"If you want to make a small fortune, start off with a large one and buy a football club"!
Examples: Steve Morgan - Wolves, WBA - Jeremy Peace, Villa - Randy Lerner, Bolton - Eddie Davies the list goes on.
Rolly the Douche - CAFC - Net worth half a billion Euros that's £423,000,000. He has spent the best part of £40,000,000, let us call that 10% of his net worth!
Relegation and future loss of revenues are facts that even the delusional "happy clappy crisis ridden management structure" at CAFC can't hide from the Bean Counters at year end.
This WILL get factored into next years business plan for CAFC, when in financial strife like CAFC is, there are two pretty common business options available:
Solution 1) Cut costs, tailor your cloth: Reduce staff costs, Sell off assets and attempt to survive on the new budget, (which one would argue will be a third or less of the old one).
Playing Staff - Long Term Contracts, Sa, Ba, Kashi, Baurer, Cellabos, Berdych, Johnson, JBG, Tex, Cousins, Lennon, TDH, Lookman, Igor (to name a few), to get rid of these assets, CAFC will have to settle up their contracts and move them on, if lucky "willingly" to another club and without CAFC subsidising the move, the problem here are best explained in two names: Polish Pete and George Tucadean. This will cost Rolly a lot of HIS money!
Sell off assets - Difficult to sell of a partially completed Academy, Sparrow Lane and the Ground both would be difficult sales, certainly no short term remedy, if a remedy at all.
Play the Academy kids and cross his fingers - The scenario we all fear!
Solution 2) Trade out of trouble - Unload what you don't need and invest in what you do need, to get out of trouble quickly.
Is he likely to want to chuck another pile of his wealth at CAFC? Subsidising the club still further? Spending more money to move players on and bringing in players to get promotion?
My Conclusions:
Lets go back to Rolly wealth pot, its currently £432M minus £40M. In this Solution 2 his investment could easily reach £75M plus by this time next year, we are now into 17/18% of his net worth (Ouch Rolly! is it hurting yet?). I really cant see that happening.
He will "Play the kids"
He will refuse to accept failure
He will fail in moving on expensive players
He will continue to mismanage the club using new "fresh faces" (Bye Kalamity)
He will attempt a "charm offensive"
This will still cost him money a lot of money!
Christmas, hovering around bottom of League 1.
Quality players are gone and replaced with kids or second/third division European cheap dross.
Panic in the January window, another dip into the Rolly wallet? At this point he may well remember just how much, Poyet, Williamson, Relegation Roger, Fanni, Sanogo and Motta cost him!
Whatever the "solution" the drain on his cash pot is inevitable will become unacceptable, he will be forced to sell for a faction of the investment made.
OR
He actually has some commercial acumen around him?
If he has plans will start in the summer and he will "cut his losses" and we have our Charlton back!
Please God with an owner that understands football in this country, rather than a delusional Twat from Belgium!
Keep the sofa as a memento to the idiots or give it to Richard Murray!
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Comments
While thinking about this, I came across this interview (there's a proper English translation at the bottom. It's quite interesting.)
ec.europa.eu/employment_social/2010againstpoverty/export/sites/default/downloads/Journalist_Award/JA_BE.pdf
Not least because his first business went bust. So he does do failure!
Anyway, the article says he owns half of Melexis with two business partners. So, let's say a quarter of it is his (probably much more). There are 40mn odd shares in Melexis. So let's take a guess and say he's beneficial owner of 10mn of them. For the last financial year Melexis paid a dividend of Euro 1.9 per share. So there you have it, his dividends could be paying for his Charlton adventures without him having to bother with dipping into his capital at all.
BTW I also bumped into a Melexis pdf here's an extract:
{...} Proposed resolution: The meeting decides to proceed to the reappointment of the following directors for a
term of four years starting today and ending immediately after the ordinary general meeting of shareholders
of 2018:
a. Mr. Roland Duchâtelet, residing at Eduard Van Steenbergenlaan 52, 2100 Antwerp; {...}
I thought someone tracked down his home and it was in Sint-Truiden?
I've read lots about Douche bag being tight (gaffer tape shoe) and this interview would suggest the same, I just hope it's true and he has an real aversion to loosing his money.
I concede we aren't privy to all his wealth but CAFC and British Football may well have introduced him to a "money pit" beyond his experience and expectation, least ways I hope it is and he cottons on and runs away quickly!
Don't sponsor, don't book hospitality and don't buy a season ticket. Increase his expenses through the protests.
http://derijkstebelgen.be/vermogende/familie-roland-duchatelet/
I can only guess why an adress in Antwerp was mentioned, however it's the country's economical centre. St-Truiden is ... euhm ... kinda rural (well known for fruit etc ... ).
Vivant VZW
COMPANY PROFILE
Company Vivant VZW (English = NGO)
Trade Name ROLAND DUCHATELET
Address Eduard Van Steenbergenlaan 52
City Antwerpen (Deurne ) - 2100
Country BELGIUM
Location TypeHeadquarter
DUNS® Number37-------
Also found it listed as home of M. Hofte, with phone number.
He still seems to be a "Tight old git" even if he is worth more and I bet he hated being "the only one of Belgium's top richest people to have lost money last".
I cant see quite how he can actually make himself or CAFC go bust over this. , normally going bust need someone like the nice UK tax man to be chasing you for debts.
Its all his own money, he actually owes himself and is actively paying himself 3% interest on his own money. Now how
weird"unique is that?New York Addict had him banged to rights in his assessment of the CAFC accounts its worth a 10 minute read.
newyorkaddick.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/flawed-execution.html?m=1#comments
And his politics are straight out of Animal Farm, Rolly the Porkster?
independent.co.uk/sport/football/fa-league-cups/belgian-tycoon-roland-duch-telet-completes-20m-charlton-athletic-takeover-9038120.html
If you looked my company up all you'd see publicly about me is an accountancy firm in Old Street, if I remember correctly. Similarly, I think Katrien has her registered address as The Valley. I presume this is possible in Belgium?
I'll see if I can get any further info regarding Vivant or Melexis, I've still got access to a service that does financials & credit reports.
I honestly don't think the money thing is a major issue in his world. He isn't going to go bust over Charlton - we're not big enough a club for that to ever happen.
OK, so his wealth might reduce by 5-10% after this is all said and done. Big deal. He is 70 odd years of age with half a billion in the bank.
His motivation is his own EGO. He wants to do things his way, and be seen as some sort of innovator in a world where money tends to buy success in the modern game.
A few thousand people not renewing season tickets for 150-450 quid a pop each aren't really going to be something that keeps him up at night. What keeps this guy up at night are things that hurt his image - as we saw in the aftermath of the Boro game.
His view of the history of football is that it is something that was bequeathed to workers by industrialists just 100 years ago. It is a view that flies in the face of reality. The Chinese were playing a version of football 2200 years ago. The Japanese invented their Kemari ball skills game 1700 years ago. The ancient Greeks and Romans had games that involved kicking balls about. Indigenous peoples around the world from the Inuit to Australian Aborigines have all invented games that involved kicking whatever local materials that could be used as footballs. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that football-like ball games have evolved organically the world over. Not because of the deeds of the bosses, but because it's a fun thing to do.
Here in England the modern game developed from ball games played over a thousand years ago. In Italy Calcio Fiorentino dates back four hundred years. Duchatelet's own country, Belgium, was the first in mainland Europe to adopt the Association rules that had been developed in England. It wasn't as Duchatelet suggests that 'industrialists were looking for something to keep their workers busy', it was a craze that swept through the school system.
It's easy to see how Duchatelet's elitist, and erroneous, view of the games origins fits in with his imperious manner of managing clubs. It is also striking just how at odds it is with the origins of our own club: Young lads in the local neighbourhood grouping together and organising things for themselves. Of course, this won't matter to Roly, because the last thing he has any interest in is history. But to me it is just one more sign that he bought the wrong club.
Surely he didn't answer the question there.
His vision of football is to take away the clubs natural heart and soul...and piss alot of people off in the process, just because he can.
I think RD has a genuine natural mental condition that perhaps lacks empathy and a form of understanding to step into someone elses celotape strapped shoes. Doesn't make him an evil person...but that os statement is all the evidence you need.
Professionalism is extremely low on his list of priorities. Maybe that's because he already has outstanding wealth there's no motivation required to differentiate between what he says and what he thinks.
Money is a big part of his ego driven experiment
What is better for his experiment 10k of season tickets average £275 or 2k of season tickets average £275 which is £2.2m diff
Will his ego prefer 15,000 in the ground or 6,000 punters in the ground
Starving him of dough is what will make his experiment unviable imo
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