Finance Guru: West Brom clear outstanding debts as documents emerge on Companies House
We’re delighted to welcome football finance expert Dr Daniel Plumley as our exclusive West Brom columnist. Each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at The Hawthorns...
Dan Plumley says there’s nothing for West Brom fans to worry about when a series of documents were uploaded to Companies House last week.
On 21 September, Albion added six “satisfaction of charge” files to the club’s Companies House page, with some of them dating back quite some time.
Plumley admits that when fellow finance expert Kieran Maguire tweets about a club’s activity, it can send pulses racing among supporters.
West Brom fans are already on edge over the club’s financial situation too. However, in this case, Plumley says there’s nothing to be concerned by as it means that debts have simply been cleared now or were cleared some time ago.
“It’s always a one that scares fans to death, especially when Kieran [Maguire] tweets about it and puts it in the public domain,” Plumley told West Brom News.
“But all that means is, essentially, that the debt or the charge has been paid in full.
“This looks like a series of mortgage loans but most of them are quite old. I think some of them go back to 2005.
“There are two things. They’ve potentially been paid off some time ago and it’s just a bit of accounting housekeeping where you’ve finally got around the sorting the paperwork out. Or it could be clearing the decks to borrow from a new source.
“Both of those are quite plausible but it’s nothing to worry about in terms of any damning indication on the finances.
“It’s just a series of outstanding debts being paid off in full but some of them are quite old. The definition I would always go to for a ‘satisfaction of charge’ is that it’s been paid in full and you can see that on Companies House if you really go into the details.”
In other West Brom news, Ron Gourlay has spoken out about rumours of Albion selling The Hawthorns.