Be Careful What You Wish For (42 page)

This price surprised me but they based it upon a variety of calculations and that was their expert valuation. Before instructing Seymour Pierce I gave them one more set of parameters – that my ‘legacy was as important as my tenure’. I wanted legitimate buyers with genuine intentions for Palace and with that understood, in August 2008 I formally engaged them and set about giving them all the information they required to produce a glossy information pack and sales brochure for potential purchasers.

Neil Warnock was fully supportive, both privately and in the media, believing that I was entirely right to want to sell. Personally there was a level of disappointment seeing as we got on so well but he knew if I got the club sold it would be done with the club’s and his best interests at heart.

My modus operandi was business as usual so we set about preparing for the new season with the ambition, as always, to be successful. We sold one of our young players Tom Soares to Premier League-promoted Stoke City for £1.25 million and, rather than bank the money as most sensible people would have done, I backed my manager and allowed him to go out and spend nearly £2.5 million on players!

We brought in Paddy McCarthy for £500,000 to replace the club captain Mark Hudson, who left on a free transfer after contract negotiations broke down. I was told he deliberately made ridiculous demands because he never had any intention of signing a new deal
once
his existing one had run out. This was because when he had signed in 2004 Iain Dowie promised he would be our starting centre back in the Premier League, but nothing ever came of that promise. So I lost Hudson, who had originally cost us £500,000, for nothing to Charlton! On top of that Neil signed their centre half for £500,000! So Charlton managed to get some of the money back they had to pay in legal fees on Dowie’s behalf over the lost court case!

We also signed Alan Lee, a big centre forward from Ipswich, for £650,000. The most curious signing and one which Mr Warnock was entirely culpable for was Nick Carle, an Australian international. We paid £1 million to Bristol City to meet a release clause in his contract. Carle was sold to me as Bristol’s key player, a free-scoring midfielder according to my management team. I do remember him being mentioned as the player to stop when we played Bristol in the 1–1 draw in the controversial League game back in January.

So I sanctioned the investment and when he scored his first ever goal in English football for Crystal Palace early in the season it came as something of a surprise to me. He started with such promise but virtually disappeared and was nothing like the player I had been led to believe I was buying. His hefty salary aside, he was, shall we say, a bit of a disappointment and not one of Neil’s finest moments.

We also signed two other players and a raft of loan players from Premier League clubs, such was the belief I had in Neil. Unfortunately for this season it was to prove a little misplaced. Perhaps it was my announcement to sell that unsettled the club, or maybe it was a hangover from the disappointment from the play-offs last year, yet it was a surprise to me that we started the next campaign so poorly given that we had significantly strengthened our side. It took us five games to record our first win and at the end of August we
were
in the bottom three and had suffered an embarrassing 4–0 away defeat to then League One Leeds United in the Carling Cup. The performance at Elland Road was abject, and that’s being kind, which was surprising given how Neil, as a Sheffield fan, viewed Leeds.

Tragically in late August I lost my dear friend and publicist Aroon Maharajh. We had been working together for about eighteen months and had become very close. In one of life’s strange coincidences I had met his wife Teresa some twenty years earlier as she worked for Mark Goldberg and was responsible for my first ever computer contract. Aroon was one of those people who made a room light up. He had an infectious personality and a wicked sense of humour. He was thoroughly on my side, albeit frequently encouraging me to do things I never wanted to do! On my phone the first picture I have is Aroon in my house in Spain in March 2008, holding my six-week-old daughter Cameron. He died seven months later after suffering a massive heart attack. I gave a eulogy at the packed church for his funeral. He is still sorely missed. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Throughout September we stayed in and around the bottom three. The only bright spot of any note was playing Charlton Athletic at home, where we got to achieve a long overdue win. Craig Beattie, a loan signing from West Brom, scored the winning goal in front of a euphoric Selhurst Park crowd. Beattie proved to be an inspired signing, and in October and November we started to fare better. By the end of November we were mid-table, still not where I had expected us to be!

By now the sales document from Seymour Pierce had been circulated to potential purchasers for Palace and, according to Keith Harris, we would start to see some interest very shortly.

The launch of
Telstar
in October at the London Film Festival
was
greeted with great critical acclaim and by now I had decided to use a leading film sales agent, Fortissimo, who had very high hopes of sales. They gave me three forecasts of what they were expecting internationally and in the UK market. The top-end forecast was just under $10 million, the most likely was $6.5 million and worst case was $4.5 million. What this told me was at best this film could make me over £4 million on my £2-million-plus investment, worst case maybe half a million. This was from one of the leading and most experienced internationally reputed big sales companies so it should have meant something. The fact the forecasts weren’t worth the paper they were written on emerged sometime later.

In the same month I was invited to co-host my favourite radio show on talkSPORT with the copper-headed one Adrian Durham. I always enjoyed being a guest on the show as I liked talking to the fans on the phone-ins, discussing any weighty issues of the time and regaling the world with my opinions. But this was a co-host slot and involved a different set of parameters. I had to try and be a proper radio presenter, which wasn’t that easy as I had no benchmark working alongside Durham.

But I enjoyed it. On the three shows I did I invited Lynval Golding and Terry Hall from The Specials to talk about football as well as the recent re-formation of the band and how and why it had come about. On the last show I invited Nick Moran on so we could shamelessly plug our film
Telstar
. Whilst I was discussing the film, and during a round of banter, Adrian asked me if I would consider the now actor and ex-footballer Vinnie Jones in any future film projects. My sarcastic comment in response was only in the event that the dialogue consisted of a series of Neanderthal-like grunts.

This was fed back to Mr Jones, who somehow got confused.
Vinnie
Jones had worked with Nick on the hit film
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
and upon hearing this bit of mickey-taking he jumped to the conclusion that it was Nick and the producer of
Lock Stock
, Matthew Vaughn, who had made fun of him. Thus a bemused Matt Vaughn received a series of explosive phone calls from Jones, and Nick Moran, in fear of his life, phoned him to apologise. Oh well, all in a day’s work for me!

In autumn 2008 the world was gripped by the current financial crisis and I was becoming extremely exposed. Since 2001 I had used an overdraft to fund Palace’s trading. The long-standing reason for this was that in the unlikely event I was ever able to take money out of Palace, reducing an overdraft was seamless, whilst taking money out would inevitably lead to criticism from certain fans! The overdraft was fully supported and secured by my cash, which was put into an investment vehicle. The borrowings my cash supported were at £12 million but my portfolio was at circa £14.5 million so I had plenty of headroom, or so I thought. In three short months that portfolio was to lose in excess of £3 million as a result of market volatility.

The forecasts at the beginning of the season for Palace that had shown the £5 million hole, which I had plugged, were now proving to be wrong. The recession was biting into our attendances, and the team’s slow start didn’t help: for the fourth year in a row our crowds dropped substantially. This, coupled with a big downturn in corporate spending with the club, meant that our income was actually coming in at several hundred thousand per month less than anticipated.

On top of that I had several million invested in the Spanish property market, which by now had gone soft. I had bought twenty-three properties in 2003 and the developer had been late
completing
them. I had only managed to sell nine, and as the market worsened the potential of selling more receded; furthermore, twelve of these properties lost their planning permission – and I had invested a significant seven-figure sum in them. I had been suing the developer for nearly fifteen months to get my money back when the company, Fadesa, one of if not the biggest developer in Spain, went into administration with debts of €1.5 billion, which meant getting my money back became even more difficult.

To compound things further the Club Bar and Dining business was ailing and my relationship with the partner I had founded it with had now deteriorated. I was concerned at his lack of hands-on involvement, and it seemed that company funds had been misused. This business now had cash demands and the only place to get the money from was me!

Around this time I was due to go to America to look at the marketing opportunities and key sales of my film
Telstar
. As I was preparing for this my best friend in the world, someone whose judgement I trusted in unreservedly, came up with an investment opportunity. My lawyers and accountants looked at it, and the information we gleaned suggested it was a sound investment. It was based upon buying shares in a Nasdaq-listed company at a certain price which were going to move to the London AIM market. Going to another exchange meant that the shares would then increase in value – a huge opportunity for gain with seemingly no risk whatsoever! So with that I placed a seven-figure sum into this investment!

By November 2008 my liquidity was at its lowest in eight years and below the threshold I had said I would ever go under. I had just under £10 million in the bank but I remained asset rich. I had a football club supposedly worth £35 million that I was potentially
about
to sell, a film that wouldn’t only get my £2 million back but also generate a good return, a portfolio with £3 million excess cash in it against the borrowings I had for Palace and a house in Spain with £2 million in equity. Whilst slightly problematic, there was also a seven-figure sum claimable by me also in Spanish property and a lucrative investment with a close friend, plus sundry assets like boats and luxury cars. So all in all, whilst I had alarm bells ringing, I had the asset base and wherewithal to see out the problems I had. How wrong one person can be!

The team’s performance in December improved markedly and we troubled the top six for the first and only time that season, going to fifth in the league. Even the forgotten £2.5 million Shefki Kuqi was back in the team and scoring goals and despite the threats on the horizon, this gave me cause for optimism. Wrong again!

Each year I threw an annual Christmas party for the staff and players. And this year, irrespective of the financial pressures, was not different. These parties were big affairs with over 250 guests and most years were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel. We had top-drawer entertainment from comedians like Jimmy Carr and Bradley Walsh to music acts such as Lemar and the Sugababes. These parties cost me in excess of £100,000 a year, but were a great opportunity for me to show the staff how much I appreciated them for all their endeavours over the past twelve months. This year, my customary speech at the opening of the evening was touched with a tinge of sadness as, given the club was up for sale, it was likely to be the last one. Well, I had to get something right!

Despite being told in October and November that the sales document for Palace had been produced by Seymour Pierce, I finally saw in the New Year what was going to all the supposed
interested
parties in Palace. My faith was a little diminished as to date Seymour Pierce had proved to be all talk and no action, but there had been one interested party. They themselves were of course represented by a third party. In the third week of January, with the team two points off a play-off spot, I flew with Tom Sheldon, one of Keith Harris’s staff, to Paris for a meeting.

By now we had established that the interested party was a French–Israeli consortium. I met them and their representation in Charles de Gaulle airport for a two-hour meeting. They appeared knowledgeable about football and purported to be interested in owning the club solely for footballing reasons. After going through all aspects of the club they announced they would be making a bid of £25 million but both Seymour Pierce and I said the document had said we were looking for £35 million, which now seems a touch avaricious but no one takes the first offer. If I had done that back in 2000 for the sale of my mobile phone business I would have got £40 million less.

One of them, a Middle Eastern guy whose name escapes me now, asked to speak privately with me. He said he could make the offer £30 million but £5 million would need to be paid in cash as they wanted for their own reasons to book the sale at £25 million. This concerned me, as whilst the number was very acceptable the fact they wanted to pay in cash didn’t sound right. I stated that whilst he might not want to make such offers in front of his own representation I most certainly wanted mine to hear and called Sheldon over.

I expressed my discomfort at being paid a significant proportion in cash, mainly because it smacked of money laundering and could be a possible sting. We agreed to look at how we could work such a deal, bearing in mind taking £5 million in cash was not plausible, and Seymour Pierce would get back to them.

I was hoping these people were real and legitimate but I realised that if they were I would need to be careful as I had to acquire the stadium from Paul Kemsley’s HBOS-backed company. Even though I had signed a lease he had flatly refused to put a maximum buy price into the agreement and the last thing I wanted was for him to get me again! But I considered that was only worth worrying about when it was necessary to do so.