The Trust are delighted to announce a deal has been struck for the purchase of a further 50,000 shares in the Football Club.
The deal has been agreed for one reason – to safeguard the future of the Football Club. With uncertainty over the future of the Club in the air right now, this will go a long way to ensuring that the Club stays in the hands of the Supporters.
The deal to purchase the shares has been struck with Director Andrew Kelly and will be funded using existing Trust funds as well as an incredibly significant and generous donation from the money left in the will of Dale Superfan David Clough. Members gave this their backing over the weekend with a ballot of members where we had 100% of the votes in support of the Trust using funds to purchase additional shares. The money received by Andrew Kelly will be put back into the Club.
Trust Chair Colin Cavanah said “Yet again, it is truly remarkable that David Clough is still proving to make such a massive difference to the future of this Football Club. This would not have been possible without the donation from his estate.
“We are thankful to for Andrew Kelly for his part in this deal. The last few weeks have been extremely uncomfortable for Dale supporters with the uncertainty surrounding the ownership of the Club. This deal is another important step to making sure this club is safe from any hostile takeover.”
Newly appointed Trust Director Murray Knight stated “In receiving the donation, it is vital that we do justice to David Clough by representing the supporters to the best of our abilities for many years to come.”
The Trust will now become the second biggest shareholder at the Football Club with 62,625 shares that equates to around 12.5% of the Club.
We are proud to say that with such a sizeable shareholding, the Trust will be balloting all members before any AGM/EGM that the Club holds in the future and will be voting in the way that the members dictate us to. This is something that we have done recently but we will be looking to get this built into our own Constitution later on this year when we host our own AGM to ensure that any vote undertaken by the Trust has to be backed by the members.