Starting to get some grief from the other shareholders at AS Nancy now too You may remember I'd reported that Conway had brought in a character called Max Kothny to share some of the CEO load at Nancy with Gauthier Ganaye, who spends nearly all his time at Ostend. Kothny was previously CEO of Turkgucu Munich who were owned by Conway's pal and minority investor in PMG's football shareholdings (don't know which clubs sadly) Hasan Kivran. Turkgucu Munich were last season in the German third division with Kothny as their CEO. I say 'were' because on 31st January 2022 the club filed for insolvency, they were expelled and their results were expunged from the records. Kivran just cut and ran in mid-January leaving the club to its fate. Kivran's final act seems to have been to persuade Conway to take Kothny under his wing and appoint him at AS Nancy. Kothny began work at AS Nancy in May. However, the other shareholders at AS Nancy have now ganged up against Conway and annulled his appointment of Kothny who has been sent packing! Having had to put the thick end of £6m into the club to retain their licence in the French third division it seems like the shareholders at AS Nancy want more of a direct say now in appointments there instead of letting Conway just mess things up.
Thank the Lord he is gone. Conwy Castle is a good historical visit too. Con Man is gone. Last summer is over and a new one yet begun. You could say I'm a dreamer. Am I the only one. Some day you might join me.
One day, football will look back and say ‘do you remember that Paul Conway bloke? How the fk was that allowed to happen!?!’ Complete charlatan, should be nowhere near the game.
Does anyone else not think it odd that the current board didn’t know he was acting on behalf of other shareholders and not actually have bigger shares add to that apparently Dane knew.
I thought it was the nominee part that they weren’t aware of? I think they knew the make up of his shareholding was from investors, or investors were involved. Might be wrong though.
That doesn't tie in with what was said recently about them only finding out about the New York investors when Dane Murphy mentioned that they recommended him would it?
That’s the bit that seems odd to me though. If they knew his shares were so small surely they knew he was acting on the others behalf?
I suppose we see it as Paul Conway when it was really PMG, a company Paul Conway owned. The funding needed came from PMG and Paul Conway, as owner, was who they dealt with alongside Chien Lee. Probably no requirement to dig deeper? Definitely interesting though and worked in our favour big time
I'm clearly not on your wavelength this morning, but how did this work in our favour big time when we've all just endured arguably our worst ever season in our history?
Because if Conway wasn’t representing investors, with a time period that was expiring as their nominee, I’ve no idea what position we would be in right now. For certain I don’t think we’d be hiring Michael Duff and looking at 7,500 to 8,000 season ticket sales.
Yes, there is that. Every cloud has a silver lining and all that....In my opinion though I'd have preferred not to have had him at all
Quick question about the shareholding at BFC. In the shareholders agreement it states that 10 business days are given to existing shareholders to make a decision and find the money for a new share issue. Obviously we don't know when the equity injection was or is due to be actioned, but we're certainly past 10 business days since Parekh first mentioned putting money in. And given the funds are likely needed now to the end of the transfer window, I'd suspect they'd want to act swiftly. Has there been any indication of change in shareholding in the HK vehicle? I'm interested if Lee and Conway are keen to preserve their equity split or willing for it to be diluted.
Of course. But you can only deal with the cards you've been dealt. Thankfully this Summer we did, for the better.
You're right and we did sort things out. We also did it professionally as well, which is always difficult under the circumstances. Also, I sense that the Supporters Trust had a hand in it as well. So thank you all round
Worth pointing out at this point that BFCST had zero input in to making the change happen - that was fully Neerav and James/Jean Cryne. But the current board did keep the communication channels open with us from around October/November last year, which is why we were able to be a little bit calmer (not always) as the fire was burning around us last season. Would be unfair to take more praise than we are due on that one. Communications with the club have been good post announcement as well, with various bits of feedback being provided around follow up announcements and updates, which I think has been noticeable. Everything is moving in the right direction, that's for sure. Feels like Michael Duff, with the right players staying and the right players joining, could get the whole town behind this football club. Don't want to get over excited though.
Would it be correct to say that since Conway/Lee have been voted off the shackles that held the CEO and the remainder of the board have been relaxed somewhat and they are now free to act as a proper football club board should, ie employing Duff, communicating with the fans, improving the fans experience on matchdays, etc, or is there that bad smell still lurking in the undergrowth that could still spoil things?
Sorry for slow reply - it is interesting how all that will play out but there's nothing been added to the HK companies site on BFC Investments recently (nothing since the football club Board changes). The HK site is usually updated in about a week from filing of anything so I'll keep an eye out.
You have my respect mate. It must have been hard to sit on your hands knowing that in the face of some hysteria and vitriol. Some of the people on the Facebook group seemed to have completely got their knickers in a twist. Probably meant well but lost credibility quickly. I did scratch my head why they targeted Conway specifically rather than the whole PMG ownership. Do you think they had wind that the people who counted were starting to realise he was the problem?
