The Celtic Trust held its AGM on Tuesday 2nd September and it became clear that many people who attended that meeting were not, in fact, members and had come along to express their concerns about the present situation with the club.
That is entirely understandable and thankfully there has been a lot of activity in the days since that meeting which shows a level of unity among the fan groups to address their concerns. More of that later.
However, the meeting also revealed a lot of misunderstanding about what the Celtic Trust is, what it does and what it can do.
What is The Celtic Trust?
Unlike other fan organisations, the structure of the trust and its legal status is far more important than who its leadership is at any given time.
The Trust is organised as a mutual, with a constitution and which is required to submit its accounts annually to the Financial Conduct Authority. It was designed to be, and is ideally suited to being, the vehicle for the democratic ownership of Celtic FC by the fans.
Every penny of subscriptions, with the exception of the small amount needed for administration, is used to buy shares and we currently own 170,000 ordinary shares with a current value (today) of £297,500.
Those shares are owned in common by the members of the Trust and can never be sold or distributed in any way. This is guaranteed by our legally-binding constitution.
Building fan power
The Trust will continue to build up its share ownership but that is very unlikely to be sufficient to produce more fan power any time soon.
However, the other line of attack is that there are 20-30% of shares out there which are owned by people who, like me, bought the smallest amount possible in 1995.
If all of those – or a good proportion of those – were to sign up the Trust shareholder portal (which does not require membership of the Trust) and thereby agree to be contacted at the time of any Celtic PLC AGM or EGM and asked to vote in a particular way, then we create the possibility of a very powerful bloc.
Shareholders: make your vote count
Shareholders who do this will still own their own shares and they can take a decision at the time whether to vote with the Trust or not, so it costs them only the time it takes to give us your details and permission to contact you in very particular circumstances.
For instance, if we could rely on 5% of the vote then we would have had the power to call an EGM to demand answers from the Board regarding the recent disastrous transfer window.
In the meantime, we regularly, and with some success, campaign on fan issues and are united with other fan bodies in the current initiative to hold the Board to account.
How to join The Celtic Trust
You can subscribe to the Trust with a minimum monthly amount of £5. For that you get to take part in any decision of the Trust on a one-member-one-vote basis.
If you currently own shares and you join us then you would obviously be expected to vote those shares in line with the democratically determined decisions of the Trust.
Please consider joining us and, even better, becoming actively involved.
More details about joining can be found at The Celtic Trust website.
Jeanette Findlay
Vice Chair, The Celtic Trust
