The FA has taken a one-off £10M ($14.2M) hit because of its redundancy and restructuring program but "claims its latest accounts show it is better positioned for the future than it has been for decades," according to Owen Gibson of the London GUARDIAN. During a period "in which a string of senior executives left the FA" and a restructuring program resulted in 100 redundancies, the £10M one-off cost left the organization with a £12.1M ($17.2M) loss. Once one-off items are stripped out, the FA "recorded an underlying profit after tax" of £3M ($4.3M) in '14-15, down from £5.1M the previous year. It "was still able to reinvest a record amount into the game" -- £117M ($167M) compared with £115M in '13-14 -- and Group Finance Dir Andrew Crean said that the FA "had all but achieved its target" of £30M ($42.7M) in annual savings to reinvest in different areas. Crean is "confident about the sale of Club Wembley debentures" when it came up for renewal in '17 -- long identified as "a crunch point for the FA's finances." With UEFA "on the verge of signing a new TV contract for England matches" with Sky and ITV on the FA's behalf that will improve on the existing one that runs to '18, Crean said that it "could make decisions about its future from a position of strength" (GUARDIAN, 1/20).
