----- Original Message ----- Q for those who know these things...by continuing to remain anonymous? I'm not being devil's advocate, I am genuinely interested in what their reasoning could be.
It is of course impossible to give a definitive answer and it could be said that any answer is purely speculation. A clue or indication may be in what took place in the sale of Chelsea to Abramovitch. Mr Bates was of course paid for the Chelsea shares that he held in his own name. This is the usual media story about how much he was paid for Chelsea. If he had held any greater number of shares in his own name then stock exchange rules said that he would have had to buy out all of the other shareholders. Fortunately many of the rest of the Chelsea shares were held by a series of offshore entities based in various tax havens around the far flung corners of the world. These other shareholders were also paid in full by Abramovitch for the shares that they owned. Luckily all of these widely varied other shareholders were all represented by Mr Taylor (the same Mr Taylor who made the judgments about how much debt/voting rights the "creditors" each received during the Leeds administration). This enabled Mr Taylor conveniently to collect all of the money for these shares and to pay it all into a holding account that he held at the Co-op bank in Manchester. (This is as reported by Tom Bowyer in Broken Dreams). This arrangement resulted in an investigation being launched by the Financial Services authority. The FSA were faced with having to launch a full separate investigation in each of the respective offshore havens around the world and eventually gave up on that massive task. I have no idea what the tax arrangements were on the money received by Mr Bates for his Chelsea shares but there is no reason to assume that it is the same tax treatment as was experienced with the money paid into the care of Mr Taylor for the benefit of the offshore entity shareholders. No doubt whatever took place was a learning experience. Several years further down that learning curve, what we have at Leeds is a situation where Mr Bates works for nil salary and holds none of the ownership shares of the club. I do not know what the tax arrangements might be when the club is sold and the proceeds are due to Forward Sports Funds anonymous shareholders. Obviously Mr Bates himself will not be paid for any ownership shares because he doesn't own any. _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist and the hardest time in a sailor's day is to watch the sun as it sails away
