POWER AND MCGRATH STEP UP

Thursday 24 June 2004 

Directors Kevin McGrath and Bill Power today stepped up to become the chairmen of QPR Holdings plc and QPR Football Club respectively.

Six days after the club announced that chief executive David Davies would be leaving the club "by mutual agreement" next month, plc chairman Ross Jones and football club chairman Nick Blackburn were on their way too, beating a hasty retreat down South Africa Road.

Kevin McGrath
Before being escorted from the premises both departing chairmen were allowed to take their leave on the club's official website. Nick Blackburn, the man who had tried to merge QPR with Wimbledon FC in 2001, said "I feel that the Board has not functioned in a manner that I believe to be correct since April of this year."

Bill Power
Ross Jones was equally ungracious, paying tribute to the players and the staff at Loftus Road but not to the loyal supporters who in recent years have turned out to follow Rangers in record numbers. This is perhaps not a surprise coming from the man who once said that QPR fans had no more right to know what was going on off the pitch than a customer buying a pair of knickers in Marks and Spencers has a right to know what is going on in the M&S boardroom.

McGrath, Power and Gianni Paladini are now expected to move quickly to convert QPR Holdings plc into a private limited company. Whilst there are many reasons why football clubs should not be plc's, one plus point is that shareholders of a plc are entitled to a certain amount of company information. Thousands of Rangers fans are shareholders in the club, and Boardroom Blues urges the new board to ensure transparency and accountability in the future by incorporating guarantees of quarterly meetings with shareholders, prompt and regular disclosure of financial information, and so on, into the rules governing the new private company.

Good luck guys!

Read more
 Kevin McGrath profile
 Bill Power profile
 The attempted QPR-Wimbledon merger
 QPR show how to lose £27m in four years


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