Sell on news. The golden rule of the transfer market always works better and with fewer uncertainties than offside. The conclusion of the negotiating marathon that led to the transfer of Rome football passed in the night from James Pallotta to Dan Friedkin. After an upward start, the yellow and red club's stock took the downward path with losses of more than 3 percent. The decline is largely linked to end of speculative appeal fueled by the hope of an upward auction.
On the contrary, after a long push and pull, Friedkin, one of the main Toyota dealers in the USA, reached the finish line with an operation worth a total of 591 million euro to acquire the 86,6% held through the Neep Roma holding plus another 3,3% controlled directly at a price of 0,1165 euro per share. Friedkin is now required to launch a mandatory public offer on the club's outstanding shares (13,4% of the share capital).
The Giallorossi club thus passes from a US entrepreneur with strong real estate interests to a tycoon matching successes in the auto trade (exclusively check out sales in 5 states through 154 retailers) to leisure investments which brought him to position 504 in the Forbes ranking of millionaires thanks to investments in luxury resorts, entertainment, golf events and safaris in Africa. Married and father of four, he has also worked in cinema as executive producer of “The Square”, winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2017, the film about Paul Getty, and “The Mule”, by Clint Eastwood. Will he be able, the fans ask, to win the football Oscar? Or it will just float in a delicate moment for the sector after the shock of the pandemic.
Difficult to say, even if Friedkin will soon have to pronounce on the prospects of an industry that last season, according to Deloitte, had a turnover of 2,5 billion euros, less than half of the 5,8 billion of the Premier League, collecting a loss of 318,5, 4 million. A complicated situation, given that only XNUMX clubs (Naples, Turin, Frosinone and Cagliari) ended the season on positive ground, while the football league, as usual, hesitates to choose a path for the future: the agreement with a private equity intending to take a minority stake and management of a media company to run the business; the agreement with a group willing to finance Serie A or other proposals that are already on the desk of Paolo Del Pino, successor of Gaetano Micciché at the helm of the troubled Confindustria of the ball. All in the uncertainty of relations with Sky and, even more important, decisions on stadiums, especially San Siro and Olimpico.
Disorder, as usual, reigns over the skies of the ball. But it attracts capital. Even if Arsenal, a very rich English club, rings an alarm bell: the club has fired 55 employees in an attempt to save money after the pandemic.
