Review of the Registered Clubs Industry in NSW - Clubs NSW

11 Making it easier for clubs to amalgamate
– Identifying the full extent of assets and liabilities of the other club. This is
especially important for parent clubs as they will assume the other club’s
business.
– Checking the compliance of the clubs involved in relation to the Registered
Clubs Act and other related legislation. An example of this would be checking
for building compliance with relevant standards and regulations.
– Modelling the viability of the amalgamated club under various scenarios to
consider the risks and possible impacts of amalgamation, particularly in the
case of a parent-other model where the parent is ‘saving’ a struggling other
club.
– Determining how much assistance the parent/stronger club should provide or
can afford to provide to the other/struggling club prior to and after the
amalgamation.
Operational considerations that the clubs need to negotiate, such as:
– the business and management structure of the amalgamated club
– the level of autonomy of the other club, including what services, amenities and
traditions will remain
– how memberships at the other club will be absorbed into the parent club and
what benefits will remain or change
– a charter of separate accounts for the other club’s core property/activities, to
allow for the monitoring of the preservation of the other club’s main purpose
post-amalgamation
– the treatment of major assets and core property 204
– impacts on employment and existing staff, particularly for the other club
– the strategic future direction of the amalgamated club and how this will impact
on the individual clubs in the amalgamation
– under what circumstances and after how long the parent club will consider or
be allowed to close down the dissolved club, and any required consultation
process.
The availability of this step-by-step guide should help clubs to better understand and
negotiate the complexity of the process. The guide may also make it cheaper for
smaller clubs with limited resources because they would not need to rely so heavily
on consultants and/or would be able to manage their consultants more effectively.
204 As defined in the Registered Clubs Act.
182 IPART Review of the Registered Clubs Industry in NSW