Chairman Nicholas Randall says owner Evangelos Marinakis remains fully committed to Nottingham Forest, with no intention to sell the club.
The shipping magnate, who also owns Greek giants Olympiacos, took over the Reds in May 2017, with Randall appointed to his post at the same time.
Marinakis has put in large sums of money with the ambition of overseeing promotion to the Premier League - a dream which has yet to materialise.
Forest, though, continue to run up substantial losses, with their most recent set of accounts showing a £31.9m operating loss for the period from April 2019 to May 2020.
Randall says the Reds are on a par with other Championship clubs in terms of their finances, but points to Marinakis recently converting more than £20m of loans into shares as a sign of his commitment.
Discussing the accounts in a Q&A with the Nottingham Forest Supporters’ Trust, he said: “Obviously they have been partly hit by covid, but not the full picture, so it’s qualified to some extent.
“They show we were on the verge of record turnover. That was all positive and encouraging.
“The reality is they are not an unusual set of accounts for a club in our position. We are a big club in the Championship that needs, and its fans deserve, to be competing in terms of expenditure and investment in a way which enables us to push for promotion.
“This is a set of accounts which is typical for a club in that position.
“One point I would make is that the owner has recently written down the £20m debt to equity.
“I appreciate some have said, ‘well, that’s tidying up’.
“In very simple terms what it means is there isn’t the £20m of debt hanging around the club. It’s been invested into equity.
“In other words, in order to get anything back, the owner would have to be able to show that the valuation of shares has gone up.
“Why is it important? In the short run, if you take a very narrow snapshot, the cynic might say, ‘he’s not going to get that money back anyway, the club isn’t going to pay off those loans, so there’s no real change, it’s just an accounting technique’.
“That, I think, is very unfair.
“The crucial reality is, whenever a club is sold - because lots of these clubs make losses - the way in which an owner extracts value, when they wish to sell, is by saying, ‘I’ve got all these loans attached to this club, you need to pay me a price which enables me to agree to give up those loans’.
“The key aspect of what the owner has done and what it illustrates to fans is, the owner is totally committed to the club. He is not looking to sell it under any circumstances. That is the position we are in.
“We are fortunate to have an owner who is totally committed to us.
“One of the key issues which comes up in EFL discussions is how we have a set of rules which require owners not to load their clubs with debt, but to do exactly what Mr Marinakis has done on this particular occasion.
“I believe that is a significant element of the whole picture.”
