theresa towle
5th January 2004, 12:18
This is the full version of the article written by Michael Crick for the December 2003 edition of United Shareholder.
HOW THE AGM PLOT WAS HATCHED
Michael Crick investigates whether John Magnier’s agents tried to hijack the United AGM
It was early September when I first learned the corporate investigators Kroll were interested in Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United. I came across a group of TV producers who claimed to be researching an investigative documentary into the United manager. It soon became clear this was merely a pretext to get people to talk, and they were really gathering material for the Irish multimillionaire John Magnier, to defend him against Ferguson’s planned lawsuit over breeding rights to their horse Rock Of Gibraltar. As a broadcaster it disturbed me that people should use TV work as a ‘front’ for other activities.
Spin forward ten weeks to Friday 14 November. As I arrived for the Manchester United AGM at Old Trafford, the SU Vice Chair Theresa Towle pointed out an attractive young lady called Tayla Goodman. She had just told Theresa and another SU colleague, Margaret Orhan, how she was an actress from Nottingham who’d been converted to United by her ex-boyfriend. “She was strikingly good-looking,” recalls Margaret’s son Chris, “but one or two things she said didn’t strike true.” Goodman sought advice from SU on AGM procedure, as she wanted to ask about the conflict of interest between Ferguson and his son Jason in United transfers.
What an astonishingly bold question, I thought, for an inexperienced United shareholder. My immediate reaction was that Goodman was working for a national paper.
Indeed, as the meeting progressed, we heard a string of bold questions. First, a young man called Rupert Harris asked why payments to agents weren’t disclosed in the accounts. How could the board ensure that we didn’t suffer a Harry Kewell situation where much of Liverpool’s £7 million payment for the player had gone to agents?
Then came that question about the conflict of interest between Ferguson father and son. Strangely though, it wasn’t asked by Tayla Goodman, the actress who’d spoken to Theresa and Margaret, but another young woman (called Jane Kemlo, I later learned).
And when Goodman did get to the microphone, about half an hour later, she instead asked why United had failed to buy both Ronaldinho and Damian Duff over the summer. “Who is responsible for club transfer policy?” she demanded.
Finally, in the same vein, the last-but-one question of the morning came from a lively Londoner called Andy Terrington. He wasn’t satisfied with the answer to his colleague on agents’ commission. United “should be leading the way with transparency over these deals,” he said, to great applause. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
As the meeting broke up the SU press officer Oliver Houston spotted a stray piece of paper on a chair where he’d seen woman scribbling furiously on a notepad throughout the meeting. All four questions were neatly typed on the A4 sheet, almost word-for-word as they’d been asked, together with a fifth question about who at United was responsible for enforcing FA rules on drug-testing. That question had presumably been abandoned after Sir Roy Gardner’s announcement that discussion of the Rio Ferdinand affair was prohibited. Yet the mislaid document suggested a degree of planning and organisation of which SU itself would have been proud.
Yet who were they? It puzzled me. Once I got home I began investigating the questioners. Company records revealed they’d bought their shares only a few days before, in small batches of 100 or less. More significant, Tayla Goodman and Andy Terrington were fellow directors of three London companies with curious intelligence links – The Group Global Intelligence Services Ltd., Spy Cafe Ltd. and Spy Tours Ltd. An internet search also showed both Goodman and Terrington had done uncover work as journalists – Goodman for the Sunday Mirror, and Terrington for a Channel 4 series called Sleepers. Rupert Harris also turned out to be a TV producer.
Yet when she was phoned a few days later, Tayla Goodman was extremely unhelpful. It was pure coincidence, she claimed, that her colleague Andy Terrington had also been at the AGM: there had been no collusion between them, she insisted. Terrington himself wouldn’t return my calls.
A former TV colleague of Terrington’s suggested I should contact a close friend of his called Ben Hamilton. Hamilton said he knew about the AGM operation, but claimed it merely related to a campaign called Clean Up Football, set up by Terrington, whom he said was a keen Arsenal fan. Hamilton suggested I should consult their website at www.cleanupfootball.co.uk
The site was pretty insubstantial – a single page of just 128 words appealing for people to email any allegations about sleaze or drugs in football. If the AGM questions had really been part of this campaign, why not say so when they got up and spoke? Why were they being so cagey? And why hadn’t Clean Up Football sought any media publicity? Enquiries showed the website had only been registered on 2 November, less than two weeks before the AGM. It had all the air of a front, a good excuse if Terrington and his friends were ever rumbled, as they now were.
Nor had Ben Hamilton been totally frank. I soon discovered that out that he, too, had been in the AGM team, but also the crucial fact that Hamilton often works for the corporate investigators Kroll. A week after the AGM it was publicly confirmed that since late August John Magnier has been employing Kroll to gather information on Alex Ferguson. Everything suddenly clicked into place. When I confronted Hamilton he admitted sometimes working for Kroll but denied his presence and that of his friends had anything to do with the company.
When I finally spoke to Andy Terrington he argued that the whole thing had been an effort to rustle up football stories for his television work. The man who’d demanded “transparency” at the AGM now seemed curiously reluctant to say how many people had been in his team at Old Trafford. He did, however, put me in contact with the second woman questioner, Jane Kemlo, who, like Tayla Goodman, is also actress. Kemlo claimed the AGM team was merely a group of friends from the Enterprise pub in Chalk Farm, who genuinely wanted to clean up football. The trip to Manchester had all been “a bit of a jamboree really,” she said, “a bit of an excuse to have a fun day out”. I couldn’t hide my scepticism, especially when Kemlo tried to make out she was a United fan. So who scored our goals in the 1999 European Cup final? She couldn’t say.
Terrington and Hamilton’s team had spared no expense. They’d flown up to Manchester by plane and originally hoped to stay at the top-class Malmaison hotel until told it was full. Still, they’d all enjoyed an expensive dinner together at Manchester’s trendy new restaurant, Le Mont, and then a good lunch immediately after the AGM. And Jane Kemlo confirmed that they’d planned the trip expecting that Ferguson himself would attend the AGM and take questions, just as he had in 2002. When they learned Sir Alex wasn’t coming this time, Terrington and his friends pressed ahead anyway.
Quite what Terrington or his clients really gained from this job at the AGM is hard to fathom. The board brushed off their questions with ease, though the sparks might have flown had Ferguson turned up and been grilled on these matters himself.
“They clearly stood out, “ says Paddy Harverson, the United communications director. “We were puzzled by what they were up to, but we don’t feel overly disturbed by it. They didn’t appear to have achieved anything.”
Yet I think Sir Alex and every United shareholder should be very disturbed about what happened. Officials at Old Trafford should worry about Magnier’s refusal to deny he was involved – given 24 hours to respond, his English spokesman merely came back and said ‘no comment’.
The episode is an illustration of how far Magnier is prepared to go to win his highly-public legal battle with Sir Alex. The AGM operation involved at least six people and considerable planning; it must also have cost several thousand pounds. John Magnier seems willing to spare no effort or expense in seeking every morsel he can on Ferguson’s professional record, as well as every snippet on Sir Alex’s spending habits and private life. In the long term that could be hugely damaging to both Sir Alex and United.
Michael Crick
HOW THE AGM PLOT WAS HATCHED
Michael Crick investigates whether John Magnier’s agents tried to hijack the United AGM
It was early September when I first learned the corporate investigators Kroll were interested in Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United. I came across a group of TV producers who claimed to be researching an investigative documentary into the United manager. It soon became clear this was merely a pretext to get people to talk, and they were really gathering material for the Irish multimillionaire John Magnier, to defend him against Ferguson’s planned lawsuit over breeding rights to their horse Rock Of Gibraltar. As a broadcaster it disturbed me that people should use TV work as a ‘front’ for other activities.
Spin forward ten weeks to Friday 14 November. As I arrived for the Manchester United AGM at Old Trafford, the SU Vice Chair Theresa Towle pointed out an attractive young lady called Tayla Goodman. She had just told Theresa and another SU colleague, Margaret Orhan, how she was an actress from Nottingham who’d been converted to United by her ex-boyfriend. “She was strikingly good-looking,” recalls Margaret’s son Chris, “but one or two things she said didn’t strike true.” Goodman sought advice from SU on AGM procedure, as she wanted to ask about the conflict of interest between Ferguson and his son Jason in United transfers.
What an astonishingly bold question, I thought, for an inexperienced United shareholder. My immediate reaction was that Goodman was working for a national paper.
Indeed, as the meeting progressed, we heard a string of bold questions. First, a young man called Rupert Harris asked why payments to agents weren’t disclosed in the accounts. How could the board ensure that we didn’t suffer a Harry Kewell situation where much of Liverpool’s £7 million payment for the player had gone to agents?
Then came that question about the conflict of interest between Ferguson father and son. Strangely though, it wasn’t asked by Tayla Goodman, the actress who’d spoken to Theresa and Margaret, but another young woman (called Jane Kemlo, I later learned).
And when Goodman did get to the microphone, about half an hour later, she instead asked why United had failed to buy both Ronaldinho and Damian Duff over the summer. “Who is responsible for club transfer policy?” she demanded.
Finally, in the same vein, the last-but-one question of the morning came from a lively Londoner called Andy Terrington. He wasn’t satisfied with the answer to his colleague on agents’ commission. United “should be leading the way with transparency over these deals,” he said, to great applause. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”
As the meeting broke up the SU press officer Oliver Houston spotted a stray piece of paper on a chair where he’d seen woman scribbling furiously on a notepad throughout the meeting. All four questions were neatly typed on the A4 sheet, almost word-for-word as they’d been asked, together with a fifth question about who at United was responsible for enforcing FA rules on drug-testing. That question had presumably been abandoned after Sir Roy Gardner’s announcement that discussion of the Rio Ferdinand affair was prohibited. Yet the mislaid document suggested a degree of planning and organisation of which SU itself would have been proud.
Yet who were they? It puzzled me. Once I got home I began investigating the questioners. Company records revealed they’d bought their shares only a few days before, in small batches of 100 or less. More significant, Tayla Goodman and Andy Terrington were fellow directors of three London companies with curious intelligence links – The Group Global Intelligence Services Ltd., Spy Cafe Ltd. and Spy Tours Ltd. An internet search also showed both Goodman and Terrington had done uncover work as journalists – Goodman for the Sunday Mirror, and Terrington for a Channel 4 series called Sleepers. Rupert Harris also turned out to be a TV producer.
Yet when she was phoned a few days later, Tayla Goodman was extremely unhelpful. It was pure coincidence, she claimed, that her colleague Andy Terrington had also been at the AGM: there had been no collusion between them, she insisted. Terrington himself wouldn’t return my calls.
A former TV colleague of Terrington’s suggested I should contact a close friend of his called Ben Hamilton. Hamilton said he knew about the AGM operation, but claimed it merely related to a campaign called Clean Up Football, set up by Terrington, whom he said was a keen Arsenal fan. Hamilton suggested I should consult their website at www.cleanupfootball.co.uk
The site was pretty insubstantial – a single page of just 128 words appealing for people to email any allegations about sleaze or drugs in football. If the AGM questions had really been part of this campaign, why not say so when they got up and spoke? Why were they being so cagey? And why hadn’t Clean Up Football sought any media publicity? Enquiries showed the website had only been registered on 2 November, less than two weeks before the AGM. It had all the air of a front, a good excuse if Terrington and his friends were ever rumbled, as they now were.
Nor had Ben Hamilton been totally frank. I soon discovered that out that he, too, had been in the AGM team, but also the crucial fact that Hamilton often works for the corporate investigators Kroll. A week after the AGM it was publicly confirmed that since late August John Magnier has been employing Kroll to gather information on Alex Ferguson. Everything suddenly clicked into place. When I confronted Hamilton he admitted sometimes working for Kroll but denied his presence and that of his friends had anything to do with the company.
When I finally spoke to Andy Terrington he argued that the whole thing had been an effort to rustle up football stories for his television work. The man who’d demanded “transparency” at the AGM now seemed curiously reluctant to say how many people had been in his team at Old Trafford. He did, however, put me in contact with the second woman questioner, Jane Kemlo, who, like Tayla Goodman, is also actress. Kemlo claimed the AGM team was merely a group of friends from the Enterprise pub in Chalk Farm, who genuinely wanted to clean up football. The trip to Manchester had all been “a bit of a jamboree really,” she said, “a bit of an excuse to have a fun day out”. I couldn’t hide my scepticism, especially when Kemlo tried to make out she was a United fan. So who scored our goals in the 1999 European Cup final? She couldn’t say.
Terrington and Hamilton’s team had spared no expense. They’d flown up to Manchester by plane and originally hoped to stay at the top-class Malmaison hotel until told it was full. Still, they’d all enjoyed an expensive dinner together at Manchester’s trendy new restaurant, Le Mont, and then a good lunch immediately after the AGM. And Jane Kemlo confirmed that they’d planned the trip expecting that Ferguson himself would attend the AGM and take questions, just as he had in 2002. When they learned Sir Alex wasn’t coming this time, Terrington and his friends pressed ahead anyway.
Quite what Terrington or his clients really gained from this job at the AGM is hard to fathom. The board brushed off their questions with ease, though the sparks might have flown had Ferguson turned up and been grilled on these matters himself.
“They clearly stood out, “ says Paddy Harverson, the United communications director. “We were puzzled by what they were up to, but we don’t feel overly disturbed by it. They didn’t appear to have achieved anything.”
Yet I think Sir Alex and every United shareholder should be very disturbed about what happened. Officials at Old Trafford should worry about Magnier’s refusal to deny he was involved – given 24 hours to respond, his English spokesman merely came back and said ‘no comment’.
The episode is an illustration of how far Magnier is prepared to go to win his highly-public legal battle with Sir Alex. The AGM operation involved at least six people and considerable planning; it must also have cost several thousand pounds. John Magnier seems willing to spare no effort or expense in seeking every morsel he can on Ferguson’s professional record, as well as every snippet on Sir Alex’s spending habits and private life. In the long term that could be hugely damaging to both Sir Alex and United.
Michael Crick