Wednesday's Would-Be Owner Storch Sets Staff Summit as Takeover Trudges On
David Storch arranges meetings with Sheffield Wednesday staff as Arise Capital Partners' preferred bidder status moves the protracted takeover saga into its next chapter.
In the grand tradition of football takeovers that move at the pace of continental drift, Sheffield Wednesday's potential new owner David Storch is apparently ready to press the flesh with club staff as his Arise Capital Partners consortium edges closer to actually owning something.
The prospective supremo has arranged meetings with Wednesday employees as part of what administrators no doubt describe as the 'ongoing process' – that magical phrase beloved by suits in expensive offices who've never had to explain to fans why their season ticket money disappeared into the ether.
Storch's outfit were handed the coveted 'preferred bidder' status last month, a title that sounds rather more definitive than it actually is in the wonderfully opaque world of football administration. They inherited this privilege after the James Bord-led consortium decided they'd had quite enough of the whole affair and withdrew from proceedings, presumably having glimpsed the size of the financial black hole they'd been invited to fill.
To his credit, Storch hasn't adopted the usual takeover playbook of mysterious silence and cryptic statements filtered through expensive PR firms. Instead, he's been refreshingly open with supporters via the media – a novel approach that suggests either admirable transparency or dangerous naivety, depending on your level of cynicism.
Behind the scenes, the machinery of modern football ownership continues to grind through its various bureaucratic checkpoints. Productive discussions have reportedly taken place with administrators Begbies Traynor, because nothing says 'exciting new dawn' quite like productive discussions with insolvency practitioners.
The English Football League has also been consulted, as has the Independent Football Regulator – because apparently buying a football club now requires more regulatory approval than launching a space programme. Still, given the litany of previous ownership disasters across English football, perhaps a few extra hoops aren't such a bad thing.
For Wednesday supporters, this represents another chapter in what's becoming a rather lengthy novel of potential salvation. The meeting with staff suggests Storch is serious about understanding what he's buying, which is either encouraging due diligence or the actions of someone who's just realised what they've let themselves in for.
Whether this latest development brings Wednesday any closer to actually having new owners remains to be seen. But at least the staff are getting a meeting out of it.