ACC has dropped court action against Terry Serepisos' Century City Football, backers of the Wellington Phoenix, after a cheque for $261,000 of outstanding levies was dispatched by the club today.Accountant Brett Whyte and club communications managers John
ACC has dropped court action against Terry Serepisos’ Century City Football, backers of the Wellington Phoenix, after a cheque for $261,000 of outstanding levies was dispatched by the club today.
Accountant Brett Whyte and club communications managers John Mitchell broke the news at a press conference this afternoon, held in Century City Development’s 14th floor offices on Hunter Street in Wellington.
Mr Whyte was brought in six months ago, at the request of former Wellington Phoenix chief executive Terry Pignata, to work with the club on its levy issues.
He told reporters that an instalment plan had been set up to settle the outstanding amount but that the club had fallen behind in its payments, triggering the liquidation application announced today.
Mr Whyte said that only one payment –about $65,000 due at the end of August – had been missed.
The full amount would have been paid by Christmas under the instalment plan.
He was unable to explain why the payment had been missed – saying only that it was due to the “vagaries of cash flow” in the current environment – or how the club managed to settle the full amount today.
“All Brett’s mandated to talk about is the ACC situation,” Mr Mitchell interjected.
The outstanding payments are understood to have dated back several years.
ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards, speaking to media in the lobby of the Hunter St tower after the press conference confirmed that the cheque had been received and court action withdrawn.
In a written statement, distributed by Mr Edwards, ACC acting chief executive Dr Keith McLea said that it was unfortunate that the threat of legal action was needed to achieve the payment.
He said that Mr Serepisos had known about the pending court action for "quite some time" and that ACC was prepared to pursue further legal action if additional levies were not paid.
Mr Serepisos was unable for comment this afternoon.
What should the Phoenix pay?
Mr Whyte said that future negotiations with ACC would focus on achieving a “more effective” levy rate for the football club.
“We’ve never said we don’t want to pay our fair share... [but] we don’t feel that that’s being achieved at the moment.”
He suggested that the 22-player team should pay about $150,000, including administration costs, rather than the $300,000 that the team estimated it would be charged in the current year.
As the Wellington Phoenix also compete across the Tasman, they must fork out an additional $80,000 to $100,000 to cover insurance rules set down by the Football Federation of Australia.
Mr Whyte said that claims made by the team averaged $80,000 a year – which, including an 80% whole-of-life rehabilitation mark-up, left a total average annual bill to ACC of about $140,000.
ACC spokesman Laurie Edwards responded that levies could not be based on claims expensed in a single year.
"Most people would pay a zero premium because most people don't make claims in a year - levies need to be based on a much longer time frame than that."
He said that there were ways for businesses to reduce their levies and welcomed future discussions with the club, but noted that ACC needed to be consistent with how it handled levy payments.
