Steve K:Matt, as you have good knowledge on the financial side of things, if this hyperthetically became true, how would the running of the club work? Who would own it and make all the important decisions?
It would go back to how it was before glazer and the board would ultimately make the decisions, the board usually being elected by the shareholders, so obviously the board is accountable to the shareholders.
Obviously if you have somebody with significant more shares than another, then the board is much more accountable to them, they have more power as such so its not like the Co-op model employed by FC United where its relatively equal.
Hence within a PLC, you can get interference from significant shareholders, a good example of this was the infamous magnier and mcmanus shareholders who owned a huge stake in the club around 29%.
Ferguson had a business partnership involving a horse, then there was an argument between them involving studding rights..........the relationship turned hostile with Ferguson suing for half the stud fee's per year (around 10 million pounds).
In order to put pressure on Ferguson to back off, Magnier and Mcmanus began to increase their stakes in the club and also demanded an investigation into all the financial aspects of the club, especially transfer fee's and the use of agents and the length of any new contract offered to sir alex..............aimed to make Alex stand down should he persist in his legal actions.
As a result Gill and Sir Roy Gardner encouaged the then much smaller american investor in the club Malcolm Glazer that he should increase his stakes as a stop gap to Magnier and Mcmanus damaging the club.
We all know what happened then.
The PLC model allowed United to become what we have become but its not all positives and it can become very messy should there be conflicts