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Cardiff City Financial Statement

Last updated : 08 March 2005 By Gary Fish

The extent of Cardiff City's financial worries was revealed on Saturday as the club sold captain Graham Kavanagh to Wigan to ease the problems.

The club’s end of year statement for May 2004 shows they made a retained loss of more than £9m, taking Cardiff City’s judgements to £29.6m.

The Kavanagh sale brought in only £400,000, with possibly an extra to £200,000 later, but more sales are expected for the Championship club.

Fellow strugglers Nottingham Forest are keen on striker Peter Thorne, Cardiff’s top scorer this season, while Wales international defender James Collins has been linked with a move to West Ham, with a bid already having been rejected and termed “derisory”.

It is believed that midfielders Jobi McAnuff and Paul Parry, in addition to defender Chris Barker could also be sold before the 24 March transfer deadline in an effort to capitalise on assets while the problem is still manageable to an extent.

Talk from Ninian Park is that the unexpected 3 month delay in the timetable to build Cardiff's new stadium at Leckwith is the primary reason for the predicament, connected with the retail side of the Leckwith development, with construction of the 30,000-seat stadium now expected to start in July rather than May.

The accounts note the following:

Ø Expenditure on fees incurred on the new stadium project came to £2.7m, up from £741,248 in 2003.

Ø Wages and salaries for the club's 140 employees rose by £1.3m to more than £9.7m.

Ø Rudgwick Ltd, the parent company of Cardiff City Football Club (Holdings) Ltd, received a management service charge of £583,333 (compared to £300,000 the previous year) from the group.

Ø Rudgwick Ltd is owned and controlled by Cardiff City chairman Sam Hammam, which in turn owns 83% of the club.

Ø A loan advance of £1.68m was provided by Rudgwick Ltd to the club and was "replaced" in full on 15 September 2004. Interest was charged on the loan advance at 6% above bank base rate.

Ø Separate from the loan provided by Rudgwick Ltd, advances totalling £1.4m have been provided by three directors of Cardiff City, with interest being charged at 3% above the base rate.

Ø As at the end of the financial year, CCFC (Holdings) Ltd owed £2.3m to Rudgwick Ltd.