One of the most common frustrations among Celtic fans is the lack of accountability in the boardroom, which leads to a lack of meaningful engagement with fans. This includes not sharing any detailed vision for Celtic’s future, or even whether one exists. The vague nothingness purported to be a plan, which has been mentioned by the CEO on multiple occasions, would not be acceptable within any PLC or any serious business for that matter.

This starts from the top. Dermot Desmond’s contempt for any segment of the fan base who do not reflexively tug their forelock and genuflect in obeisance has become a culture within the boardroom. This culture is virulent, infectious and spreads dismissive scorn, arrogance and a pompous superiority amongst all those who spend too long around the boardroom table.

The despondency and depressed resignation amongst fans is mainly attributable to the lack of realistic ways in which Desmond may be challenged within a timeframe not entirely dictated by Mother Nature, or the whims of the heir apparent.

Demond currently owns 34.7% of Celtic’s shares and, as many of you will be aware, the next largest shareholder is Lindsell Train Limited with 14.88%, down from a high of 17.06%. Any group that wants to be in a position to challenge the Desmond dictatorship must acquire that shareholding to mount any realistic rebellion.

Up until now, Lindsell Train have voted in lockstep with Desmond and have raised no public concerns about any of the issues surrounding events at the club or the clear charade of corporate governance.

The Times They Are A Changin’

Nick Train and Michael Lindsell have long been golden boys among fund managers, with Train being the face of the operation. However, their long-term, high-conviction “buy and hold” growth strategy has severely lagged behind the market in recent times. By 2026, his trusts reported the worst performance in their 25-year history, underperforming global indexes for five consecutive years.

Train intentionally avoided the massive US technology stocks driving the market (such as the “Magnificent Seven”). Instead, his heavy exposure to out-of-favour consumer brands (like Diageo and Unilever) and traditional data providers (like LSEG) caused massive relative losses as the market shifted to AI.

Due to this severe underperformance, his £980 million Finsbury Growth and Income Trust was forced to hold a high-stakes investor continuation vote in January 2026. A “no” vote would have resulted in Lindsell Train losing the lucrative mandate to run the fund—effectively removing him as its manager. Train survived the vote, but only after tens of millions of pounds were pulled by jittery investors.

By late 2026, Train had to offer a buyback to purchase up to a fifth of shares back from frustrated investors in the Lindsell Train Investment Trust (LTIT), an offer that was heavily oversubscribed by savers desperate to cash out.

It’s also worth considering a reason they may be so comfortable with Celtic’s corporate governance farce (effectively a family business and only notionally a PLC) is that they face similar criticism themselves. Investment platform titans like Hargreaves Lansdown publicly criticised the firm’s lack of “effective challenge” to Train and co-founder Mike Lindsell. They raised red flags that a tiny team of six fund managers, controlled billions without enough independent oversight, drawing uncomfortable industry parallels to the failed Woodford fund empire.

The Sports Franchise Thesis

The Lindsell Train thesis was not to view sports teams as speculative punts. They actively invested in elite clubs with deeply entrenched, captive global consumer bases and highly valuable intellectual property.

How has that actually borne out?

The strategy has largely failed to generate the significant commercial growth or profit the firm anticipated. While their long-term thesis on “captive consumer audiences” holds true culturally, it has been a demonstrable failure financially, severely destroying value across their three primary sports investments.

The actual performance of the specific sports franchises they have backed shows how this model has broken down:

1. Manchester United

Lindsell Train was historically the largest independent institutional investor in the club, building a peak stake of over 11.6 million shares by 2021.

• The Reality: The stock has consistently underperformed, languishing below its 2012 IPO price of $14 for multi-year stretches. The club suffered escalating debt, massive operational overheads, and a clear requirement for a multi-billion-pound stadium infrastructure overhaul.
• The Outcome: Realising the thesis was broken, Lindsell Train entered a phase of aggressive capitulation. They cut their stake by 13% in early 2025 and slashed another 18% of their holding in late 2025, reducing their position to just 6.4% of Class A shares as they actively offloaded the asset.

2. Juventus FC

Train treated the Italian giants as an “immortal brand” with global intellectual property.

• The Reality: Juventus has been a financial black hole. Due to chronic balance sheet deficits, catastrophic losses from the pandemic, and massive player wage inflation, the club has been forced into relentless, dilutive capital increases.
• The Outcome: Instead of extracting profits, Lindsell Train has had to repeatedly commit cash just to maintain its position. In the €250 million capital increase launched in late 2026, Lindsell Train (now down to a 6.2% stake from a historical high of 11%) had to inject an additional €15.5 million simply to keep their heavily diminished equity from being completely wiped out.

3. Celtic PLC

• The Reality: While Celtic is structurally much more stable than Juventus or Manchester United, its stock is highly illiquid. It does not experience natural growth based on financial metrics, but rather fluctuates on brief trading anomalies or European progression.
• The Outcome: As a recent example, Lindsell Train’s failure to take advantage of the June 2026 peak resulted in a £12.9 million paper loss on their 14.88% stake, locking up nearly £28 million of capital in an illiquid asset at a time when their core funds desperately required that liquidity to battle client redemptions.

Why Do We Care?

The Thesis failed for many reasons unrelated to Celtic, but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground. Even a fund manager with the reputation of Lindsell Train cannot keep losing money. It is effectively the same as the Martin O’Neill situation. Your historic achievements will buy you a period of trust and grace, but if you don’t turn it around, there will be consequences. In this case, that applies even to the fund owners.

The failure of the overall investment strategy for the last five years (an eternity in fund management where performance is measured in quarters) and the Sports Franchise Thesis in particular, adds to the extremely significant pressure on the fund managers to reevaluate and realign their strategy and their holdings.

Celtic, in particular, offers little by way of predictable and foreseeable capital growth for shareholders. And it now seems like the stewardship of Desmond and his minions could have triggered a spiral of financial decline, as top-flight European football becomes elusive at best and a distant memory at worst.

Regardless, the lockstep vote with Desmond is under pressure. The entire shareholding must be under serious scrutiny at this stage. Will there be a consortium of Celtic-minded investors there to act when Train finally concedes to his investors?

As I understand it, that’s exactly what’s happening in the background. Competing groups are trying to put together a block bid for the Lindsell Train shares. An off-market deal to avoid tanking the share price.

If you find yourself unconvinced by any of the above, be assured of this point at least.

In June 2022, Nick Train and Michael Lindsell committed to seven years of further management of the funds. That takes them to ages 70 and 69 respectively.

It is highly unlikely that they will stay beyond that point in June 2029. There is a succession plan in place, but whatever the plan may be, continued losses won’t be part of it. And once your ideological centre has been removed, then more market-sensitive solutions will no doubt be the order of the day.

Let’s hope that sticking to their guns sees them ousted in the short term and offers a consortium (which must ideally include Celtic fans) a realistic way to challenge the despotic rule of Desmond.