Director of Business Shaun Grady has provided shareholders and supporters with the context behind the Board of Directors’ and Majority Shareholder Paul Barry’s desire to seek fresh future investment for the club.
At Saturday’s shareholder meeting Grady informed those in attendance of the timeframe of when discussions around new investment first took place, as well as the number of parties currently interested in Cambridge United.
“At the end of last year with the deficits that we were experiencing and also looking forward the funding that we think is going to be needed in order to progress and fulfil the promise of Cambridge United, it became clear to the Board and to Paul that we did need to look for fresh additional investment.
“We are very sensitive and conscious that we need investment from the right people, so we haven’t put a for sale sign up on Cambridge United. We were actually approached by two different parties on an unsolicited basis who have been interested in investing in football and had seen Cambridge United as a highly interesting Club to potentially get involved with.
“We are still having ongoing discussions with those two parties and there has also been a third group who spent some time with us. All three of them have been provided with some financial information so they know what they would be investing in. We confirmed with the shareholders in the meeting that right now there are still ongoing discussions with two separate parties.
Grady added: “These are very credible people and if we didn’t think they were credible then simply we wouldn’t be wasting our time. But of course you can never guarantee that something like that would come through.
“It was therefore very helpful that Paul Barry was in attendance at the shareholders meeting and appropriate he received the warm welcome he did for the funding that has kept the Club going, and he answered the questions directly about what would happen if that [fresh investment before June 2019] didn’t come off.
“If we got to a situation where there isn’t fresh investment then Paul would sit down with the Board and together we would look at other avenues. First and foremost though we are keen to explore bringing fresh investment into the Football Club from sensible people.”