Levy / ENIC

  • The Fighting Cock is a forum for fans of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Here you can discuss Spurs latest matches, our squad, tactics and any transfer news surrounding the club. Registration gives you access to all our forums (including 'Off Topic' discussion) and removes most of the adverts (you can remove them all via an account upgrade). You're here now, you might as well...

    Get involved!

Latest Spurs videos from Sky Sports

Yeah, I don't have a great understanding of how this works, but it was reported in numerous places that, once the stadium was fully up and running, the finance would be restructured to more favourable terms for the club.

Good news to hear that it's been sorted.

Also nice to know that nearly 40% of the development has already been paid for

What is the development in its entirety? Stadium, hotel, I believe there was also talk of affordable housing?

Anyone know the breakdown in cost between each part of the development?
 
What is the development in its entirety? Stadium, hotel, I believe there was also talk of affordable housing?

Anyone know the breakdown in cost between each part of the development?
Are the surrounding items (housing / hotel) Tottenham assets or Enic assets, I always thought the latter and will not contribute to paying off the debt or Tottenham revenue. Nice earner for Enic and it may mean they are more likely to spend but not directly on the balance sheet.
 
Last edited:
What is the development in its entirety? Stadium, hotel, I believe there was also talk of affordable housing?

Anyone know the breakdown in cost between each part of the development?

There's the stadium site which includes the shop, health care centre (yet to be built, NHS want to ensure they have the cash to fit it out), potential hotel, Tottenham Experience, 3 blocks of flays (circa 685 planned)….and then there is a wider Tottenham regeneration area where Spurs have some involvement.

Phase 3 (hotel, flats with 40% affordable housing etc) have outline planning permission, so detailed planning needs to happen and get permission. No public start dates to these.

Wider Tottenham Regeneration
- The Brook House development was completed several years ago, 100% affordable housing and where many of the original Love Lane residents now are (plus others), development included a primary school and some other stuff like some commercial premises etc.
- 500 White Hart Lane - JV with Fairview homes. Houses currently being built, Fairview starting to market them this Autumn.
- The Goods Yard (circa 300 homes, 40% affordable housing) plus some community assets such as public square etc now has (from July ?) planning permission. No start date to construction yet announced
- B& M Site - As Goods Yard, but planning permission not yet received.

In total Spurs driven regeneration will have built 1500+ flats/homes (on brownfield sites so all are additional housing stock to Haringey).

Some of the wider Tottenham regeneration sites are in ENIC companies with some Spurs participation. We've yet to see what that means in practice

Financial information is published in TH accounts and other estimates within planning documents, but at a high level so breaking down between development isn't really practical, although an estimated breakdown would be possible later from next years accounts. But it will require quite a lot of wirk to do,
 
A bit foggy. Understand the Spurs team and stadium are now 2 separate companies. Means if or when a London nfl franchise comes to Tottenham may or may not benefit Spurs team budget. Similarly, not clear about the hotel/apartments.
As I understand it a lot of umbrella companies bought the land around WHL rather than any directly linked to Tottenham Hotspur, that's just from reading bits and pieces on the internet.
 
As I understand it a lot of umbrella companies bought the land around WHL rather than any directly linked to Tottenham Hotspur, that's just from reading bits and pieces on the internet.
Most clubs are set up like this I believe. Chelsea consists of 3 or more shell/umbrella companies I think.
 
That’s why the club have been in transfer austerity for a decade, this summer was our first significant spend since the 2009 window (Keane pt.2, Defoe pt.2, Chimbonda pt.2, Palacios).
And part of the reason for that splurge was because we were looking at relegation. Levy said he couldn’t sleep at night. We bought Keane back for 12 having sold him 6 mos previous for 19m to Liverpool.
Little did we know that he was on his last legs before loans to hammers and celtic, then sold to USA.
 
And part of the reason for that splurge was because we were looking at relegation. Levy said he couldn’t sleep at night. We bought Keane back for 12 having sold him 6 mos previous for 19m to Liverpool.
Little did we know that he was on his last legs before loans to hammers and celtic, then sold to USA.
We perhaps DID have a fair idea, but it was desperate times. £12m on a player only worth £8m is absolutely nothing compared to relegation, which at a minimum would have cost us about £150m (TV revenue, commercial decline, two seasons of no Europe, loss of assets below market price due to non-renewal of contracts or release clauses kicking in...) and could quite easily have scuppered the whole stadium project and therefore the future of the club.
 
We perhaps DID have a fair idea, but it was desperate times. £12m on a player only worth £8m is absolutely nothing compared to relegation, which at a minimum would have cost us about £150m (TV revenue, commercial decline, two seasons of no Europe, loss of assets below market price due to non-renewal of contracts or release clauses kicking in...) and could quite easily have scuppered the whole stadium project and therefore the future of the club.
That was the summer after we finished 11th, right? I think that was the 2nd season I started supporting Spurs and we just had two consecutive top-5 seasons.

:pochshock2:

I was not aware of Tottenham a few seasons earlier when we finished 14th.
 
A bit foggy. Understand the Spurs team and stadium are now 2 separate companies. Means if or when a London nfl franchise comes to Tottenham may or may not benefit Spurs team budget. Similarly, not clear about the hotel/apartments.

Pretty standard where an asset is being built with bank finance the bank insists the asset ( is stadium complex,) is in a seperate company - reason is the bank wants to ensure its finance isn't being side tracked into paying for the football side of the business. So I wouldn't read anything into that other than it's just a condition of bank finance.

Might change when the debt is changed into bond finance.
 
As I understand it a lot of umbrella companies bought the land around WHL rather than any directly linked to Tottenham Hotspur, that's just from reading bits and pieces on the internet.

Spurs issued a press release on the sale of the land not essential for stadium build at the time - might have been about 2015 - explaining the reasons so it wasn't kept secret.
 
Spurs issued a press release on the sale of the land not essential for stadium build at the time - might have been about 2015 - explaining the reasons so it wasn't kept secret.
The rumours, and they were rumours are additional land was also bought up by enic shells in anticipation of the increase in land values.
 
The rumours, and they were rumours are additional land was also bought up by enic shells in anticipation of the increase in land values.

If you look a couple of pages back ( and on previous occasions over the years) I've mentioned some of the other property close to but not part of the stadium. Much was included in the transfer from Spurs but likely it's been added to since

A couple of pages ago I gave an update on :

- Brook House and kingdom Hall - flats and primary school completed several years ago
- 500 white Hart Lane, building under way with Fairview
- The Goods Yard - planning permission obtained
- M & B site planning applied for

Extent to which Spurs share in profits is unclear, but Brook House supplied most of housing to move Love Lane tenants into and other properties supplied a lot of affordable housing etc.
 
And part of the reason for that splurge was because we were looking at relegation. Levy said he couldn’t sleep at night. We bought Keane back for 12 having sold him 6 mos previous for 19m to Liverpool.
Little did we know that he was on his last legs before loans to hammers and celtic, then sold to USA.
Tbf he only brought Keane back because Defoe got injured that same January, Frazier Campbell wasn’t good enough, Redknapp preferred Sandra to Darren Bent and Pavlyuchenko was still settling in.

Palacios easily the best signing though and given the proper context, maybe he is up there as one of our most important signings of this century .
 
A bit foggy. Understand the Spurs team and stadium are now 2 separate companies. Means if or when a London nfl franchise comes to Tottenham may or may not benefit Spurs team budget. Similarly, not clear about the hotel/apartments.

This is a requirement by the lending agents. Think of it as you buying a house, car, life insurance, an an antique vase ... whilst the bank will lend you money to buy them all, it will want to secure all those assets at the same time .

If the bank lent all the money secured against the house there's nothing to stop you selling the car, life insurance, vase and spending that money on holidays in the Bahamas without repaying the bank.

So the bank will give you four loans one for each purchase, each one secured against an individual item, now you can't sell anything without paying the bank back for that item first. That's what's been done with the land in Tottenham, whilst we have total lending of some 637m it's secured in pieces across various developments.

So what next? Well in the above scenario once you own all the items you approach a wealthy family member to pay off all the loans and give you one big loan, your house is now so valuable it covers the whole debt ... the family member trusts you so he gives you a great deal.

This in effect is what Bonds do, wealthy individuals or institutions will buy a piece of the bond confident that their money is secure and that it will produce a guaranteed long term return. The bond pays off the bank loans and everyone is happy.

At this point ENIC/Spurs no longer need seperate companies, in reality the officers in those companies will be the same, the offices the same, accountants the same etc. It then becomes a question of cost over benefits, some companies merge to form one larger more cost efficient and powerful entity, some stay as seperate small companies each doing their thing ... no idea what ENIC / Spurs will do but as all the seperate vehicles are property development based, it makes sense to run them as stand alone and just close each one as the individual development finishes ...

On point to note is that we have 637m in debt yet all the reports indicate 400m in bonds ... that would indicate that we are looking to either carry a debt of 237m or pay it off from profits.

Let's hope that remaining debt all sits with the other developments and that it's no issue for our club, pretty sure that will be the case.
 
Most clubs are set up like this I believe. Chelsea consists of 3 or more shell/umbrella companies I think.
It's fine. When a property owner sells to "North London Trust & Holdings" they might not think twice, but the moment the same representative walks in representing Tottenham Hotspur F.C., the price just went up 50%.

Shell Companies are a necessity when dealing in corporate real estate.
 

Tottenham secures financial future with stadium debt deal
Daniel Levy tells FT refinancing £600m of loans gives club headroom to compete with European rivals

Murad Ahmed and Robert Smith in London, Financial Times

Tottenham Hotspur has refinanced more than £600m of loans taken out to build its new stadium, with the English Premier League club tapping US investors through private bond markets to secure its financial future. The team moved into its £1.2bn arena, one of the most expensive in Europe, in April. To support construction, it borrowed £637m from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and HSBC. Those loans were due to be paid back by April 2022, creating a potential financial cliff edge. The club completed a private placement in the US this week that converted roughly £525m of its debt into bonds, with staggered maturities of between 15 and 30 years. Speaking to the Financial Times, Daniel Levy, Tottenham Hotspur chairman, said the move to limit the club’s debt-servicing costs, along with revenues from the new stadium, would provide the financial headroom to compete with Europe’s top clubs. But he insisted there would be no change to the frugal business plan and player transfer strategy instituted during his nearly two decades running the club.

“I understand, as I am a fan, clearly you want to win on the pitch,” he said. “But we have been trying to look at this slightly differently, in that we want to make sure we ensure an infrastructure here to stand the test of time.”

The message won over US private investors for the bond issue but may be seen as provocative by fans who want a spending spree to reinforce a team that has fallen agonisingly short of the sport’s top prizes in recent seasons. “We could have easily spent more money on players,” said Mr Levy. “Who knows if that would have bought us more success or not . . . The right approach is to build from the bottom up. There is no quick fix to becoming a much more significant global club.”

Tottenham has firmly established itself among the “Big Six” in English football’s top tier, which also includes Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Woolwich and Chelsea. Each is among the world’s 10 highest-earning football clubs, due in part to their share in the Premier League’s multiyear broadcasting rights, currently worth £9.2bn.

Under head coach Mauricio Pochettino, Tottenham has qualified four times in a row for the Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious club tournament that distributes roughly €2bn among participating teams. That success is particularly striking because the English club’s wage bill has been the lowest among the Big Six.

Academic research has shown the best predictor of a team’s league position is how much it spends on player salaries. Although Tottenham has outperformed, it has won no major trophy in many years, finishing second in the Premier League in 2016-17 and losing in the Champions League final last season. To complete the refinancing of its stadium loans, BofA, which acted as bookrunner on the bond issue, has also provided a £112m loan, while HSBC has provided a revolving credit facility. Goldman, which took a leading role in Tottenham’s previous transaction, did not participate. Rothschild acted as financial adviser.

The average annual interest rate on this new debt is just over 2.6 per cent, according to people briefed on the transaction. Private placements in the US were particularly popular with English clubs in the 1990s and early 2000s, with Manchester United, Woolwich and Newcastle United among those to issue long-term bonds. US private placements typically carry investment-grade ratings, in contrast to the recent rush of bond issuance from Italian football clubs. Inter Milan and AS Roma have tapped the high-yield bond market in the past two years, while Juventus raised a bond this year without a credit rating.

Mr Levy said the Tottenham bond issue was “significantly oversubscribed”, reflecting a strong credit rating from investment agencies and confidence from US investors that the club is a relatively sure bet in the volatile world of football. Asked if the deal would free up more money for player transfers or new deals for current stars — some of whom have held off on contract renewals unless they are offered significant pay rises — Mr Levy insisted the refinancing “will have no bearing on how we run the club . . . and no bearing on those types of short-term movements [like transfers].”

Still, there are signs the club has begun to loosen its purse strings. Over the 2017-18 season, it achieved record revenues of £380.7m and pre-tax profit of £138.9m — the largest annual profit ever recorded by a football club. This summer its net transfer fee spending was about £70m, among the highest in the Premier League.

To increase revenues further, Mr Levy wants to transform Tottenham Hotspur Stadium into a “Madison Square Garden in London” — referring to the New York indoor arena that hosts sports, concerts and other events. The club has already secured deals to host two NFL American football matches a year for a decade, and an annual Saracens rugby union match for five years.

“Clearly, if you have a stadium of this magnitude and quality, to only have 25 to 30 games a year being played by Tottenham Hotspur, it’s not making use of the capital we have invested,” said Mr Levy.
 
Back
Top Bottom