Absolutely and I agree on that but that £9M that they paid doesn't just vanish.
It does. Kinda.
If I sell you a magic bean for £10. You no longer have £10 but you do have a bean nominally worth £10. The
actual value of the bean is a moot point now. You have the bean, you do not have the £10. You can tell your bank manager you have a bean worth £10, you can include it in your accounts at whatever value you like but the fact of the matter is you are £10 cash down and £x (non fixed) assets up.
Your bean might never, ever realize a value from this point. You could lose it, it could be stolen, it could turn out to be a fake, it could f
uck it's ACL, or it could sit on your books until the end of time. Obviously there is no such thing as magic beans so while your assets list might well show a bean worth a tenner, it is irrelevant, it is a nominal sum of money.
You still do not have £10 at any stage after you bought the bean. Regardless what your accounts say, and regardless what your bank manager thinks. You
might be able to leverage your bean, but if you do, you would run the risk of losing it.
Now, if you sell the bean, for ANY amount, that amount is additional cash coming into your pocket. You did not have it, you sold the bean, then you did have it. A 'nominal' amount will move on the balance sheet under 'assets', disappear, and a real amount will arrive in the 'cash at hand' (unless it is swallowed by the bank manager for your overdraft).
That is what is happening here. A fake, made up number will drop off their balance sheet (the bit that does not mean a great deal anyway) and £12 million in cash will land in whatever bit of their accounts they send it to (paying off debt, sitting as cash etc etc). A fake number drops away, replaced by a real number somewhere else!