West Ham owners David Sullivan and David Sullivan haven’t injected any cash into the club for nearly six years.
The pair injected a total of £52.5m between 2011 and 2014 after the Hammers relegation but since then they have not ploughed in further funds into the Hammers. Ten percent American shareholder Tripp Smith injected £9.5m of cash into the club interest free in 2017 which is only payable on the sale of the club but no more share holder funds from him in the last three years.
In 2018 Norwich City came up with a novel way to fund investment to upgrade their training facilities by offering ‘bonds’ of £500 or more to all Canary supporters. The club offered a handsome return of 5% per annum of interest on these bonds plus a further 3% of club credit to spend at the club.
Could West Ham adopt a similar model to invest in infrastructure such as training facilities? The word ‘bond’ is probably unfortunate term considering our history of bonds but crowd funding is probably a more accurate term anyway.
With continuing criticism over the owners taking 4.25% interest on the £45m of outstanding share holder loans this same model could be used to move the interest given out from owners to supporters.
The Norwich City model also has the advantage of allowing supporters with money to spare more engagement with the club through investment while seeing their cash earn interest.
You must be joking, what about all the money that they have siphoned out via interest payments on loans to themselves & that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
So you think it’s better for our club to pay back a loan at 5% to supporters rather than only 4% to gold and sully?
We are meant to be the 18th richest club in the world & have joint chairmen with a combined wealth of £1.6bn but haven’t put any money into the club in six year..
Maybe have a ‘crowd funding’ to raise investment? Now that really would make us a laughing stock.
Makes me think that perhaps they are planning to “abandon ship” sometime soon?
Oh! Dear!
So in laymans terms, are we saying that since 2014 they’ve not made ANY financial contribution to the club, but have been merrily taking the interest on the loans they made to the club??
I guess some people are just thick. They will never understand that sully and gold are doing the club a favour lending to themselves at 4% when they could get far better returns for their money elsewhere.
They were charging over 7% up until fairly recently & only reduced it because of fan pressure. But i guess some people are just thick!