If that is true we are completely f@cked. You are painting a doomsday scenario here. Basically that last sentence could well mean we are heading the way of Derby. Depressing stuff this thread.
Seriously this stuff is all in the public domain. Just go to the Companies House website. Every club's published accounts to June 2021 are freely available.
Negative Nett Shareholder Value means the business is technically insolvent, kept a going concern by Group Undertakings where the Group promises not to call in the loans within 12 months, even if they are listed as Creditors due within 12 months.
It means that the liabilities of the club outweigh the assets.
There are only 4 British clubs with bigger negative nett shareholder value than Middlesbrough.
Brighton -£238.7m
Stoke -£194.7m
West Ham -£165.0m
Cardiff -£141.8m
BORO -£116.6m.
There are clubs with bigger debts than Middlesbrough, but none more underwater.
This means nobody in their right mind would pay anything to take control of the club in the Championship. Why buy something worth MINUS £117m? with a turnover of c £25m that loses money outside the PL?
So, even if Gibson gave the club away, a new owner would pick up something with £117m nett liabilities, unable to raise external finance.
So unless Gibson was to write off the £121m internal loan his Group is owed by the Club, then nobody will pay anything for Gibson's equity.
IF he writes this debt off, converting it to equity as he has moderately done before then I am sure other parties might get involved and take over the club. But trhey won't want him running it. Who seriously would?
IF he writes this off AND gave the club away then he would have put £185m into the club (inc £64m debt to equity conversion 2012-2016), the sort of money people think he has over his 29 year reign.
If he won't then he is stuck with us and we are stuck with him.
I get the romance around local bloke, supporter, best interests etc.
But he has had complete control.
He has us lower than where we started under him and completely unsaleable.
That is why we desperately needed to get things right this summer.
If promoted and re-established in the PL then the debt can be contained, not expanded; the financial balance addressed and rationalised, the club sold and Gibson get some money back.
Every season we lose money this death spiral gets more pronounced.
Randy Lerner got out at Villa having lost a fortune, but enabling the club to continue under new ownership who injected a fortune in.
Ellis Short got out at Sunderland and dropped a fortune to enable it to go again.
I think Gibson still thinks he offers the club the only way, despite the evidence of the last 16 years.