On behalf of the 1000+ members of 10000hours we would like to express our disappointment that we have been unable to conclude the deal to purchase the majority shareholding in St Mirren Football Club for its fans.

We made the very best sustainable and deliverable offer we could, based on the substantial backing we received from our members.

That offer was for £1.25 million, to be paid over a 3 year period.

We would like to make it clear that none of our major backers had any doubts about the concept.

While it is now time to end our bid for the controlling interest in our football club, our formal offer remains open indefinitely should the selling consortium have a change of heart.

We will however now move to cancel all members Direct Debit mandates and this will be completed over the next few days. This will happen automatically although any member may of course login to the GoCardless.com website in the meantime and cancel their individual mandate if they wish.

We wish the club every success both on and off the park and again would like to thank everyone who backed the bid for their tremendous support.

 

Update 13th Sept 2012; All members direct debit instructions have now been cancelled

 

 

We can confirm that we have now had a response from the Selling Consortium to the bid which was submitted on August 24th.

We have been asked to review two particular clauses within the offer and re-submit the bid.

We are in the process of completing this task and intend to re-submit our updated offer to the Selling Consortium tomorrow.

Thanks again for your continued support.

We have been informed that the selling consortium has not yet had the opportunity to meet to discuss the offer we made last Friday for the majority shareholding in the football club.

We will of course continue to keep you informed of any progress.

Meanwhile we have been encouraged with the feedback we have received from our members on the possible uses of the Nero Blanco fund. This gives us a taste of how the CIC would work in practice, with lots of good, creative ideas received.

If our bid for the shares is not accepted then the overwhelming feedback we have received is that the funds should be donated directly to SMiSA.

Having a strong independent supporters association will be more important than ever if, for the first time in the clubs history, we have people in control of our club who have no affiliation with St Mirren FC.

If we are successful in gaining control of the club then the most popular choices received were to take tables at a St Mirren dinner or at a corporate hospitality event and to hold a draw amongst all those that contributed to select attendees. This way the club gets some benefit as well as the people who contributed to the fund.

There were also various suggestions around improving the match day experience by having beer tents, kids events and entertainment.

We would like to thank everybody for their e-mails and we will make the decision once we know the outcome of our bid.

Further to our e-mail last Thursday we can confirm that we submitted our revised offer to the selling consortium on Friday August 24th.

We believe they are meeting later this week and we hope to have had some feedback by the end of the week.

Meanwhile we are continuing to make progress in other areas.

While not an essential component of our actual bid to buy the shares we realise that the fitting out of the void to provide a match day bar for our members has to be high on our list of priorities.

Today we met with Kibble and Life Church, who are the two main community organisations that are involved in the proposed development of the void, to update them on our bid and to seek re assurances of their continued support. We are delighted to confirm that both are still firmly behind the project and look forward to working alongside a fans controlled club for the betterment of Paisley and the surrounding community should our bid be successful.

Although a lot will depend on how quickly we can conclude the deal, permissions for the work are granted and licences approved we have set a provisional target for completion of the works by the end of 2012.

Along with many others one of the suggestions we have received for the Nero Blanco fund was to set up a beer tent and kids play area at the first home game if we are successful in our bid. The thought being that this could generate even more money as well as adding to the community match day experience. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed and would ask that all further suggestions are e-mailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 5pm on Wednesday. We will announce all the suggestions by the end of this week and make a decision as to how the money is distributed.