Rangers pair ordered to pay £3.4m to liquidators
++Rangers administrators ordered to pay £3.4m to club’s liquidators for ‘breach of duty’ ++ Judge says they SHOULD have considered selling Ibrox and Murray Park ++ McCoist opinion on player sales deemed ‘insufficient’ — and stars should have gone
RANGERS administrators have been ordered to pay more than £3million to liquidators after a judge ruled that the winding down of the club was botched.
Lord Tyre found that David Whitehouse and Paul Clark breached their duties while acting as administrators at the then ailing club.
In a judgment issued at the Court of Session, Lord Tyre told the duo to hand over £3.4million to financial services firm BDO.
BDO – the liquidators of Rangers – had sued Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark.
Its legal team told Lord Tyre the pair had failed to cut costs sufficiently after being drafted in almost ten years ago and could have raised more money for creditors.
Kenny McBrearty, QC, representing BDO, claimed the pair could have stopped the club from being liquidated and made it more attractive to potential buyers by making staff redundant.
Mr McBrearty told the court both Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark could have sold on players such as Steven Naismith, Steven Whittaker, Maurice Edu and Kyle Lafferty.
He said Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark should have considered selling assets such as Murray Park training ground. Mr McBrearty said they should have thought about a deal which would have seen Ibrox sold and leased back to the club.
In a 125-page judgment, Lord Tyre agreed with the lawyer’s submissions. Writing of the way Mr
Whitehouse and Mr Clark considered redundancies, Lord Tyre said the men relied too much on a report which had been provided to them by then manager Ally McCoist. On redundancies and players sales decision-making, Lord Tyre said the administrators ‘fell below the standard reasonably to be expected of an ordinarily competent administrator’. He said: ‘I am satisfied the respondents acted without having taken independent advice on certain critical matters about which they required to be informed.
As regards player redundancies, they relied upon the opinion of the manager, Mr McCoist, whom they ought not to have regarded as being in a position to offer a dispassionate opinion as to the number of possible redundancies…’
Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark – who were employed by financial services firm Duff & Phelps – were appointed as administrators after HMRC took Rangers to court for £18million of unpaid tax in February 2012. Both denied the negligence claim.
The two men went on to sell the business and assets of the club to Charles Green’s consortium for £5.5million before BDO were appointed to liquidate the old company.
The trio were later among seven indicted over fraud allegations relating to Rangers before the case against them was dropped in June 2016.
Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark raised an action against police and prosecutors last year. Prosecutors admitted the case against the duo was ‘malicious’ and conducted ‘without probable cause’. Both men received multi-million-pound settlements.
Duff & Phelps was contacted for comment. BDO declined to comment.
A JUDGE has ruled that the administrators overseeing the financial collapse of Rangers could have done more to save the club by selling key players, Ibrox or the Murray Park training ground.
In a judgment issued at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Lord Tyre ordered that Duff & Phelps, whose employees David Whitehouse and Paul Clark acted as administrators to the Ibrox club, pay £3,404,500 to financial services firm BDO, who liquidated the club.
The ruling came after Whitehouse and Clark were deemed to have fallen below an ‘ordinarily competent’ standard by paying too much heed to a report prepared by former manager Ally McCoist and failing to cut costs aggressively enough. BDO’s advocate Kenny McBrearty QC claimed:
● More staff should have been made redundant to make the club more attractive to potential buyers.
● Players like Steven Naismith, Steven