Wilful ignorance

 Wilful ignorance

I know I’m preaching to the choir when it comes to what I am about to write but I ask for your patience as some are either totally unaware of history or wilfully ignorant. Now and then I make the cardinal mistake of debating with followers of Rangers who insist that Celtic ‘died’ in 1994 and are somehow a ‘new club.’ Of course, this is the smokescreen used to assuage the pain and humiliation of the actual liquidation and death of their club in 2012. The idea that a ludicrous stunt by a trashy tabloid newspaper, in which they hired a hearse to park outside Celtic Park and pictured it with the headline ‘RIP Celtic,’ is held up as proof. Sensible people know that Fergus McCann led a takeover which paid Celtic’s debts and saved the club from entering administration.

Let me repeat that; there was no administration at Celtic, nor was the club ever liquidated. These are indisputable facts.

‘But, but’ they say, ‘the company name changed so it must be a new company,’ they bleat. Companies restructure all the time and Fergus McCann restructured Celtic in 1994 in order to meet the serious challenges they faced. In order to alleviate the club's debt, McCann reconstituted the then privately owned ‘Celtic Football & Athletic Company Limited’ into a public limited company – Celtic PLC. This was done in order to finance this restructuring of the stadium and the team, McCann set up a share issue which the fans backed wholeheartedly and it generated £14 million, making it one of the most successful stock market flotations in British financial history.

Let me repeat that; there was no administration at Celtic, nor was the club ever liquidated. These are indisputable facts.

When Celtic FC was founded in November 1887 it was an amateur organisation which, in theory, didn’t pay its players wages. In that sense it was no different to the amateur teams which still play in Sunday leagues to this day. Celtic was a sporting club with members and a committee elected according to some sort of constitution. Such a club has no legal identity in law, it is simply a group of like-minded people coming together to organise football matches and raise money for worthy causes. Today, it would be called a voluntary organisation. In 1897, the club incorporated; that is to say it became a company. It changed its legal status and so obtained a legal identity. The main benefits of incorporating and becoming a ‘Limited Company’ primarily revolve around limited liability, tax benefits, and enhanced credibility. It creates a separate legal entity, protecting the personal assets of members from business debts and lawsuits. 

In becoming a limited company in 1897, the ‘Celtic Football and Athletic Club’ was also responding to the changing nature of Scottish football. Professionalism was introduced in 1893, some 8 years after it had been introduced in England. Scottish players had left for the English game in serious numbers and the SFA had to act by allowing Scottish clubs to pay their players. As football grew in popularity, better and bigger stadiums were required and Celtic’s ambitious board knew that incorporation was the sensible way to fund the stadium and pay the players and staff.

The men who guided Celtic in those early years also knew that if you want to enter into contracts with players, then you need to become incorporated. As stated earlier, an incorporated organisation is a legal entity in its own right. It can enter into contracts, employ staff and lease property. Of course, fans support a football team not a company, but the team is merely something that the company controls; it has no separate identity in law. The players and officials at Celtic are employees of the company. Consider the store in Argyll Street, Glasgow, which used to be Woolworths. After Woolworths was liquidated, the assets were sold off to help meet debts the company owed. The shop that now operates from those premises is not in any sense Woolworth’s. The assets of the defunct Woolworths were bought by other businesses when the company was wound up.

In Scots law there simply is no separate “club” that is operated by a company. They are one and the same thing. If you sue a club, you are suing the company. If you sign for a club, you are signing for the company. The company employs players and officials, pays the wages, sells the merchandise and tickets, and it pays any taxes when liable. Celtic PLC is a Public Limited Company owned by its shareholders. The largest shareholder is currently Dermot Desmond, who owns around 34.7% of the shares. As stated previously, companies can, for a variety of reasons, change their name or form without their unbroken business record being in jeopardy. Celtic were incorporated on April 12^th 1897 and despite takeovers and changing into a PLC, remain the same legal entity as they were on that day 128 years ago.

Let me repeat that; there was no administration at Celtic, nor was the club ever liquidated. These are indisputable facts.

If you want to dispute this then the onus is on you to come up with evidence to support this view which holds more water than a trashy photo-op created by a low-end tabloid in order to sell papers. Where is the administration certificate? Where is the CVA offer? Where is the liquidation certificate? They don’t exist. Why? Because they never happened. The Celtic fans rallied and saved their club. Unlike some.