Rangers liquidation: Shareholders anger after club’s last rites

SHAREHOLDERS in Rangers have long since been forced to accept they hold little influence on how the club is run. Their share certificates, some of them passed down from generation to generation, were more about emotional investment than anything else.

Yesterday, around 250 of those small shareholders attended the final meeting of The Rangers Football Club plc. It lasted little more than 20 minutes, a sense of futility and despair engulfing those present.

Since Rangers first issued share capital worth £12,000 back in May 1899, ending their previous status as a private members’ club founded 27 years earlier, there have been many colourful and dramatic gatherings of shareholders. Yesterday’s was simply grey and sullen, befitting the wake it effectively was for Rangers in the corporate format they have existed as for the last 113 years. Where ordinary shareholders could once air their views to charismatic chairmen such as John Lawrence, David Holmes and Sir David Murray, the meeting at Ibrox yesterday saw them faced by two accountants and a lawyer.

Paul Clark of administrators Duff & Phelps spoke from a marquee set up on the side of the pitch, while the shareholders sat in the Bill Struth Main Stand. David Whitehouse, Clark’s co-administrator, and Neil Smith of lawyers Taylor Wessing, sat at a desk but did not speak.

The formality of the creditors’ meeting in the nearby Argyle Suite earlier in the day, which took just nine minutes to confirm the failure of the Company Voluntary Arrangement proposal which had been rejected by major creditor HMRC two days earlier, was relayed to the shareholders by Clark.

“It was just a farce,” said David Stewart, one shareholder who left the meeting grim-faced. “He wouldn’t answer any questions. He just said what they [Duff & Phelps] wanted to say, he didn’t want to engage with us at all. Someone shouted ‘what are we doing here, then?’. He just said it was a legal requirement to meet the shareholders after the creditors’ meeting this morning.”

Attempts to ask questions met with little success, although there was applause for one shareholder who pointed out the sizeable bill Duff & Phelps have run up since Rangers went into administration on 14 February.

“I don’t think they could understand what people were shouting, they were so far away,” said Kenny McLeod, like his friend Stewart a shareholder for more than 20 years.

“They didn’t have any microphones up beside us, they had no intention of taking questions.”

When the meeting was declared closed by Clark, there were jeers from the shareholders, one of whom shouted: “How do you sleep at night?”

When Whitehouse left Ibrox by a rear entrance around 30 minutes later, one of the fans waiting outside yelled: “You’re a robber without a mask”. That was in stark contrast to the acclaim given to Ally McCoist, the Rangers manager cheered and applauded when he drove away from the ground at 1.30pm.

If faith in Duff & Phelps has been steadily eroded over recent weeks, the greatest level of concern for those in attendance yesterday was over what the future holds for their soon to be newly-constituted club.

“It’s unbelievable what has gone on, I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” added Stewart. “Someone is going to grab this stadium and Murray Park for £5.5 million for a start. That’s our shares in Rangers finished now. When the newco starts up, we’ll have to buy new shares. But the Rangers fans will stick with the newco. There will always be a Rangers. The history is there and always will be, we won’t let it be forgotten.”

As the debate continues about where the new Rangers take their place in Scottish football next season, there was sizeable support among shareholders for the prospect of starting out in the bottom tier of the Scottish Football League.

“Would I still buy a season- ticket it we are playing Montrose or East Stirling here?” mused veteran supporter and shareholder Tommy Daniels, a well-kent face around the club who has been a lifelong resident in the Ibrox area. “Aye, probably. I’ll renew my season-ticket whatever happens, loads of us will be the same. But Scottish football needs us and so do Celtic. Anyone who says differently isn’t being realistic.”

The reality yesterday was the end of Rangers FC as constituted for more than a century. The feeling among some supporters was that some of their rivals should be careful what they wish for.

“If they put us into Division Three, then there are going to be a lot of other SPL clubs in big financial trouble,” added McLeod. “But that’s up to them. We are at the stage now where we feel as if we should maybe take a few others with us.”