The Rangers supporters shareholding organisation Club 1872 today confirmed that it has completed it’s first share purchase from Dave King, the former Ibrox Chairman and figurehead.
In a statement released to its members earlier today, as reported by Sky Sports News, it said,
“Club1872 is pleased to announce our first share purchase under the agreement recently announced with Dave King. This first purchase of 1,250,000 shares takes the Club 1872 shareholding to 5.12% – securing a crucial 5% shareholding again.”
“The deal with Dave King represents a hugely important strategic opportunity for Club 1872 over the next three to four years – it is likely to be the only major source of shares available to the organisation after the early part of this calendar year as RIFC moves to the sustainability phase announced by John Bennett at the RIFC AGM.”
Initially, there was some scepticism voiced by a section of Rangers fans toward the deal struck by King and the fan body as they felt that funds should be fed directly into the club. Others welcomed the ‘legacy’ venture as they aim for a 25% shareholding bloc, which is the landmark objective to futureproof the safeguarding of the club.
Flexibility
The statement continued, “We have spoken to Dave King over the festive break and are pleased to confirm that we have agreed with him that all share funding raised in the first six months of 2021, both from legacy and standard donations, can be made available to RIFC if they go ahead with a share issue on the terms that John Bennett announced at the AGM. We have also retained funds from our member contributions from 2020 to put towards any such share issue.”
“If the RIFC share issue goes ahead then Dave King has agreed that he will add six months to our current agreement, meaning we will retain the opportunity to purchase shares from him for 20p for a full calendar year after the RIFC share issue window comes to an end. If the share issue does not go ahead for any reason then the funds can be used by Club 1872 to purchase shares from him as agreed. We thank Dave for his flexibility in this regard and for once again putting the financial wellbeing of Rangers first.”
This is further good news for Rangers fans after the joy of the last few days and the Old Firm win to create a 19 point gap at the top of the table.