[Uni-verse] Problem Urgent

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi all,

I've been going over all details the past hours with Angela. The  
planning as we've made for 2004-2006 was based on how to realistically  
cover the other 50% for this project, but the total revenues of the  
Foundation is not scheduled to be much more, certainly not this year.

With such a limited cashflow, the projected payments were absolutely  
essential for us to be able to do the necessary investments. Or to  
recap, we expected the following payment schedule:

month 1: half of 85% of 50%
month 7: half of 85% of 50%
month 19: 15% of 50%

with an identical payment schedule repeated for the second 18 month  
period.

This really is the minimum acceptable schedule for us... I was already  
intended to discuss next week whether the larger partners would be  
potentially willing to accept a 'consortium fund', where some money  
will be put in to cover variable expenses for the dissemination  
workpackage.

When the above 85% will go down to 26.6%, it will mean we'll have to  
pre-finance over 40k euro extra over a period of 1.5 year. If that's  
been correctly interpreted by me, I'm sorry to already announce I can  
not sign next week.

So, I think we now have two choices:

1) Go back to the EU to restore the original 85% prepayment (Sweden  
wont go bankrupt, indeed!)
You could put the highest pressure possible on them, because they were  
the ones who changed this last minute. When this causes a 2-3 month  
delay, so be it. I already booked the ticket and hotel for next week,  
so we can still do the kick-off and start initial preparations.

2) Internally only, the bigger partners in the consortium can agree on  
accepting 22% instead of 26.67%. The amount of money this frees up is  
sufficient to pay the BF according the originally agreed schedule.
Question of course remains whether this would be even accepted by the  
EU.

Regards,

-Ton-


On Tuesday, Jan 27, 2004, at 22:55 Europe/Amsterdam, Gert Svensson  
wrote:

> I have received the contract from the commission for us to sign.
> There is however an unforeseen problem in the contract.
> The pre financing is 26.67 % instead of normally 80 %.
> This would mean that we have to wait longer for proper financing in  
> the project.
> This is no big problem for us but what do you say about this?
>
> I called the project officer immediately and he claimed this was done
> because if the bad financial situation at KTH.  This seems quite absurd
> as we are a part of the Swedish government. Country of Sweden going  
> bankruptcy??
>
> Anyway the situation seems to be that we cannot change this
> without further delay in the start of the project.
>
> Please let me know your comments!
>
> Best Regards
> Gert
>
> _______________________________________________
> Uni-verse mailing list
> Uni-verse@blender.org
> http://www.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/uni-verse
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation ton@blender.org  
http://www.blender.org