following statement to Sky Sports News this morning:

"Portpin Ltd regrets to announce that it is withdrawing its bid for Portsmouth Football Club.

Unfortunately, our efforts to save the club once more from extinction have hit a wall of rejection and lacking co-operation from the administrator and other interested parties.

We are not the ones who have caused the club to collapse and we are not the ones to choose PKF as administrators.

As history has recorded, we sold the club over a year ago after saving it from liquidation and unfortunately found ourselves again fighting to try and save the club from another liquidation.

Through this administration process over the last six months we have always had the club's best interest in mind – unlike many parties who were involved in the process.

We repeatedly encouraged the administrator to find a new, willing and able buyer to take over the club – unfortunately he was unsuccessful in this job and couldn't find a buyer despite his promises.

Later he approached us to be his safety net to save the club as he couldn't find a buyer. We agreed in the effort to avoid liquidation of the club.

We welcome and will assist anyone, including the supporters trust to try and save the club in the coming days.”

The decision means the club's last chance of survival could be an alternative bid by the Pompey Supporters Trust.

* * *

PKF meet conditions for Portsmouth CVA

13 August – Administrators from PKF have announced that player Liam Lawrence will leave Portsmouth Football Club, allowing them to push forward with a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) and avoid liquidation.

After negotiating a compromise agreement with Lawrence, PKF has successfully completed agreements with all of the first team squad and met the major condition of the offer from Portpin, which formed the basis for the CVA proposal.

PKF partner and joint administrator Trevor Birch said: "We will now aim to finalise our discussions with Portpin with a view to completing the sale of the club as soon as possible. The intention is to push this through early next week in order to ensure that player recruitment can begin as quickly as possible for the start of the new season."

Birch added that the offer from the Pompey Supporters’ Trust remains a fall-back position and that they were pleased to note that the council had agreed to provide a loan facility to support the trust bid.

As part of the rescue deal a CVA will provide unsecured creditors 2p for every pound owed. In order for the CVA to go through, 75% or more of creditors by value of debt need to vote in favour of the proposals.

The administrators and player Tal Ben Haim had been locked in a battle over wages, but managed to secure a deal last week resulting in Ben Haim leaving the club.

Birch commented on the agreement with Ben Haim: "The progress that we have made over the past 24 hours means that there is now a much better prospect of meeting the conditions of the CVA, completing the sale of the club and avoiding liquidation.

PKF’s Trevor Birch, Bryan Jackson and Ian Gould were appointed joint administrators of Portsmouth Football Club on 17 February 2012.

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By david5541
14th Aug 2012 13:13

the way it should always be for football clubs

if only rangers had followed the same route;

there would have been no relegation

deals will have been struck with the big players in rangers, and /or ongoimg  losses on them limited like pkf did with haim & lawrence.

 

the american route to administration is far more "entity freindly" and this route is the best half way house for everyone at portsmouth. 

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Replying to Ruddles:
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By scaldro
15th Aug 2012 14:36

Clueless

 

Completely different to the Rangers case

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By justsotax
14th Aug 2012 13:42

nice to see that

the over paid players have repaid the loyalty shown to them by their fans - but i guess if you have a 1.5 mill mortgage.....

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By carnmores
15th Aug 2012 14:05

its not comparable with Rangers

chalk and cheese

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