Ann Budge reveals how fan ownership will work at Hearts after final £100,000 FoH payment

Ann Budge has outlined her plans for fan ownership at Hearts

Ann Budge has outlined plans for fan ownership at Hearts as she prepares to pass her majority shareholding over to supporters.

Foundation of Hearts will take control of Budge's 75.1 per cent stake in spring when they pay the final £100,000 of the £2.5million she is due.

The Edinburgh businesswoman labelled the handover "an amazing achievement on behalf of the supporters" but stressed that fans will not be running Hearts on a day-to-day basis.

She intends to stay on as chair and chief executive of the club, with the fan-led Foundation group wanting her in place to ensure a seamless transition.

FoH are backed by more than 7,500 members whose monthly donations help fund Hearts to the tune of around £1.4m a year.

They will soon take hold of 75.1 per cent of Hearts' shares from Budge and keep two representatives on the club's board - currently Stuart Wallace and Donald Cumming - but Budge will remain in charge.

She has been repaid £2.4m of the money she used to get Hearts out of administration in 2014. When the final £100,000 arrives, likely to be around April, she will hand over her shares to the Foundation.

"Of the £2.5m, £2.4m was a loan to the supporters - £100,000 was what I paid for the shares," she told BBC Scotland. "That £2.4m has been paid back. When the £100,000 is paid back, that is the point at which we could transfer the share certificate.

"We want to celebrate this. We want to ensure it doesn't create any complexities in the accounts and additional cost. So it's choosing the right point at which it's easy for us to do. Then it's just a matter of choosing a date when everyone can celebrate.

"At the moment, I'm the majority shareholder, the chairman and the chief exec. Once I hand over the share certificate, I will become the second biggest owner because I still retain a fair shareholding, and I will continue to be chairman and chief exec.

"As I keep saying, the key thing is that the running of the business must not be interrupted. We must keep running it as a business.

"A lot of people have shares in public companies, but that doesn't mean they run them. There is a board of directors who run the club, there is an executive team who run the day-to-day operations.

"It is the entity of FoH who are protecting and holding the shares on behalf of the shareholders. It doesn't mean they are going to run the club.

"I've said repeatedly that fan ownership does not mean fans running the club. We can't have that. If that happens, I genuinely believe it would be a disaster and it would undermine everything that we've done."

Sceptics who questioned Hearts' fan ownership model have been silenced by the number of supporters subscribing to the Foundation. Budge admitted taking a lot of satisfaction from the entire project.

"I'm delighted because a number of people said 'this will never work' and clearly it has worked," she said. "I said I would put the money up for the club but this is a joint effort. I'm doing it as a supporter on behalf of the supporters.

"I said, 'I'll put up the capital we need to make this happen but then we need the supporters to back the club with working capital for a couple of years' because we had debts and all sorts of things we had to do. That was the first traunche. In rough terms, let's say £2.5m.

"The intention was that they would then pay me back. As everyone knows, I went to them with a suggestion that perhaps they would like to contribute to a new stand and we would put everything else on the back burner."

Budge has overseen a transformation on and off the field at Tynecastle Park. She helped build the new main stand - the final cost of which is expected to exceed £22m - whilst the team have returned to the Scottish Premiership, qualified for Europe and reached a Scottish Cup final during her tenure.

She initially only expected to be in control for three years but, six years later, the 71-year-old has no intention of retiring just yet. "The plan was that, at most, I'd be here for three years. I did write into it, 'but longer if needed'," she recalled.

"Obviously, the way things went, deciding to build a new stand etc, that lengthened everything by a couple of years. I did not think I would still be here six years on but I'm not complaining.

"I've always said I'll be here until the point at which I feel I can't add any value. That will be good because that will mean everything else is working really well or, and this is the one difference, the point at which the supporters say, 'we don't want you any more'.

"If the shareholders want change, they can indeed make that happen at board level [through FoH]. If that happens, so be it. Other than that, it will be the point at which I no longer feel I'm the one to take this club forward."

Supporters have criticised Budge with Hearts bottom of the league and fighting relegation. She sacked manager Craig Levein in October before appointing Daniel Stendel in his place, and admitted the last few months have been her most difficult.

"No matter what kind of business you are in, you are always going to have good times and bad times. I'm long enough in the tooth not to let the bad times get me down, as long as you genuinely believe you can get out of that and improve things.

"The last few months have undoubtedly been challenging. The first couple of years, I'm not for a second going to suggest it was easy. It was very different because I was coming into something I knew was broken. We had an idea of what we had to do to try and get it back on course. That was all business-orientated, really.

"The problems we have now have been on the field and, yes, they are difficult to cope with because I don't have all the answers. I'm not saying I've got the answers to all the business problems either but I've got a better chance of addressing them."

Budge is determined not to be distracted by public opinion. "Anybody who is in that leadership position knows they have to take the bad with the good and people are looking for decision-making," she said.

"The key thing for me is to try and keep steady. Don't get dragged along by extreme views on either side. I think it's a matter of trying to just keep sensible."

The final phase of the stand, completing the second floor, should be done later this year or early in 2021. Budge explained why the overall cost of Tynecastle's redevelopment work has almost doubled.

"We got various quotes for the stand and they ranged: 'If you only do this, it will cost you X. If you want to do something better, it will cost you Y.' We started out with a very modest plan.

"Looking at plans, we had so much more capacity than we realised. You still had changing rooms and other rooms but they were enormous in real terms. When you looked at what would be the size of the changing rooms, it was: 'Good heavens. How are we ever going to talk to the players in a room this size?'

"These things weren't apparent to me or others but then you saw the scale of the new things and we thought, 'right, we've got to do things a wee bit differently'.

"We took the view that we would do them a bit better as well. We could have cut corners but we decided to do this once and do it properly."