Ann: I’m ready to Budge over & it’s amazing achievement

ANN BUDGE insists Hearts’ impending handover to fans’ group Foundation of Hearts (FoH) is an amazing achievement.

And she reckons it has comprehensively silenced the doubters.

Budge rescued the Jambos from impeding liquidation in the summer of 2014, shelling out £2.5m to purchase the club and its assets from administrators, BDO.

An agreement was struck that FoH would purchase the 75.1 per cent majority shareholding once that sum had been repaid.

It was confirmed this week that £2.4m has been reimbursed, leaving just the formality of transferring £100,000 in spring to formally complete the supporters’ takeover.

FoH boast more than 7,500 members whose monthly pledges provide Hearts with working capital of around £1.4m a year.

Budge said: “I’m delighted because a number of people said ‘this will never work’ and clearly it has worked.

“I said I would put the money up for the club but this is a joint effort.

“I said, ‘I’ll put up the capital we need to make this happen but then we need the supporters to back the club with working capital for a couple of years’. We had debts and all sorts of things we had to do.

“That was the first tranche. The intention was always that they would then pay me back. Of the £2.5m, £2.4m was a loan to the supporters and £100,000 was what I paid for the shares.

“That £2.4m has now been paid back. When the £100,000 is paid back, that is the point at which we could transfer the share certificate.

“It’s now about choosing the right point at which it’s easy for us to do.”

Budge has repeatedly stated the fans will not have direct control of decision making.

She will to stay on as chairman and chief executive of the club – an agreement FoH are amenable to – until at least 2021, with FoH represented by Stuart Wallace and Donald Cumming in the Hearts boardroom.

However, FoH will be the guardians of the shares.

Budge said: “There is a board of directors who run the club, there is an executive team who run the day-to-day operations. It is the entity of FoH who are protecting the shares. It doesn’t mean they are going to run the club.”