Chairman Mike O’Leary says Marcus Evans was a demanding seller in the long negotiation which led to the Gamechanger 20 Ltd takeover of the Blues and director Ed Schwartz believes the Blues' former owner deserves some credit for making sure the club was put into good hands when he sold up earlier this year after just over 13 years at Portman Road.
Evans retained a stake in Gamechanger, which owns 87.5 per cent of the club, which O’Leary says is not at a fixed level, and also retained some land at Bent Lane.
"There [have been] a number of moves in the way the funding has happened over the period since the acquisition was made,” the chairman said at last night’s fans’ forum.
"Marcus’s shareholding in GC20 has fluctuated between five per cent and probably three per cent. It’s currently probably at the lower end of that range. It does change month-on-month depending on how the funding is handled.
"I don’t actually think Marcus has been to a game since the deal closed. I certainly haven’t seen him. He still has a box which he is at liberty to use but I don’t think he’s used it.
"He’s a very busy chap, he’s all over the world running his other businesses, so in some ways I’m not surprised by that. He doesn’t have to be here to do anything now.
"But I think pretty much, he still feels he’s a fan and wanted that minority stake and he still has it. So, that’s where we are.”
Schwartz, who was at Portman Road for the first time yesterday, was asked whether he and the other current owners would take similar care when the time finally comes for them to move the club on to someone else.
"It’s a great question and something I started thinking about today as we were going through some of our detailed plans,” he reflected.
"Our goal is to build something, I’m sure you’re sick of me saying it already, that has long-term sustainable success.
"And part of that plan is to make sure that we have a good succession plan and that however long we own this team for, is it going to be 10 years, 15 years, however long it is, that we position it so someone could take over and continue with those plans.
"Our objective, our hope, our goal is to do what I think Marcus Evans did. I know he might not have been as popular an owner at the end, but I hope at least he gets some credit for, and maybe I’m biased in saying this, but in selecting us to acquire the team as opposed to someone else.
"Because he did say, and the negotiations too many, many months, it was a very tough negotiation, but he really did, and Mike can speak to this better than me, he really did care about the club and he wanted it in good hands.”
O’Leary concurred: "I can absolutely vouch for that. He made it very clear that coming up with the purchase price alone simply didn’t cut it.
"We had to provide him with evidence that we had resource that would allow us not only to buy the club from him for whatever valuation we agreed, but we had sufficient working capital available to us to take the club forward and we had a managerial group that had experience and was able to manage the club successfully and would be able to equally take it forward.
"He was a pretty demanding seller and Ed is quite right, the negotiation was lengthy, it was sometimes very tough, but he drove a hard bargain, but you would wouldn’t you?
"But at the end of it all, everyone came out of it feeling that it was OK. We all got the deal we wanted. He got the deal he wanted and we’re very, very comfortable with where we are.”