Previous owners?

[SanDimas1988]

Just curious if anyone could fill me in who owned the club before Jack Walker?  Not even just who he bought it from, any owners before his purchase.  I'm just curious, and can't find anything online.  All the results I search only come up talking about Jack Walker and Venky's.  Even Uncle Jack was long before my time, so I have no idea who came before him, much less earlier.

[philipl]

I am going off memory but the shareholders were quite wide spread.

Jack offered to buy them all out but some continued, happy to be massively diluted by Jack's injection and there continues to be a tiny minority interest to this day including I believe at least one share now owned by the Trust.

Going back, the largest individual shareholder typically became Chairman so they included Bill Fox, Derek Keighley whom I believe was chairman for 19 days before his sudden death and Bill Bancroft.

[SanDimas1988]

Thank you. I didn’t even have any idea it was shareholders. I would have guessed it was just single owners. 

[tomphil]

From what iv'e read in the past and heard from guys like Robert Coar the former biggest shareholders just referred to themselves as custodians of the club on behalf of the town.

[Upside Down]

1 hour ago, tomphil said:

From what iv'e read in the past and heard from guys like Robert Coar the former biggest shareholders just referred to themselves as custodians of the club on behalf of the town.

And that's all they should ever be considered as being.

[tomphil]

9 hours ago, Upside Down said:

And that's all they should ever be considered as being.

To be fair they did keep the lights on when not many of the town bothered showing up back then.

[philipl]

6 minutes ago, tomphil said:

To be fair they did keep the lights on when not many of the town bothered showing up back then.

Yes there was a dismal season where Ewood didn't see one crowd of five figures and attendances of 4,000 weren't unusual.

[lraC]

I remember some of the chairmen, but until Jack Walker came in, I never really even thought about who owned the club.

As a boy, it didn't really matter, I was a just a Blackburn lad, who was in love with my home town club. I guess until I was about 15 I didn't even think about the finances, just the players who put on the famous shirts and did their best week in, week out.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

8 hours ago, tomphil said:

To be fair they did keep the lights on when not many of the town bothered showing up back then.

Too damn right and they deserve a lot of credit as we watched other local Clubs fall into the Div 4 abyss.

[tomphil]

2 minutes ago, SIMON GARNERS 194 said:

Too damn right and they deserve a lot of credit as we watched other local Clubs fall into the Div 4 abyss.

Yep non of them were wealthy enough to stick tens of thousands in every year to buy players and nobody was buying football clubs back then apart from the odd spiv.

I think the sales of Hird then Barker a few years later basically kept the club out of debt whilst the custodians kept the lights on when there was no players to sell.

[Herbie6590]

The oldest accounts at Companies House are from May 1986…those were the days…

[Upside Down]

13 hours ago, tomphil said:

To be fair they did keep the lights on when not many of the town bothered showing up back then.

To be fair, that wasn't a unique problem for this club.

Jack was brought onside to help pay a tax bill and the rest is history.

13 hours ago, philipl said:

Yes there was a dismal season where Ewood didn't see one crowd of five figures and attendances of 4,000 weren't unusual.

This old chestnut again. Attendance figures were low for everyone back then.

Unlike today.

[wilsdenrover]

The following are the past and present shareholders in 1991.

A certain Mr J Walker was busy…

[Penwortham Blue]

23 hours ago, Herbie6590 said:

The oldest accounts at Companies House are from May 1986…those were the days…

Keith Lee was Simon Barker’s Father in law.

[4,000 Holes]

On 11/07/2023 at 22:30, Herbie6590 said:

The oldest accounts at Companies House are from May 1986…those were the days…

I read the news today, oh boy, 4000 shares in Blackburn Rovers...