The P&A Partnership’s six-monthly progress report has been released and the total cost to Plymouth Argyle is £675,756 so far. £1.4m has been spent on “office holder fees”, “professional fees”, “other senior professional fees” and “consultancy fees”, all very vague descriptions. It is speculated that acting chairman Peter Ridsdale was pocketing £20,000 per month, I guess that’ll be the consultancy fees then. Lead administrator Brendan Guilfoyle is claiming £381,008 for 812.7 hours work. The “other senior professionals” are claiming over £250,000 1,389 hours worked.
If we take the four months of dealing with Bishop International and Kevin Heaney who clearly never had the money out the equation, that fee should be much, much less. I really hope that James Brent refuses to pay the full administration costs as his bid was on the table before anyone else’s, and here we are five months down the line doing the deal with Brent’s Akkeron Group.
Frankly Brendan Guilfoyle and P&A Partnerships have mismanaged the Argyle account really badly. I’m still confused how Guilfoyle could dismiss Paul Buttivant’s consortium’s bid because of no proof of financial backing when clearly there was no financial backing for the BIL/Heaney’s bid, despite the £300,000 in exclusively payments, which fell £700,000 short of the £1,000,000 agreed in the exclusivity deal. I would love to see the “proof of funding” that Guilfoyle and P&A Partnership received, but I doubt it exists; it was all in Guilfoyle’s imaginary world! In my opinion, P&A Partnership need to be investigated by whatever body regulates insolvency companies.
It now looks likely the deal to buy Argyle will be completed next week before the Football League meets on the 13th October. Former directors Paul Stapleton, Tony Wrathall and Phill Gill have denied attempting to deal with administrators and Lombard who owns the mortgage on Home Park, trying to buy the club back and are openly supporting the James Brent bid. But there’s no smoke without fire; there must be some truth to it with the trio expected to be hit with a bill for £450,000 each from Lombard to make up the shortfall from the Akkeron Group takeover bid!
Although I was pissed off at the news that Stapleton, Wrathall and Gill were attempting to usurp the Brent deal, some fans took it too far, threatening Stapleton’s family, including threatening calls to his home and personal threats to his kids. I understand people are angry but these people need to be arrested and thrown in jail, there is no excuse for that sort of behaviour, I just hope that the Argyle Trust don’t condone this behaviour, i’ll lose all respect for them if they do!