Sole 24 Ore: Investcorp’s name re-emerges as Cardinale seeks investment in Milan

Another report has emerged this morning suggesting that AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale is looking for an investment of capital from the Middle East.

After the news reported by Repubblica on the trip to Bahrain by Cardinale and Giorgio Furlani, Il Sole 24 Ore have also suggested that the Milan ownership are actively looking for investors from overseas.

The journalist Carlo Festa published an update in the newspaper, claiming that Cardinale been very busy in the last month in the search for new potential investors in Milan, American investors and investors from the Persian Gulf area.

This is why Investcorp – a Bahrain-based fund that just over a year ago seemed to be the chosen ones to buy the club – have reappeared as a potential candidate amid the opportunity to invest in the Rossoneri.

“The objective would be to provide additional capital to be injected at the top of the AC Milan control chain alongside that already paid by other subscribers to the fund set up by RedBird,” Festa writes.

This explains the trip of Cardinale and Furlani to Dubai (where a club HQ was opened), Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Bahrain which took place between the end of October and the beginning of November.

With a vendor loan of €600m (with an interest rate of 7%) to be repaid in two years to Elliott Management, Cardinale’s search for capital for Milan has not stopped and will not stop in the near future.

Indeed, Festa adds: “It is continuing in a more active way than usual: the objective would be to be able to repay part of the debt to the Singer family fund before maturity, not to mention that some of the current shareholders of the RedBird fund may want to exit ahead of time and monetise the investment.”

Sources close to the club revealed to the newspaper that a practice of this type is normal administration for a fund like RedBird, always looking for potential investors especially in the Persian Gulf area.