RANGERS fans turned their fire on the administrators Duff & Phelps last night after it emerged that the club was to go into liquidation.
Questions were raised about the company's reported £5.5 million fee for handling the process since the club entered administration on February 14, after it failed to find a buyer who could steer the club to safety.
Duff & Phelps was brought in by former owner Craig Whyte almost four months ago.
John MacMillan, general secretary of the Rangers Supporters Association, said that it had taken far too long to get to the point where it had become apparent that a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) would not be agreed.
He said: "I question how long this whole costly procedure has taken. I personally don't think it is being handled very well by the administrators.
"I am surprised that we were not able to get to the point where we knew a CVA was not going to be possible before now."
Duff & Phelps courted a number of suitors, including The Blue Knights, American businessman Bill Miller and Singaporean investor Bill Ng, before finally agreeing to do business with Charles Green's consortium.
In the interim they are said to have run up fees worth millions of pounds, and also had to go to court twice, including an attempt to sue Whyte's former lawyers Collyer & Bristow.
But in the end the firm has failed to steer the club out of administration but will still walk away with a large fee.
It has also emerged the club will now face a separate bill as Duff & Phelps will step aside to let neutral liquidation company BDO step in and complete the process.
Malcolm Cohen, BDO business restructuring partner, will be appointed joint liquidator of the old company.
He said: "Once BDO is formally appointed, the joint liquidators will be seeking to protect any remaining assets, maximise recoveries for the benefit of creditors, and investigate the reasons behind the failure of the company.
"It is important to understand that the appointment of liquidators will not mean the end of football at Ibrox – only the end of the company that ran the club. This is the structure that BDO will investigate."
A spokesman for Duff & Phelps said that the company had worked to avoid the "doomsday scenario" of the club going out of business, and was paid in line with other insolvency experts. He estimated its fee at £3m, plus legal costs.
He said: "Duff & Phelps kept the club going in very, very difficult circumstances which was the primary purpose of administration.
"Administration fees are all subject to creditors' approval and are also defined by the regulator for insolvency practitioners."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article