West Ham shareholders David Gold and David Sullivan have cut the amount of interest they charge on shareholder loans from an average of 6-7% to 4%. There is an outstanding balance of £45m of shareholder loans which date back to 2011.
A senior source told Claret and Hugh “At the new rate of 4%, the shareholders charge the lowest amount they thought HMRC would accept as a commercial rate. They felt, due to drop in base rate that 4% was acceptable. The third party overdraft loan is a much higher rate of 6.5% plus a 0.5% annual facility fee.”
The shareholder loans of £45m plus interest are due to be paid back in January 2020 while the £50m credit facility from Media rights and Funding is due to be paid back at the end of this season. West Ham have drawn down £25m of the credit facility so far attracting the 6.5% interest from the time it was received while 0.5% is charged on the full £50m available to them.
Sure I’ve read somewhere that Ashley charges 0% on his loan(s) to the barcodes.
Its just more PR bull💩 Mary ! There full of it !! They should fek off to Millwall as nobody likes em lol ! 😎
That is correct Newcastle, Everton, Chelsea, Stoke and Bournemouth shareholder loans are all interest-free
So the statement from the ‘senior source’ re. HMRC is incorrect, as there is no minimum/maximum percentage payable?
If so, I wonder why 2 multi-millionaires who profess to be hammers supporters would choose to charge ANY interest, especially with the club still being in the same level of debt as when they took charge (albeit the debt is now owed to them and not to the banks)?
So if our owners are charging ‘the minimum’ HMRC would regard as ‘commercial’ what are the owners of these other clubs are doing what exactly? Avoiding tax? If so it’s funny HMRC haven’t caught up with Abramovich Coates & Ashley by now. Perhaps it is just that our owners have higher moral standards & don’t want to be compared to Amazon, Google etc? We all remember DS being interviewed by Gary Neville & explaining that Bilic had a 3 year contract & that made it a moral commitment to give him three years. Even though that decision has now left the club more likely to go down than stay up. And even though he was eventually sacked anyway. Still, who are we to try to understand the mysterious ways of these people? Only the mugs who have been supporting our team for decades.