Dave King opens up on investment situation at Rangers
The Rangers chairman says he and his boardroom allies have invested almost two-thirds of the £30million he promised before taking control at Ibrox.
King declared that £18million had been invested but he stated that they would probably have to go above the oft-cited £30million figure before they could challenge Celtic for supremacy in Scottish football.
The South Africa-based businessman previously claimed that he would be willing to personally invest £30million and could potentially persuade others to put in a further £20million but those figures now appear to be unlikely.
In a statement giving background on the end of Mark Warburton's reign as manager, King said: ''I personally estimated that we would require an investment of £30 million over that period to achieve our stated objectives..... £18 million of the originally estimated #30 million investment has already been made.
Ultimately, the overall investment in any football team is driven by the net player spend and, given that we are behind target with our squad, there may be a further need to accelerate investment at the end of this season.
It is my present personal view that we will, in all likelihood, invest more than £30million before we are where we want to be but this will be revisited once we have a new permanent management team in place.''
The Glasgow-born director, who lost up to £20million in oldco Rangers, had told the Daily Mail in March 2014: ''My view of what it will take to make Rangers competitive again is bottom end £30million but probably £50million - over the next four years.
From the discussions I have to date I think there are other people who would come with me. But I would say I would probably have to put in #30million of the #50million over the period of time. And I could probably get other people to put in £20million.
Would I be willing to invest £30million despite what happened previously? Of course. Sure.''
However, gaining power from Mike Ashley and the Easdale brothers proved more costly than first imagined.
Having been rebuffed in attempts to invest directly in the club, King and the so-called Three Bears consortium - George Taylor, George Letham and Douglas Park - bought about 28 million shares between them. King is the biggest shareholder with close to 12 million. At about 20p a share, the outlay would have been more than £5million, money which went to investment groups rather than into the club.
King and his allies took control after a shareholder vote in March 2015 and have had to plug ongoing losses since then.
Club accounts in November 2016 revealed that a total of almost £13million had been loaned to the club through interest-free loans from shareholders, most of which is believed to have come from King and the Three Bears.
The Rangers board's attempts to launch an exclusive share issue which would allow shareholders to convert loans into equity have fallen short in a vote at each of the last two annual general meetings.