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Consultation Papers - In Favour of Option Three
at 16:33 22 Jul 2017

Hi, I'm a long time trust member who paid £5 towards the cost of Leon, but I'm brand-new to this forum.
Holding my hands up, my first thought was to support the trust's recommendation. But my wife, who has a long history with Supporters Direct, made me think again.
Currently, the Supporters Trust own about 21% of our club. That's massive: it's a big share and currently we're a big club. Recents events have brought into sharp relief the fact that we don't own about 79% of our club, but we don't live in Utopia, and there's no golden option on the table right now.
On the face of it, selling between a quarter and a half our shares for a few million makes us no different to the other shareholders: I'm not knocking them particularly but they are individuals as well as Jacks. As Swanstrust we're not. When the other owners were local Jacks, we still argued and fought for getting a bigger share of our club. I can't believe that the new ownership of the club changes that.
Talk of what we might be able to do with £5-12 million is a bit pie in the sky. Yes, maybe we'd get the whole club if everything goes pear-shaped and we end up back in Leagues One and Two. Maybe, maybe not. The reality is that we would now go from owning to 21% to owning somewhere between 10 and 15%. Are the new owners with all their gold so shiny and fabulous that the actual supporters of this club no longer want need or even deserve to own the big share we've fought hard for?
Remember: we don't need this deal in order to have a principled working relationship with the current owners. They may choose not to heed our voice, but that might happen even if we do make this deal with them. The papers state - as a 'con' to Option Three - that "how influential the Trust will be will be at the discretion of the majority shareholders". That is a con of ALL the options, and isn't really changed by selling them half our shares.
In closing, let me address at least one more of the "cons" stated under this option: the papers cstate that ours is "a minority shareholding with less financiual value to other parties", and goes on to talk about how little money it might be worth on selling. The problem is that this treats us like other speculating shareholders: we're proud of the size of our share and have no intention of selling it.
I find myself hardening to Option Three the more I think about it.

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Sean

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