THE RANGERS TAKEOVER: NO BILLIONAIRES IN SIGHT AS TRUE WORTH REVEALED
- BY LIAM CARRIGAN
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
With Celtic claiming the league title, and preparing for a cup final, womens’ football took on a whole new level of importance for the occupiers of Ibrox, until of course their own Zombettes “Hibs’ed it” against Hibs at the weekend!
Still, for the beleaguered Rangers fans out there, they still have one thing to look forward to. No, I don’t mean the ongoing “marching season”.
The Rangers Takeover: Hope Springs Eternal, But Reality Says Otherwise
Yes, the long, drawn-out prospect of billionaires from the US coming in to put finally those uppity Tims back in their place remains the sole, forlorn hope for a Rangers support long starved of success, yet still deluded enough to believe they are entitled to it.
The Rangers Takeover story has gone oddly quiet over the past few days though. You would have thought that with Celtic’s title celebrations plastered all over ever paper, that Keith Jackson and company would be going the extra mile to throw at least a few breadcrumbs of false hope towards the Ibrox hoards.
Instead, the silence has been deafening. It’s now a good two weeks since the Scottish press provided any meaningful update on the situation.
So, once again, it falls to Ireland-based journalist Phil Mac Giolla Bhain to do the Scottish Media’s job for them and actually apply some kind of critique to this whole situation.
In his latest blog, Phil addresses one of the biggest issues that has long puzzled me about this whole deal. Just how much money is the man supposedly spear-heading it all, Andrew Cavenagh, actually worth?
Well, nothing like what the Daily Record and The Sun no doubt hope he is, that’s for sure.
According to Phil’s sources, Cavenagh has a home currently valued at 2.4 million dollars, and an annual salary of around 850,000 dollars from his day job as CEO of health insurance consultancy firm Pareto Health.
Now, CEOs commonly make far more than their published salaries, thanks to stock options, bonuses and so on.
However, Pareto Health currently generates about $140 million in revenue per year. An optimistic estimate would then put their profit at around 8 million per year, once the salaries of their 280 staff, and other operating costs are taken into account.
So, even if Cavenagh was getting 10-15% of that, which would be a very generous package by industry standards. He’s still making less than 2 million a year.
Don’t get me wrong, I think most of us would love to be in his position, but it’s not really what you want to hear when you’re a Rangers fan desperate to sate your sugar daddy addiction.
That “transfer war chest” The Daily Record were creaming their collective doughnut over last week isn’t going to come from Cavenagh. Nor is it likely to come from 49ers Enterprises.
As I reported previously, Jed Yorke, owner of the San Francisco 49ers and unlike any of the other shysters linked with Ibrox past and present, a genuine billionaire, already confirmed there would be “no financial crossover” between The 49ers and any “soccer” clubs 49ers Enterprises might invest in.
Instead, 49ers Enterprises would share marketing and business management “best practices” with any potential partner clubs.
As I’ve said before, that means fiscal responsibility, it means balancing the books. It means no more spending money you don’t have, year after year in a flailing attempt to keep up with your bigger, more financially robust rivals.
That will not go down well with The Rangers support. However, and I’ll repeat once again, now that we have a clearer view of the personal financial firepower of the man leading this takeover, austerity is the only way it can work.
Cavenagh will have a plan to buy this distressed asset for as little as he can. Then, like the good vulture capitalist that he is, make whatever cuts are needed, no matter how brutal, to return the business to profit, before passing it off to someone even more gullible, for a considerable profit on his initial investment.
That is the only way this takeover can work. The Scottish media continue to deny these simple facts.
Meanwhile, Celtic have a treble to wrap up, and another European campaign to prepare for.
Due diligence will have to run its course at Ibrox before any deal can go through, and as I’ve said all along, that remains the biggest obstacle to any takeover.