Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is in the final stages of acquiring a majority stake in one of Italy’s top football clubs, Inter Milan, according to reports.
Once finalized, Inter Milan will be the second football club with a high global profile the fund has acquired in 2021 after taking control of Newcastle United in the English Premiere League.
With Inter Milan, The PIF is reportedly seizing on an opportunity to acquire a blue chip European football club in financial distress. A report in the International Business Times says the price tag will be around $1 billion for a controlling stake.
“It is well known that the Chinese owners, the Suning Holdings Group which acquired the soccer team in June 2016 have been actively looking for an investor to join them since 2019 to absorb some of the pressure,” the IBT writes. “The Chinese owner’s control 70% of the team shares, and under their leadership Inter did well as a team winning the national league in 2020. However, Inter did very poorly financially and lost $320 million dollars just in 2020-2021. As of now, Inter Milan continues to lose about $15 million dollars per month and despite winning the scudetto (the national league) last year, it was forced to sell two of its best players, Belgian striker Romelu Lukaku and Moroccan Achraf Hakimi, allowing the Chinese owners to recoup $150 million.”
The PIF’s deep pockets could make fans of Inter Milan happy. The PIF has roughly $400 billion under management with investment across 13 sectors.
