The Newcastle Knights Board today announced it would move to finalise negotiations for the establishment of a Patrons Trust
Is their any public information about this yet?
Knights Chairman Rob Tew said that the Tinkler Group’s proposal in its current form would have been just as unacceptable to the Club’s Members as it was to the Knights Board.
Thats not for him to decide.
“What was initially touted as a $100 million guaranteed offer to buy the Knights has turned out to be a small fraction of that offer with no certainty for the club beyond two years and a host of other liability questions unanswered,” Mr Tew said.
Were these details not available at the last meeting that they "agreed to in priciple"?
We believe continuing to operate the club on the current basis and re-opening other options previously on the table makes the most sense.
Im aware of only one - Patrons trust.
“At the time we announced “in-principle” support for the Tinkler Group’s offer in its revised form, we also referred to a number of other options available to the Club. This included the potential establishment of a Patrons Trust
Again, the details of tinklers offer, have they changed since they agreed to it in principle? If the details are the same, why the backflip? What are the option(s)? It is the patrons trust and ........ ?
“The Patrons Trust model has been successfully used in other football codes to help clubs advance their growth plans.
What does this model involve? does anyone know? what other codes, clubs use it?
From reading the statement made in janurary, tew said tinklers offer was superiour to the patrons trust, this is when they agreed in principle to tinklers offer. I assume that the offer that was put forth then should very well be the same offer that was going to be negotiated on today (and the finer points made clear to the public yesterday).
So to me, the board knew about the omition of junior development, and the extent of the 100mil over ten years, or lack thereof, but agreed to it in principle. Or where these details left out of tinklers bid that they in principle agreed too? As tew said "a mirage", so tinkler just slipped these other details in?
Now, tew has said the patrons model is superiour. Using what i have said above, if they are the same models that were present at the time they agreed to tinklers model in princple, how does it now turn out that it is superiour? Again, unless the finer details were not know back then :S
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Importantly, the Patrons Trust would allow the Knights to maintain its current membership structure. That is, we could continue to operate as a community-based club that has the best interest of Members at its heart
by that, it is the same structure now, just an external cash flow???
---------- Post added at 05:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:14 AM ----------
the Patrons Trust would be used to access funds for capital expenditure, junior development, community programs, special projects, resource improvements and the like
Not sure where these funds come from, third parties, current sponsors, a newcastle business consortium?