Finch Farm just weeks from being taken over by Government
13 Jun 2013 07:00
Company was at risk of being struck off
Liverpool Council leaders clinched the £13m deal to buy Everton FC’s training ground just weeks before it could have ended up being taken over by the Government.
The company that owned Finch Farm was at risk of being struck off and dissolved by the end of next month, the ECHO can reveal.
If that had happened, the Halewood site would have been taken from Finch Farm Ltd and put into Treasury coffers.
Treasury sources said, if that had happened, the Government would then have looked to sell it off.
But a Goodison insider confirmed Everton’s lease would have been secure even if this had taken place.
Concerns about the future of the 55-acre site grew as Finch Farm Ltd, previously known as ROM Capital (Academy) Ltd, failed to file accounts in January this year. They have still not been filed, and its annual return, due on April 27, is also still outstanding.
Three days later, the Registrar of Companies applied to have the company dissolved, so all assets would have gone to the Crown.
So far, no application to keep the company trading has been received.
Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson said it was important that the council helped the club where it could. He said the outlay on the deal, which has been bankrolled by borrowing at low interest rates, would be recouped in rent from the Blues.
Everton is in a long-term lease deal with the council and will have to pay the deal’s value – and more – back to the council in the long term. The ECHO understands they will end up paying double the amount borrowed by the council, but in smaller instalments over a longer period than under the deal with Finch Farm Ltd.
But, while opposition figures have questioned why the council is paying £13m for a site that the club sold to ROM Capital for just £2m, Mayor Anderson explained that the deal would still turn a profit when sold for the council.
He said: “Whatever the deal Everton did for the land, what we’ve got now is a complex that has infrastructure and buildings.
“Whether the value of the land has increased I don’t know, but there’s no way we would have paid anything without it being valued properly. It went past the District Auditor.”
No-one from Finch Farm Ltd could be contacted for comment but one of its directors, entrepreneur Robert David Whitton, was last in the headlines in 2008 when his £3bn property investment fund aAim, which boasted Sir David Frost as its chairman, collapsed into administration.
It ranked among its backers Sir Alex Ferguson and former TV presenter Anthea Turner’s husband Grant Bovey.
Mr Whitton became involved with the company that went on to become Finch Farm Ltd in 2006, and Everton moved in in 2007.
Council Lib Dem opposition leader Cllr Richard Kemp said more detail was needed on how the council had made the decision: “We need to know what the social and economic benefits are.
“If we are to make a profit from it, then we need to see report and there needs to be proper scrutiny of how the council thinks it can make a success of this.”
Club chief executive Robert Elstone has so far publicly said that “we continue to work with the council on many fronts and the club is especially pleased to have delivered an innovative scheme, on our superb Finch Farm facility, that works for both parties.”
An Everton source said: “Finch Farm Ltd was nothing to do with Everton. That’s all in the past now and we’ve reached a situation that works.”
