We've only gone and done it! A club statement has announce that the hostile takeover attempt by Morton House has now been concluded. Rochdale are a Fan Owned and Fan-Led Club!
The club has gone through horrendous off-field issues, caused by former directors selling their shares in the club to Morton House who, led by Andrew Curran and involving Matthew Southall, made huge bids to hoover up shares to gain an overall majority and gain control of Rochdale AFC.
A monumental effort from the new board of directors and the Dale Trust managed to defend this and force Morton House to pull out from their attempt at gaining full ownership but because of legal issues over shares transfers and purchases, Morton House filed a High Court Claim against certain individuals of the Football Club and the Trust but a statement from the club today has announced that proceedings will be dismissed with no further legal action being taken!
Morton House has also agreed to transfer it's full shareholding of 212.895 shares to a Board of Directors Consortium. The transfer of this beneficial shareholding has obtained EFL apporoval with all board members already having passed the Owners and Directors Test (OADT) previously when they joined the board.
We at RochdaleAFC.com, would like to thank everybody who has contributed to the legal battle fund, whether that be Dale supporters, family members, fans of other supporters or anyone else. Anyone who has shared articles, liked articles and generally got our message out there to the wider football community because the help the club and the Trust has received has been absolutely invaluable!
The work of the Board of Directors and the Dale Suporters Trust has been absolutely incredible and the fanbase will be eternally grateful and this needs to be the platform that we all build from to get behind the players, the manager, whoever that may be, and the board to try and get give ourselves as much chance of being successful on the pitch, as well as off it.
The full statement can be found by following this link:
https://www.rochdaleafc.co.uk/news/2022/august/statement_26.08.22/