THE controlling shareholders in the Kangaroos have agreed to give up their shares to allow the club to become a membership-based club — ensuring that it can keep the special AFL funding that keeps it alive.
With the AFL insisting that the Kangaroos would not receive special assistance — at present, $1.4 million a year — unless the club reverted to control by the members, major shareholders John Magowan, Peter de Rauch and Bob Ansett have agreed to give up their shares, at no cost to the club.
It is understood that new chairman James Brayshaw only agreed to take on the enormous challenge of leading the club after Ansett, de Rauch and Magowan gave him an undertaking they would give up their shares.
Collectively, the trio own about 75% of the club's shares, enough to give them control of the club's destiny. Brayshaw had told the trio — each of whom served on the club board and, in Ansett and Magowan's case, as chairman — that, having spurned a Gold Coast future, the club would not be able to survive in the medium term unless their shareholding was handed over to the members, as requested by the AFL.
AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou has informed the Kangaroos' board that the club would not be entitled to receive the annual special distribution — without which it would not survive — beyond 2009, unless it became a club controlled by membership rather than shareholding.
The AFL had initially offered to buy all the shares, but only on the proviso that the club relocated to the Gold Coast.
While it is uncertain what the club will receive from the AFL, when the ASD funding agreement expires after 2009, the Kangaroos recognise that they will need some ASD funding to remain solvent beyond 2009.
While Ansett, who was chairman when the club was floated on the stock exchange, de Rauch and Magowan have agreed to give up their shares, without seeking financial compensation, Brayshaw said the club would offer to buy shares.
"When we come to do it, we will have to offer to buy the shares back, because these people — some of their parcels cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. We've got to do the honourable thing. They saved the club back in the '80s. We've got to, at the right time, when we're ready to do it, offer to buy them back.
"A lot of the shareholders have indicated to me that they won't ask for any money, but there will be some that will and we've got to do the honourable thing and pay for them."
