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Bill Bratt has said he will carry on in his role as Port Vale chairman following the club being secured by a consortium lead by lifelong fan Peter Jackson.
The late bid by Jackson was enough to displace the bid made by the man who looked most likely to gain control, Italian football agent Gianni Paladini. The new deal saw Jackson purchase 30,000 shares in the club at £5 each, making the club £150,000 better off.
Bratt will carry on from where he left off since becoming chairman last year after the takeover by supporters' consortium Valiant 2001.
Jackson told the club's official website:'Bill has done a tremendous job and I believe our investment will help him finish the work he has started. 'We believe the club has great potential and we are confident we can introduce the right business management to enable the club to realise their potential.'
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19-12-03
A mystery fifth bidder has placed an offer on the table reports the Prt Vale rivals website.
The bid comes from overseas and is seen by a spokesman for the club as a 'substantial and serious bid to take control and invest in the club.'
Port Vale deny that the latest bid is from lifelong 'fan' Robbie Williams and also not from the Icelandic interests that are currently running Stoke City.
The new bid will be looked at along with bids from the likes of Vantis, a sports management consultants who were interested in gaining control of Notts County. Raj Bhatia and Len Smith, Bhatia was also in the running for Notts County along with Frank Strang before their bids failed at the eleventh hour. The Woodford Group who are property developers and an anonymous supporter.
The new bid comes in the light of Bill Bratt's statement saying that the club may be forced to re-enter administration before the end of the year.
The bids will be considered at a board meeting on Tuesday.
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11-12-03
Port Vale chairman Bill Bratt claims the club could go to the wall if fans do not invest £200,000 by the end of the month. Vale's perilous financial situation has worsened after the shock FA Cup exit at the hands of Scarborough.
Two parties have formally approached the club with bids to take a controlling interest, and a deadline of Friday has been set for others to come forward.
But Bratt - who last year led a takeover of the club by supporters' consortium Valiant 2001 - insists selling a majority shareholding would put Vale's future in doubt. He said: 'We are on the cliff's edge. We need supporters to come forward and buy shares in the club so we can keep control. I believe there's a possibility the club could go if we are forced to sell over 50% of the shares. If we can raise this money in the short term we can negotiate with the investors as equal partners rather than it needing to be a takeover.'
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Valient 2001 are the new owners (18-Mar-2003)
As previously reported administrators Poppleton & Appleby have at long last accepted the offer from supporters group Valient 2001 to buy the club. They are now officially the clubs new owners.
The bid was finally accepted at a creditors meeting on Thursday.
There had been fears that the bid would have been rejected by former Chairman Bill Bell who did have the power to turn the offer down. Many had thought he may do so especially with him not seeing eye to eye with certain Valiant2001 members in the past.
full report on the Port Vale Rivals site
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Fans are concerned that a possible deal linking members of the Icelandic company that owns Stoke City means that they could buy out Port Vale, sell off Vale Park and move to the Britannia Stadium.
Several local and National sources in the media are running the story that an offer from Stoke City's owners has been received by Port Vale's administrators via a London based solicitor. The news has triggered an angry reaction from both sets of supporters as the deal only seems to be heading in one direction, this being a merger between the two clubs and there is little doubt that it will more likely be Port Vale who are swallowed up by the more dominant Stoke City if it were to take place. Reports the Port Vale rivals website.
It really is hard to see Stoke's owners buying Port Vale and moving them to the Britannia Stadium in a ground share situation while still funding both football clubs between themselves. When the Icelandic Consortium took over Stoke City in late 2000 its main aim was to make money and use Stoke's potential of attracting big crowds to make a profit while still running the Football Club successfully. However since the collapse of the ITV Digital deal the Icelanders plans have gone to pot at the Britannia Stadium and Stoke themselves now find themselves in a sticky financial situation.
With this in mind would a company operating on behalf of the owners of Stoke City really want to buy Port Vale Football Club and attempt to run them on smaller gates than the ones they have at Stoke, and make Port vale successful again in the traditional sense?
In short the answer appears to be no. The whole deal points to a fraction of the Stoke owners wanting to buy Port Vale, sell off Vale Park and the club's assets to readdress the current £2.4 million debt at Vale Park, move Port Vale in as tenants at the Britannia Stadium to split the £500,000 a year rent that Stoke themselves currently pay as part of the agreement with the City Council.
Of course then what? it could only be a matter of time before the Icelandic owners would attempt to merge both Stoke and Vale together as one team, in similar fashion that Robert Maxwell tried to unsuccessfully do in the 1980's with Reading and Oxford United.
There is a rule in football where by the same owners can not own more than a 10% stake in two separate football clubs but judging from the complex state of the Icelandic Stoke Holding company it may well be possible that the move could be achieved by splitting the clubs between a certain number of shareholders making it both legal and plausible.
The bid from Iceland looks to be the highest received yet and beats out other bids from Valiant 2001, Summerbank Management and business duo Steve Ball and Iain McIntosh.
The onevalefan website has a letter that it asks all fans to sign in protest of this buyout.
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Administrators Poppleton & Appleby say they have so far received three bids for Port Vale FC and they expect more could come in before the end of the week when they expect to chose a buyer.
Valiant 2001 is said to be one of the main bidders with a bid believed to be over £800,000, while another to emerge looks to be Tunstall based consultants Summerbank Management.
Port Vale are £2.4 million in debt and said to be losing £500,000 a year.
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Reported ooung of Poppleton and Appleby accountants and Administration is likely to go ahead if the court can agree to the fact that the club will be able to settle and pay off its debts.
If successful the situation could finally rid the club of long time chairman Bill Bell, with Charles Machin (head of potential buy out organization 'Valiant2001') saying he is confident that his group will be able to meet the demands of the administrators.
