Due to
the overwhelming number of people attending the last
extraordinary general meeting, the venue was changed to the East
Midlands Conference Centre at Nottingham University. It was a lot
bigger than the Moat House and this time there was no need for
people to stand outside in the corridor, listening on the
speakers.
The meeting started just after 10:30 and Eric Barnes started off
by outlining the two proposed resolutions to Forest’s
financial difficulty. I will now attempt to explain as best I can
what this involves:
Resolution #1
By voting for this, shareholders would be giving the go-ahead for
Nigel Doughty, and his company CFFN Ltd, to inject £5 million
and take his control of the football club to 85%.
Shareholders could either vote solely for resolution 1 or 2, or
both.
Resolution #2
Resolution 2 would give shareholders the chance to buy the number
of shares they currently own again to raise money, and if
resolution 1 also went ahead Nigel Doughty would then buy the
remainder of the unbought shares.
If Resolution 1 is blocked by shareholders, and enough money
cannot be raised from resolution 2 then the club will become
insolvent, i.e. we will be facing extinction.
Confused? You should be, but that’s a much less technical
description than the one offered by Mr Barnes.
The meeting didn’t take as long as the previous one, and not
as many questions were asked but a few interesting points did
arise. One comment was put forward to Eric Barnes and Nigel
Doughty that together they plotted to apoint an inexperienced
manager and to waste millions of pounds in order for Doughty to
end up buying the club on the cheap! A tad far fetched, but
emotions were running high.
The only real football talk to come from the previous meeting had
been from Paul Hart, who was not present today. More than likely
off having a look at some Brazilian superstar who he will sign to
solve our goal-scoring problems.
The following statement was issued
on the club's official website shortly after voting finished in
this morning's meeting:
Nottingham
Forest shareholders today gave Nigel Doughty the all-clear to
invest further in the Club.
Approximately 300 shareholders attended an Extraordinary
General Meeting in Nottingham and 74 per cent voted in favour
of Mr. Doughty’s offer to invest another £5million in
Forest.
That means Mr. Doughty now controls Nottingham Forest
Football Club - rather than the plc – and takes over as
Chairman from Eric Barnes with immediate effect.
A second resolution – a proposed share rights issue -
was not passed at the EGM as the 75 per cent vote required
was not quite reached.
That means Mr. Doughty is heading towards owning 85 per cent
of the football club with the plc owning the remaining 15 per
cent.