[Archived] Is It Time To Question The Jack Walker Trust?

[Kamy100]

Rightly Venky’s are getting slaughtered for what they have managed to do to our proud club over the last 12 months, but is time to start to apportion some blame towards the Jack Walker Trust for selling the club to Venky’s?

As we all know the late great Jack Walker in his will put the Trust incharge of the club, and over the years they always seem to work in the past interests of the club and worked so hard to protect Jack’s legacy, along with John Williams and his team they created the most well run football club in the league, despite not having financial resources to compete with the bigger teams, Rovers managed to largely stay clear of relegation trouble.

When the sale process was going on I always said that I “trusted the trust” to ensure that anyone buying the club had the long term interests of Blackburn Rovers at heart, but it seems somewhere they got things horribly wrong and from the outside it looks like they were desperate to sell the club to anyone willing to pay £25 million, first they let in Syed Ali but got lucky as investigative journalists exposed him, but then they decided to sell to Venky’s.

I have a lot of respect for John Williams and the trust but we have to ask some serious questions, why was the club sold to Venky’s? Why weren’t more stringent written conditions put in place as part of the sales contract? Why weren’t conditions put in place in the terms of sale which not only protected Jack’s legacy but also the long term future of the club? The trust can see what is happening at the club at the moment, why are they so quiet?

Jack trusted them to protect his legacy and to ensure that the long term future of the club was secure, their decision to sell to Venky’s have almost certainly destroyed Jack’s legacy and have severely compromised the long term future of the club. The trust let down Jack and let down the people of Blackburn.

[bestierover]

To me this is pointing fingers in the wrong direction.

[Kamy100]

To me this is pointing fingers in the wrong direction.

I am not saying that we should stop pointing the finger at Venky's, they are the ones responsible for the current mess but surely we should ask the trust how/why they sold the club to Venky's?

[Grez]

Kamy - enough conditions of sale were entered into the sale document that the trust could argue a very good legal case on the grounds of breach. The fact is that they have zero interest in taking back the club! They've got their money and they get their £1m for the next 2 years and they are happy... The trust know that the venkys have not delivered on their promises.

[perthblue02]

I'd rather question Jerome Anderson and his friends at the FA and the Premier League

[chris]

I belive Venkys had everyone fooled, so how could the Walkers trust have known?

[jim mk2]

How many people are involved in the Jack Walker Trust and what are their names ?

[Kelbo]

I was always told, by a solicitor friend of mine, in the absence of a written agreement, a verbal one is legally binding.

If Venkys stated, which they have done, that they will follow certain proceedures, management structure etc and then they do exactly the opposite (especially so early on in the game) suggests to me that the trust would have grounds to claw back the club due to Venkys not doing as they promised and was widely reported at the time with comments from Desai.

Even the people who went to Pune came back with more belief so the Rao family are real sweet talkers, but then never do what they say they will do!!

[Mattyblue]

The Walker family didn't care a jot about BRFC, it was simply a loss making asset they wanted shut of, they would have sold to Syed if he had stumped up the cash.

On a personal level they should take a long look at themselves and ask if they have protected Jack's legacy.

[Ricky]

I'm with Kamy on this. I blame Venkys for the state we are in now but also blame the Trust for allowing us to get into this state. The sale document was always available on the web and had a number of conditions written into it, these have clearly not been honoured so whay are the club not taking legal action against Venkys?

[Kelbo]

I'd rather question Jerome Anderson and his friends at the FA and the Premier League

And his friends at the League Management Association, I think its time Anderson was investigated by sources outside football and have asked my local MP the criteria required regarding a public enquiry in respect of Anderson/Venkys handling of Rovers.

[Paul Mellelieu]

We need a inquiry into the whole process and every party needs to exposed for their part.

[jim mk2]

so whay are the club not taking legal action against Venkys?

The club are owned by Venky's so how can they take legal action against themselves ?

Also, haven't the club's longstanding solicitors in the town resigned ? Does the club have any legal representation now ?

[Mike Graham]

some questions must be directed at the Trust. They could not wait to sell and I am sure that the smell of £££££'s helped focuss their minds on getting the deal with Venkys done and dusted. They are laughing all the way to the bank; I wonder how many of them attend games any more?

[Kamy100]

How many people are involved in the Jack Walker Trust and what are their names ?

I'm out and about today so can't get you the names, but basically google "Rosedale Investments Jersey Ltd", that is basically the trust, in addition to these there are the "beneficiaries of the walker settlement" (in other words the Jack's family/extended family).

[47er]

The Walker family didn't care a jot about BRFC, it was simply a loss making asset they wanted shut of, they would have sold to Syed if he had stumped up the cash.

On a personal level they should take a long look at themselves and ask if they have protected Jack's legacy.

True Matty, I've believed this all along. They should be ashamed.

[jehrover]

Absolutely agree that a substantial amount of the blame has to lie with the Trust for the state of the club today. Not just for the decision to flog the club to the first serious buyers that came along, but also for their behaviour in the time they were owners between 2004 and 2010.

When Jack Walker died press statements were released in which the Trust promised to continually invest cash from their other business interests into BRFC, and this wasn't a case of Jack saying 'do it if you want to' but more a case of Jack insisting that money from his business empire found its way into his football club, to enable it to thrive for the forseeable future.

For the first 3 or 4 years after his death the trust appeared to do this, sanctioning transfers like Andy Cole and Corrado Grabbi, both of whom cost in the region of 8 million pounds. This enabled us to win promotion back to the Premier League, finish regularly in the top 10 and win the League Cup.

Unfortunately for us their interpretation of 'forseeable future' was '3 years' and they quickly decided they were not going to follow Jack's wishes and that Jack's profits would not be coming our way. Fairly sure this was in breach of the Trust settlement contract that Jack put in place, although others will know more about this than I do.

The result of this was that the club was left to rot, or at least stagnate for a long period of time. Out went Graeme Souness, the man who had masterminded promotion, cup success and a top 6 finish because he was not allowed to reinvest the proceeds of the Duff/Dunn sales. Mark Hughes inherited a side that had lost its best assets and was struggling and had it not been for his remarkable signings in the transfer market of acquiring the likes of Bellamy, Santa Cruz, McCarthy, Savage, Bentley etc. at knockdown prices and getting them to thrive at the club we probably would have been relegated around 2005. As Mark Hughes had us knocking on the door of the top four for a brief time and regularly reaching cup semi-finals what do the trust do? That's right, rather than doing what any other owner would do and give Hughes just a little bit of cash with which to push the club on, they refuse, allowing Hughes to walk out the door without so much as a fight to keep him. There is no doubt in my mind that if they had handed Hughes say £10 million in 2006 anything could have been possible.

As they continued to flog our best players for a hefty profit without reinvesting any of the proceeds, out went Santa Cruz, Bellamy, Bentley, even Friedel had enough. Very little money was given to Paul Ince to put his own stamp on the squad and the same too to Sam Allardyce, who had the likes of Guti and Van Nistelrooy lined up to come in but would not be supported by the owners.

The Walker Trust had and have lots of money, so nobody is telling me they couldn't afford to support the club. They even allowed the club to gather a £20 million debt which is substantial for a club of our size and would have caused all sorts of problems had we been relegated.

Then we move on to the sale of the club to some Indian chicken farmers. OK, so the Trust couldn't have known (even if they cared) about how things were going to turn out. Yet they had many many meetings with the Indians. Surely it must have dawned on them that nobody in the Venky's organisation had the first idea what they were talking about and that Jerome Anderson had an unhealthy role to play in the whole thing?

No. For me the Trust are fully culpable for the demise of this club. Had it not been for John Williams/Mark Hughes/Sam Allardyce we would have been relegated a long time ago with those anonymous trustees running the show. They have betrayed Jack Walker's legacy.

[jim mk2]

I'm out and about today so can't get you the names, but basically google "Rosedale Investments Jersey Ltd", that is basically the trust, in addition to these there are the "beneficiaries of the walker settlement" (in other words the Jack's family/extended family).

I'm busy too but a list of names would be a good thing if anyone can provide it at some point.

[Kelbo]

The club are owned by Venky's so how can they take legal action against themselves ?

Also, haven't the club's longstanding solicitors in the town resigned ? Does the club have any legal representation now ?

Surely the Trust as previous owners or their agents, would be the ones to take legal action, it was to the Trust that Venkys entered into the agreement and their statements regarding the future of the club with regard to Management and investment would without question, have formed a huge part of the Trusts deliberations in selling to Venkys>

[Stuart]

The Walkers' conscience should be weighing heavily on them. They have ###### on Jack Walker's club in spite of the fact that their money is Jack's money.

In some ways the Walker family remind me of the Raos. The crucial difference is that the Walkers (or the Trust at least) put the right people in charge who knew about football. When they left they turned their backs completely and, assuming there is legal recourse, appear happy to watch the club suffer. Jack's statue should be re-sited. He deserves better than to have to stand by and watch what's happening.

I'm reminded though of Dave Whelan's comments about not wanting to saddle his family with Wigan once the tome comes, and think maybe even if Jack had been alive we would have been sold at some point. The difference being that Jack would not have sat back and watched what is happening now.

The worst part of this whole sorry situation is that 18 months or so ago, we were consoling ourselves, during a period of lack of investment, that eventually the PL bubble would burst and that we would be in a strong position to rise out of the flames - so well run were we.

It's therefore ironic that we should be become one of the first of the bubbles to burst.

Ironic and devastating.

[Mike Graham]

who would take action against who????

The Trust have their money so have no interest in revisiting a venture that they are no longer involved or interested in...so who would they sue and why.

The Venkys have no need to take action against anyone.

[Ricky]

Apologies Jim, I meant the trust not the club.

[jim mk2]

We need a inquiry into the whole process and every party needs to exposed for their part.

I agree but who would hold this inquiry ? Not the Premier League who have waved through far more dodgy takeovers than Rovers, not the Trust and certainly not Venky's.

An investigative journalist might come up with some answers but it would require months of digging and trying to get people to talk, which would probably prove very difficult. Plus you have to remember it's only little BRFC, and I doubt if a national paper could be bothered to chase the story.

[jehrover]

How many people are involved in the Jack Walker Trust and what are their names ?

The only one who ever spoke to the press was Paul Egerton-Vernon, who I believe was Jack Walker's solicitor. I think in 10 years he spoke a maximum of 5 times to supporters. No idea who any of the others are. None of them ever got involved. I read somewhere there were 5 trustees.

[Stuart]

PB, The (hypothetical?) premise of the thread is that Venkys may be in breach of the contract they entered into with The Trust.