News of the club’s dramatic increase in wages and debt has just been revealed, alarming is an understatement !!! These figures will surely increase significantly again when the next set of accounts are produced. Owen Gibson wrote the following article for ‘The Guardian’:
‘The scale of the challenge facing QPR if Harry Redknapp fails to keep them in the Premier League is laid bare in newly published financial results for last season, which show their wage bill doubled even before the latest spending spree.
The accounts, for the year ending 31 May 2012, show that the club’s wage bill doubled from ¬£27.6m to ¬£58.5m in their first year back in the Premier League under Neil Warnock and Mark Hughes.
Thanks to increased TV income, revenue rose sharply from ¬£16.2m to ¬£64m. But the initial splurge on players including Shaun Wright-Phillips and Jose Bosingwa – followed by Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cisse in January 2012 – meant that QPR’s wages-to-revenue ratio stood at over 90% even before spending in the last two transfer windows is taken into account. Of last season’s Premier League clubs, only relegated Bolton and Blackburn had higher wages- to-revenue ratios.
In January, the record signings Loic Remy and Chris Samba were added to the squad in an attempt to keep the West London club in the Premier League under Redknapp, who had said he would only spend the money of owner Tony Fernandes if he felt that the team could stay up.
Fernandes admitted in his Director’s report that the Board is “conscious of the need for expenditure to be closely monitored and controlled” but also the need to invest in the playing squad.
“A critical driver of any club’s value is its presence in the Premier League and the club achieved its key objective for the 2011-12 season by successfully securing its Premier League status for the coming season,” he said. “The financial results reflect the club’s focus on on-onpitch success. There are a number of potential risks and uncertainties that could have a material impact on the group’s long-term performance. These risks and uncertainties are monitored by the Board on a regular basis.”
The club, hampered by the size of Loftus Road, made an overall pre-tax loss of £22.6m according to the accounts, filed at Companies House this week.
The financial blogger ‘SwissRamble’ has calculated that QPR have required cash injections of over ¬£104m over the last four years, split between loans and capital injections to cover aggregate losses of ¬£80m over that period.
Its owners poured in ¬£39m during 2011-12 alone. The club’s net debt, all owed to its owners, stands at ¬£88.9m.
Fernandes confirmed that he would continue to look for a bigger ground and said that his ambition remains to establish QPR as a Premier League club. “Under the guidance of our new manager, Harry Redknapp, we are hopeful that the club will secure their Premier League status going forward,” he wrote in his statement.
“We are confident that the 2012-13 season will also see the club continue to make progress towards achieving their short, medium and long term off-pitch targets.”
Despite a victory at Southampton last weekend sparking some hope, the club remains bottom of the Premier League and four points from safety.’
Owen Gibson – The Guardian
Telegraph Sport added: ‘Fernandes, Kamarudin Bin Meranun and Ruben Emir Gnanalingam own 66 per cent of QPR, while the other 33 per cent belongs to the Mittal family. Lakshmi Mittal is listed as the 41st richest person in the world by Forbes magazine, with a net worth of 16.5 billion US dollars (¬£11 billion).’
Steve Russell