FALKIRK Football Club, which went into liquidation with debts of more than #1.5m just two months ago, has been saved.
The provisional liquidator appointed to help ensure the club's survival had his appointment recalled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh yesterday after ownership of the club was transferred to a local consortium following the sale of former chairman George Fulston's majority shareholding.
The Colin Liddell Consortium, which bought Mr Fulston's 144,000 shares for a sum believed to be several hundred thousand pounds, will now call an extraordinary general meeting of the company.
Mr Fulston resigned from the board of directors yesterday and consortium member Douglas MacIntyre was appointed as the consortium's interim representative on the board and acting interim chairman of the club.
The club, which narrowly missed promotion to the Premier Division, has previously blamed historic debts, inadequate facilities at its Brockville ground, and poor attendances for its financial problems.
However, it received #250,000 from the Scottish Football League for finishing second in the First Division and arrangements have already been made to pay its two principal creditors, the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.
Mr MacIntyre, who owns the Stenhousemuir-based contractors Murdoch, Smith & Co. Ltd, said yesterday: ''We are delighted for the club, for the supporters, and the town as a whole, but it is very much the first step on a very long ladder.
''The vast majority of our energies have been focused on reaching today, obtaining control of the club, and meeting the obligations that we had to the court to get the liquidator removed.
''The court would not have approved the removal of the provisional liquidator had they not been satisfied that we are in a position to pay the outstanding debts.
''We would now hope to talk to the people who have the outstanding debts. If they want paid now, we'll pay them. If they would like to reschedule in some way, shape, or form to assist the club, then we would be more than delighted to look at that.
''It is essential in taking over the club that we took the club over as a going concern and therefore we are obliged to meet all of these debts.''
Mr MacIntyre, who revealed that the club has secured a ''major backer'' outwith the consortium, added: ''We obviously have business plans and, if we can achieve what we hope to achieve, after discussions with local councils, we would very much hope to be able to move to a new stadium, but it is not going to happen overnight. There is a long way to go and the last thing any member of the group wants to do is give false promises that we can't fulfil.''
The former provisional liquidator, Mr Donald McGruther, corporate recovery partner with Glasgow-based chartered accountants Grant Thornton, said: ''We are delighted for the supporters, the shareholders, and the creditors that this deal has gone through and that Falkirk Football Club can now go forward into the new season.
''The outcome is better than anything we had anticipated and the company is now solvent with the #250,000 money from their league placing a contributory factor. With the new owners now in office, we wish the club every success.''
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article