A forgotten cost
Posted by John Beech on July 9, 2009
When a club goes into Administration and an Administrator is appointed, that Administrator has to recover his own costs from what monies he can raise from the club’s assets. Administrators do not come cheap.
Begbies Traynor are very much the stars of the football insolvency business – very much Champions League material in this particular business sector.
Clubs at which they have been appointed the Administrators include: Kingstonian (2001), Huddersfield Town (2003), Northwich Victoria (2004), Wrexham (2004), Farnborough Town (2006), Crawley Town (2006), Bournemouth (2008), Halifax Town (2008) and Southampton Leisure Holdings (2009). Gerald Krasner, one-time Chairman of Leeds United, has been one of their ‘star players’.
They have just announced annual profits of £7.2m, a jump from £5.7m in the previous financial year (1). Insolvency is of course a boom industry in times of recession.
For use in presentations I have a rather complex diagram showing the main cash flows in the football industry. It could just be that it needs an extra arrow, representing the flow of cash from clubs to insolvency practitioners. 
Simon Cope said
You can add Scarborough FC to that list. Begbies Traynor was also appointed liquidator of the company in 2007.
John Beech said
The cost of Begbies Traynor’s services at Southampton have been quoted as a whisker under £5,000 per day (1), which suggests that their final bill will be close to half a million pounds.
Meanwhile, beyond Fratton Park… « Football Management said
[...] Farsley Celtic Celtic are teetering on the brink following the failure of the John Palmer takeover (see postings passim), with games no longer being played (7). A deeply disturbing aspect of this imminent disaster is that the stumbling block in negotiations proved not to be with club’s creditors, but with the costs of its Administrator (see A forgotten cost). [...]