From the 2002 accounts:
Moving on to the Balance Sheet, the most significant event
during the year was our agreeing a £30m securitisation
package - via Bear Stearns - with Prudential. The £30m
loan, repayable over 25 years on a fixed rate of interest,
made sound commercial sense and restructuring our
borrowing in this way allows us to plan properly for the
future. It has to be said that the securitisation product is
not new to football but given the sensitivity of the “City”
to the financial problems being experienced in the football
sector, I think it unlikely that there will be many more such
opportunities available in the near future. It must be
remembered, however, that simply by restructuring the
loan we still have the debt to service, and the Club is now
making annual repayments at a rate of £2.8m per annum
over the term of the loan.
We certainly do have challenges
ahead of us at the Club, no more so than the Club
confirming its ability to find its £30m equity investment in
the proposed new stadium project. Your Board is diligently
working towards this aim and, as we have openly said in
the past, we will not allow this project to in any way
inhibit our ability to take the Company forward both on
and off the field of play.
The net asset position has positively improved, helped by
the reduced working capital pressure following the
securitisation.
