June 7 2010

Crystal Palace

The CPFC 2010 consortium have agreed on a deal to takeover Crystal Palace FC.

Consortium directors Steve Parish and Martin Long exchanged contracts this afternoon, which will mean that much needed funding will be given to Administrator Brendan Guilfoyle in order to keep the club afloat.

Talking to the Croydon Advertiser, Guilfoyle said: "The contracts to agree the sale of the club to CPFC 2010 have now been exchanged and I have been told that I will receive funds to keep the club afloat."

"The deal is conditional on four parts. The successful sale of the stadium, secured creditors Agilo being satisfied, unsecured creditors agreeing to the CVA and for the consortium to supply the funds for me to run the club while the takeover is finalised."

CPFC 2010 released the following statement regarding the deal:

"CPFC2010 are pleased to announce that we have today completed the acquisition of Crystal Palace Football Club from the administrator of CPFC2000.

"We have also exchanged contracts and paid a deposit on Selhurst Park, the sale will complete when we satisfy the Football Leagues requirements and CPFC2010 are assigned the Football League ‘share’.

"All then that remains is for the successful conclusion of the creditors voluntary arrangement, we feel confident this will be a positive outcome, the former secured creditor of the club accepted a shortfall on their settlement, in light of this and the fact CPFC2010 were and are the only party serious about acquiring the club, we believe our offer represents the best value for creditors.

"We would like to take this opportunity to thank Lloyds Banking Group for their genuine concern for the future of the club and recognition of what it meant to the community and fans and we are extremely grateful.

"We would also like to thank Brendan Guilfoyle of The P&A Partnership who has done an excellent job in trying circumstances, Jon Rouse CEO of Croydon council for his unwavering support, The Administrators' team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Daniel Norris of Hogan Lovells, CBRE, Andrew Hall & Catherine Guerin of Nicholas Hall and `The Agilo Master Fund.

"Also special thanks to David Hinchliffe and Austin Judson of Walker Morris who have worked tirelessly to get the deal finalised as well as David Jensen who has worked equally hard as ambassador to the club and spokesperson for CPFC2010.

"We will now start the process of rebuilding the club, starting first with the management and playing squad, all our players have been magnificent, the uncertainty of the past months has been very difficult for them particularly the out of contract players and Darren Ambrose who’s on off transfer has been extremely unsettling. We would like to extend our gratitude to all of them and assure them that we will deal with all of their respective situations as soon as we possibly can. This of course is true of all of the staff at the club who have also been amazing through this difficult time.

"Finally of course the fans of Crystal Palace FC whose tremendous support in difficult conditions inspired us to keep going even when it looked like the club may indeed cease to exist in its current form. We look forward to seeing you all next season once again lending your tremendous support, it would be fantastic to pack Selhurst again and we would encourage any of you who haven’t done so already to buy a season ticket, to those of you who already have, rest assured they will all be honored by CPFC2010.

"We will call a press conference soon where we will outline some of our plans for an exciting yet stable future for Crystal Palace.

"Martin, Stephen, Steve, and Jeremy"