Manchester firms give non-league football club a shot at victory
The Manchester offices of Cobbetts LLP and RSM Tenon have helped FC United to victory after developing the pioneering football financing model launched earlier this week by the non-league club.
The new £1.5m community share issue will allow FC United, which was founded five years ago in response to the Glazer takeover of Manchester United, to give supporters and the wider community the chance to invest in its future. The money raised via the community share offer will help to fund the development of a new £3.5m stadium and community space at Ten Acres Lane in Newton Heath.
Both Cobbetts and RSM Tenon have longstanding relationships with FC United. Cobbetts has worked with the club since its inception, and created its constitution and democratic, onemember-one-vote structure, as well as developing its share offer document. RSM Tenon has acted as the club’s auditor for the last four years, and has been working with the management team over the last 18 months to explore its financial options, craft its business plan and develop its new funding structure.
Kevin Jaquiss, partner in public services at Cobbetts LLP, said: “These shares and the way they are offered mark a new departure. Societies such as FC United are not permitted to issue shares as a financial investment in the traditional sense and any return is strictly limited. Shareholders will be buying in to FC United and its plans and agreeing that any financial return will only be accrued after those plans have been achieved.
“This innovation permits FC United to raise £1.5 million to build a stadium through which it will continue to demonstrate the powerful and constructive role that a football club can and should play in its community. This is a classic example of an enterprise which people will fund for reasons that are not primarily financial.”
The club hopes the share issue will raise £1.5m of the total cost of the stadium, with an equal amount coming from grant funding. The club will also raise £500,000 through donations, with £300,000 of that already raised. The stadium will fall under the club’s ‘asset lock’, a legal agreement that prevents the club’s assets being separated from the club and sold off, and ensures continued community use.
