ONE WEDNESDAY - HOW THE FANS CAN SAVE OUR OWLS

STATEMENT FROM WTID

Wednesday ‘til I Die (WTID) has secured the backing of all Sheffield Wednesday supporters’ groups and joined together with successful Sheffield business people to launch a bid to take over the ownership and running of the club.

Since May this year WTID has been working on a community investment scheme to facilitate investment into the club by supporters. We are now close to launching the scheme, which will allow investment of between £100 and £20,000 per person.

Whilst this is a significant milestone, pooling these relatively small individual investments is unlikely to raise the money to mount a successful bid in the time available. Encouraged by the Co-op bank’s support for our business plan, we have been speaking to local business people and high net worth individuals (HNWI) about investing in the club in partnership with WTID.

We are pleased to announce that we have teamed up with a respected member of the Sheffield business community, Garry Scotting, owner of the Sheffield car retailer Gilder Group and season ticket holder. He shares the vision of WTID, is prepared to invest alongside us and also work to bring other HNWI Wednesday supporters on board to submit a joint bid. This has given rise to three defined groups of owls fans coming together under the One Wednesday banner:

1. regular fans investing between £100 and £20,000 through the WTID scheme.
2. a small group of high net worth individuals (HNWI) each with half a million pounds or more to invest – ‘Patrons’
3. a hopefully larger group consisting of people with £100k to invest – ‘100 Club’

Each half million pounds invested, by any of the three groups, secures one place on the SWFC board.

• Fans investing smaller sums will select one board member per half million invested via WTID.
• Patrons automatically get a board seat, by virtue of having invested at least £0.5m.
• Members of the 100 Club will select one board member for each half million invested, i.e. one board seat per five members.

This will result in a relatively large, diverse and vibrant board, consisting of fan group representatives, local business people and HNWIs – all Wednesday fans and all determined to run the club with renewed energy and professionalism.

So far in total 12 people have agreed to invest, including two patrons, giving an initial investment pool of £2.0m. The other patron investor prefers to remain anonymous, but we can state that he is not someone who has had previous involvement in the club, other than being a supporter. Over the coming days the One Wednesday campaign will attempt to attract other Patrons and members to the 100 Club. Although WTID is not in a position to launch the community investment scheme immediately, we will be asking fans to make pledges to demonstrate how much could be raised from the WTID scheme when it does officially launch.

Due to the winding-up petition hearing at the High Court scheduled for 1st December, theOne Wednesday bid will need to be submitted by Friday 26th November. The WTID component of the bid will be in the form of a pledged sum, with a commitment to translate this into hard cash over the following weeks.

There is of course no guarantee that we will succeed in attracting the required investment funds in time to save the club from being placed in administration, though it is our intention to do everything in our power to try. Also, if other acceptable bids materialise WTID would not wish to stand in their way. Should One Wednesday not be successful in putting together a bid in time, no other acceptable bid is tabled and the worst happens and we are placed into administration, we believe that the One Wednesday fans’ consortium would be well positioned to bid to buy the club out of administration.

It is vital that just as local business people step up to the plate that the fans do the same