Latest news with #financial crisis
New York Times
2 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
Morecambe facing National League expulsion amid financial woes
Morecambe face expulsion from English football's league pyramid after the fifth-tier National League suspended the Lancashire-based club with immediate effect because of their dire financial position. In a short statement, the league said its Compliance and Licensing Committee had met on Monday afternoon to debate Morecambe's ability to start the season. Advertisement The club have been in football's Emergency Room for years but the crisis has deepened in recent weeks after a protracted takeover by London-based sports investment company Panjab Warriors stalled and a new potential buyer emerged. With Morecambe already under a transfer embargo, the National League announced on Friday that it was effectively giving current owner Bond Group Investments until noon to sell the club. But that deadline came and went, giving the league no option but to suspend the club until August 20, which means their first three fixtures of the new season — away at Boston United, home to Brackley Town and away at Scunthorpe — are postponed. Whether they will ever be rescheduled is now up to Bond Group Investments owner Jason Whittingham. 'The club will also remain under embargo ahead of the new season,' the National League statement added. 'Morecambe will also be removed from the National League Cup for the forthcoming season. 'The committee will meet again on Wednesday, August 20, to determine if outstanding items have been satisfied, and to decide the club's ability to retain membership in the competition.' That last sentence is particularly ominous as it is the same threat Bury FC received from the English Football League (EFL) when they were prevented from starting the 2019-20 season in League One. They were expelled from the EFL on August 27, 2019, becoming their first team to suffer that fate since Maidstone Town in 1992. Bury went into administration a year later, with some fans forming a phoenix club. However, the original club was revived in 2023, after a merger with the new team, and they are now back in the seventh tier of English football. The fate of Macclesfield Town is another worrying precedent for Morecambe fans, as the Cheshire-based club were relegated from League Two in 2020 in the same state of financial disarray as Morecambe have been in but were not allowed to start the National League season and soon collapsed. A local businessman bought the assets later that year and restarted the club as Macclesfield FC in the ninth tier in 2021. They have now climbed back to the sixth tier. Advertisement Morecambe fans will be hoping they can still avoid having to take this journey but the prospects do not look good. Bond Group Investments bought the club in 2018 but has been missing payments to players and the taxman ever since 2023, which was a year after their rugby union club Worcester Warriors went bankrupt. Whittingham has repeatedly said that he wants to sell the loss-making club but spent almost a year trying to sell it to a Birmingham-based businessman called Sarbjot Johal, before moving on to Panjab Warriors. Unlike Johal, they were approved by the EFL in June and have been funding the club via loans for most of this year. But, having missed several deadlines to complete the takeover, Whittingham reneged on the deal. Panjab immediately announced it was taking legal action against him and both sides appear to be dug in for a long fight. In the meantime, Whittingham announced that he was in talks with a new group led by a British businessman called Jonny Cato. The Athletic has attempted to find out more details about this individual with no success. However, it now seems that even Cato has got cold feet, as Whittingham issued a statement via the club to say that he cannot get in contact with Panjab Warriors and adverse publicity has scared Cato's group off. The club's supporters and local politicians have no doubt as to who is to blame, though, with Whittingham being public enemy number one. The Athletic has asked him for comment on a number of occasions but without reply.
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Vatican reports good profit on investments and real estate as the pope tackles a financial crisis
VATICAN CITY — The office that manages Vatican investments and real estate on Tuesday reported a profit of 62 million euros (around $63 million) in 2024, up 16 million euros from 2023. It's one of the best results in years and a bit of good news as Pope Leo XIV begins to tackle the Holy See's longstanding financial crisis. In its 2024 report, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or APSA, said it had directed 46 million euros of the profit to fund the Holy See's operating costs. Some 10.5 million euros in profit came from good returns on investments, while its real estate profits equaled its 2023 results, the report said. The Vatican has been running a 50 million to 60 million euro structural deficit for years and is facing a 1 billion euro pension fund shortfall , a critical scenario that represents one of the greatest challenges facing Leo at the start of his pontificate. The Chicago-born math major, though, is said to have a head for numbers and his agenda in his first weeks in office has been filled with meetings of the Vatican's various financial entities. The Vatican has 4,234 real estate properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 11% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2024, these properties only generated 35 million euros in profit, essentially equaling the profit of 2023. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue, but APSA has little money to invest in renovations necessary to justify higher, market rents. The report blamed the flat results on higher costs maintaining the properties, with 3.8 million euros spent in 2024 on maintenance alone. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Associated Press
2 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Vatican reports good profit on investments and real estate as the pope tackles a financial crisis
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The office that manages Vatican investments and real estate on Tuesday reported a profit of 62 million euros (around $63 million) in 2024, up 16 million euros from 2023. It's one of the best results in years and a bit of good news as Pope Leo XIV begins to tackle the Holy See's longstanding financial crisis. In its 2024 report, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, or APSA, said it had directed 46 million euros of the profit to fund the Holy See's operating costs. Some 10.5 million euros in profit came from good returns on investments, while its real estate profits equaled its 2023 results, the report said. The Vatican has been running a 50 million to 60 million euro structural deficit for years and is facing a 1 billion euro pension fund shortfall, a critical scenario that represents one of the greatest challenges facing Leo at the start of his pontificate. The Chicago-born math major, though, is said to have a head for numbers and his agenda in his first weeks in office has been filled with meetings of the Vatican's various financial entities. The Vatican has 4,234 real estate properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value. Some 70% generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 11% are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2024, these properties only generated 35 million euros in profit, essentially equaling the profit of 2023. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue, but APSA has little money to invest in renovations necessary to justify higher, market rents. The report blamed the flat results on higher costs maintaining the properties, with 3.8 million euros spent in 2024 on maintenance alone. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
UK could save £5bn if Bailey changes course on debt sales
Taxpayers would save up to £5bn next year if Andrew Bailey overhauls the Bank of England's controversial programme of bond sales, analysts have calculated. Deutsche Bank has said Rachel Reeves would be spared from transferring billions of pounds to Threadneedle Street if it stopped selling long-term debt amid a dramatic drop in bond prices. The Bank is currently unwinding the stockpile of gilts it amassed during the financial crisis and lockdown, when it created almost £900bn to boost the economy. When interest rates were at record lows of 0.1pc during the pandemic, the Bank earned far more on its returns from government bonds than it had to pay in interest to commercial banks. However, this reversed dramatically once interest rates started to rise. The Bank is now also actively selling gilts back to the market as part of so-called quantitative tightening (QT), crystallising billions of pounds of losses for the taxpayer.
BBC News
7 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
What next after City rate-rigging convictions quashed?
After a decade-long legal battle, two former City traders who were at the centre of one of the biggest scandals of the financial crisis have had their rate-rigging convictions Hayes and Carlo Palombo were jailed following trials for manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks, known as Tuesday, their convictions were overturned in a ruling that raises many questions. Could Hayes and Palombo claim compensation? In the UK, defendants who have had their convictions overturned due to a miscarriage of justice can potentially claim compensation. But it is not key factor determining eligibility is whether the overturned conviction was deemed "unsafe" and whether a new or newly discovered fact proves innocence "beyond reasonable doubt".If those conditions are met, compensation may be awarded by the Ministry of Justice, but even then, deductions for living expenses during imprisonment may Hayes told BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "It would be great to get some compensation, but I won't get any from the British government. I've made peace with that."There could be another way. After a US court threw out their rate-rigging convictions three and a half years ago, defendants including former Deutsche Bank trader, Matt Connolly, and his British former colleague, Gavin Black, sued their former employer for malicious prosecution, later agreeing confidential settlements. Could other convicted traders appeal? Seven other traders, who were sentenced to jail for rigging interest rates, are expected to do Hayes' conviction in 2015, all the brokers he was alleged to have conspired with to manipulate interest rates were acquitted in a separate in 2016, three former Barclays traders – Jay Merchant, Jonathan Mathew and Alex Pabon – were convicted of manipulating Libor. Together with Peter Johnson, who had pleaded guilty before the trial, they were given prison sentences in July 2016 ranging from two years and nine months to six serving out their time and emerging from jail, they are now taking advice from lawyers and are likely to apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer their cases back to the Court of the Supreme Court has now ruled in Hayes and Palombo's favour, that is likely to be a straightforward process compared to the seven-year struggle of Hayes to convince the CCRC to refer his case. Other questions to be answered Mr Hayes has said he wants to see "a public inquiry into how what happened to us happened"."How was the Court of Appeal continually able to frustrate attempts to get this matter heard by the Supreme Court?" he Palombo said he "100%" believed he was the scapegoat for the anti-bank backlash following the 2008 financial crash. He questioned why he, as a junior trader at Barclays, was singled politicians including David Davis, John McDonnell and Lord Tyrie, who conducted a short parliamentary inquiry into Libor manipulation in 2012, have said there should be a public have argued in particular for a probe of the interest rate manipulation ordered by banks' senior managers, under pressure from central banks and governments including the Bank of England, as exposed the BBC Radio 4 series The Lowball are also questions about how the Serious Fraud Office also took most of its evidence from external lawyers hired by Barclays, UBS or Deutsche Bank to investigate of the reasons Connolly and Black brought the cases is that a judge in the US ruled that US prosecutors at the Department of Justice had "outsourced" their investigation to the target of the investigation – Deutsche Bank. Allowing banks to investigate themselves by employing external law, firms who then handed over evidence to the US Department of Justice, put employers in a "uniquely coercive position" towards employees, ruled judge Colleen McMahon.
