The latest issue of Private Eye casts a stern look at the activities of SISU and Joy Seppla and their management of Coventry City.
The article reads as follows:
The sad demise of the Sky Blues - now a homeless former Premiership club playing League One "home" games in Northampton - has not been reflected in the fortunes of Joy Seppala and Dermot Coleman, the owners of the London-based SISU Capital hedge-fund management group which effectively controls the financially precarious club.
The recently filed accounts for SISU Capital show the chief executive and major shareholder Seppala shared with Coleman £359,432 during 2013 in drawings from their limited partnership interests, compared with £139,000 in 2012 and £145,000 in 2011. This is despite an increase in redemptions from the SISU hedge-funds - as happened in 2011. During 2012, management fees fell because the volume of funds dropped. SISU's fees and earnings by Seppala and Coleman are much reduced since 2007, the year SISU took over Coventry.
Last April SISU changed auditors - KPMG is out, BDO is in. Back in 2011, SISU settled an investigation by HM Revenue & Customs into the company accounts from 2006 to 2008 with a payment of £161,750.
Any outside investors in the SISU-managed ARVO Master Fund would not have been impressed in the history of the Coventry City investment. The Club was forced into administration in March by the Cayman Island hedge fund, owed £10m as a secured creditor for money advanced to the club, as a result of a row with the owners of the Ricoh stadium over the £1m annual rent. ARVO is still backing the latest post-administration owners, Otium Entertainment Group, with a charge over its shares in the club registered last month and signed by Seppala as an ARVO director. But then Otium is in turn controlled by a Cayman limited partnership managed by SISU.
No doubt Seppala enjoys discussing the vicissitudes of football finance with her fellow members of the City Takeover Panel, which exists to ensure that "shareholders are treated fairly, are not denied the opportunity to decide on the merits of a takeover and are afforded equivalent treatment". Just like the Sky Blues fans.