The former Chief Executive of American Golf has been appointed as Chief Restructuring Officer of London Stadium owners E20. Alan Fort is a restructuring expert who leads businesses in financial distress on an interim basis often in a run up to administration or businesses coming out of administration.
Fort is a man who has based his career on the ability to make tough decisions. He is often appointed by the banks of struggling retailers to ensure their assets are protected. In addition to American Golf, Fort took similar roles at Dreams, Jessops and Clintons.
His LinkedIn profile claims he is: “Proven leader who brings confidence, clarity and pace to change situations especially in distress”
Last Friday the London Mayor announced “A Chief Restructuring Officer has been appointed and is starting to tackle the stadium’s commercial performance with significant savings already having been secured and work underway in a range of other areas”
simple answer is take away the costs of running it by not changing the seating, make it a football only venue. Give it to West Ham to stop the drain on the loss and West Ham have to pay the conversion costs to make it into a proper football venue that can comfortably seat 70k, if you drop the pitch like at the Nou Camp and remove the scaffolding replace it with decent seating at the right angle it is a fantastic FOOTBALL stadium. Can’t see this guy doing anything else to be honest, if he is a hard decision maker what other option is there? We are tenants with a 99 year lease that is so advantageous to us it would be a ridiculous figure for them to buy us out of it and no other sport / concert would cover the costs. It needs to be used constantly and these type of venues simply aren’t. Only thing that I can see different to this is they may expect a nominal fee for it which I believe would be around £50m.
Well if he was the head of golf, he should be able to “drive” this forward, as WJO and most would suggest when looking at the financial case it is obvious what was the biggest mistake and greatest loss to revenue, athletics… although it was the athletics legacy that we agreed to and would be the bitterest pill for the LLDC to swallow. The sooner those funding the costs face upto that and swallow it the sooner this mess will go away, not only is it the conversion costs but the time it takes to convert the stadium is all dead time that could be used to generate more revenue and make the solution profitable.