What They Don’t Want You to Know About Rangers’ Accounts

With accounts released recently,
the numbers have finally been published in black and white, after much feverish
anticipation that the release of these figures would finally explain, reveal
and explore Rangers’ full fiscal standing in the world today along with
aforementioned salaries.

The big ‘scandal’ is the amount
our executives get – that is Craig Mather, CEO, and Finance Director Brian
Stockbridge. In recent months it has emerged that Mather receives £300,000 at a
salary of around £30,000 per month. Stockbridge has supposedly earned, in 13
months, £410,000.

This has attracted ridicule and
feverish outrage from Rangers fans aghast that our two head men receive such
salubrious income. However, there are aspects which put both these numbers into
some sort of context.

Fans outraged to hear Mather
receives £300,000 may be curious to know his counterpart at Celtic Park,
Peter Lawwell, receives around £700,000. Before anyone makes the argument that
the two clubs cannot currently be compared financially, I am afraid they can.
Despite Rangers’ incoming revenue going significantly down, the club’s size and
stature has not, nor has its outgoing costs (enough).

Any Rangers fan disagreeing with
this therefore by logical conclusion considers Rangers a smaller club than
Celtic. If the clubs cannot be
compared financially in terms of outgoing costs, it is presumably because
Rangers are smaller in stature. And as we know, that is not the case.

Consequently the fact the CEO of
Rangers makes less than half the CEO of Celtic’s clearly shows cost-cutting has
taken place and his wage is far less than either Lawwell’s or indeed Rangers’
predecessor Martin Bain’s.

Bain earned around £700,000 as
well. It is a myth to suggest Craig Mather is being overpaid.

Saying it himself:

            “Through the history
of Rangers, I would be the lowest-paid CEO for a long time”

Moving onto Stockbridge, he has
received £209,000 so far in 13 months, his basic salary being £180,000. His
counterpart, Eric J Riley, at Celtic
Park, receives £140,000.
The difference of course is the bonus stated in the accounts with Stockbridge allocated
£200,000 while Riley’s is only £27,000.

However, Craig Mather stated on
1st October that this bonus was waived:

            “If you look at
my pay, there was talk about £500,000 but the actual amount I agreed to in the
end was £300,000. Brian Stockbridge was on £200,000 plus a contractual bonus. Again, quite openly he’s agreed to waive
that contractual bonus of his own accord.”

Then we have the non-executives.
So far we’ve established outgoing salaries of the executive directors to be
wages of around £500,000 if Stockbridge waived the bonus (700k if he did not
and Mather is lying). So how much are the non-executives getting? Well, the
answer is 0. Yes folks, did you not know non-executive directors only get their
costs/expenses paid? Walter Smith got £50,000 in 13 months, while Ian Hart,
Phil Cartmell and Bryan Smart all got under £30,000. Again, in expenses. None
of the departed or existing non-execs receive any salary at all. Only their
costs.

So, a grand total, in wages,
still of £500,000 in an entire 13 months. Rangers’ entire outgoing board wage
is around the same as Celtic’s sole CEO receives.

If you add the expenses it is a
‘vile’ sum of £640,000. A year. So the entire board, who are to be ‘sacked’ by
the way, earn, ‘allegedly’, altogether, less than Lee McCulloch alone. They, in
total, earn less than Ally McCoist did alone before his self-imposed wage cut.

When you actually scrutinise
these sums and ignore the press hysteria along with fan-outrage, the only
number that confuses is the £200k bonus for Stockbridge stated in the accounts
but publicly addressed by Mather as being unissued. Presumably audited accounts include contractual obligations, even if they were not fulfilled, given the paperwork (including contracts) is what auditors examine, not individuals’ actual bank accounts.

Because, and here is the killer
point: Ally McCoist took his wage cut because he is employed by the club, otherwise known as the ‘sporting’
side of the business which is formally called “The Rangers Football Club
Ltd” (this also ’employs’ the Easdale brothers – non-exec).

Stockbridge and Mather (and Hart
and Smart) and are on the board of the company
called “Rangers International Football Club PLC”. That is the parent
company of RFC Ltd.

This is not to detail whether
these director fellows are any good or bad at their jobs – that is a debate for
another day. It is just pointing out they work for a PLC company which has a
board of directors. They are not employed by the sporting side of the company
and do not require to take paycuts to keep the club afloat. Horrible as it is
to say, their loyalty is not with the club, nor the company particularly as it happens
– the company is just their employer and they expect the going rate for the
position they hold. CEOs and Finance Directors are not cheap.

Even then, they still do not
receive as much as their counterparts at Parkhead.

So any paycut is on the onus of
those loyal to the club. If the current
players had the same inclination and loyalty to the club Ally McCoist does, they too would take wage cuts to help its
costs. Not even universally 50% like he, but enough to help. There are other
ways the club (and company) is losing cash (we know it is
bleeding millions through lost income) but to employ a CEO and Finance Director
and expect them to take considerably less than they would receive elsewhere –
chances are they would quit (or simply not accept the job in the first place) and
the company would have to find someone else. And no CEO or FD would accept the
kind of salary we would like them to. This is the real world. However the
players could accept aforementioned reduction like their manager has.

The board, as mentioned, work for
the company. And that is a separate
entity.

Because here is the ultimate
catch 22:

Anyone yelling ‘sack the board’
and demanding they show loyalty to Rangers FC  with gestures like paycuts (or outright
departure) – it is a contradiction because us Rangers fans (and most reasonable
football fans) consider the company to
be quite separate from the club. The
old company was liquidated as well
we know, but the club lived on.

Consequently if you are
considering the board as part of the
club then it forces that you
consider the company employing them equally entwined. But that company is
only 18 months old.

What I am saying is fans cannot
have their cake here. To consider the board part of the club contradicts the very fact Rangers fans do not consider their
club just over a year old.

Do they really also believe
Rangers could employ a new CEO at less than £300,000 to ‘save costs’ who would
also be effective enough at his job to stop the company bleeding money too?
Where is this incredibly good (well he just ‘magicked’ millions out of thin air
after all) and economically viable (apparently he is willing to work that magic
for about £50,000) alternative? Do they really believe the likes of Paul
Murray, Scott Murdoch, Frank Blin or Alex Wilson would achieve all this (get
paid so much less and stem the financial losses while at it) in exactly the
same circumstances the existing board suffer?

There is also the rather amusing further catch 22 that many fans forget; if they got their wish and the ‘board got sacked’, contractually the company would have to pay them off. It is called severance pay, and Charles Green was paid it – something supporters outraged about. Yet they want the rest to follow suit – overlooking that little problem that firing these directors will bleed the club/company yet more money in the process. So, to save the club cash, it will cost hundreds of thousands. Anyone else see the flaw here?

Many supporters also remain
oblivious to the cash these existing directors (exec and non-exec) pump into
the club out their own pockets, sums I will not go into. But they are far from
freeloaders.

I am the first to confess I am
not a financial manager, and stocks, shares, trade and NASDAQ are all double
Dutch to me.

But I can do my sums and compare
similar situations and it is abundantly clear that whether or not they are good
at their positions, none of Rangers’ PLC directors are overpaid. In fact it is
quite plausible they are underpaid given
how much Bain, Green, and Lawwell got/get. Green, by the way, only received
around £200,000 more than Lawwell does. Unlike Lawwell to Celtic, Green brought
investment into Rangers, and managed
to form a new company which controls the sporting side, something Rangers fans
were desperate to see happen, especially once the CVA was rejected. So did he
not possibly ‘earn’ a little profit? I personally do not begrudge the man, and
still consider he was harshly treated by the fans.

It is very easy to spin stats,
but far less to spin genuine numbers.

Admittedly depending what the
press headline and first paragraphs say I suppose.