\n<\/p>\n
Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n Real Madrid president Florentino P\u00e9rez has outlined plans to sell 5 per cent of the club through a newly created subsidiary as part of a revolutionary push to bring in outside investors for the first time.<\/p>\n At the football club\u2019s annual meeting on Sunday, P\u00e9rez told some of the 100,000 members who own it that he would let them vote on the plan at an extraordinary meeting in the near future, saying the new investors must \u201chelp us shield our heritage from external attacks\u201d.<\/p>\n The plan represents the biggest change of ownership in the 123-year history of Real, a football club with a huge global fan base, hundreds of millions of social media followers and revenue of \u20ac1.1bn last year, the highest of any team in the world.<\/p>\n It comes as the financial stakes in football continue to rise. English Premier League clubs vastly outspent their Spanish rivals on new players this summer, while US investment group\u00a0Apollo struck a deal this month to buy a majority stake in Real\u2019s crosstown rival Atl\u00e9tico Madrid.<\/p>\n P\u00e9rez said the club would need to set up a new subsidiary that would be owned by existing members, or socios<\/em>, and would sell a stake of \u201cabout 5 per cent\u201d to an investor or investors.<\/p>\n Seeking to assuage potential concerns, he said the stakes of outside investors would be \u201csymbolic\u201d and \u201climited\u201d and added that the new shareholders must \u201crespect our values, contribute to the club\u2019s growth and help us shield our heritage from external attacks\u201d.<\/p>\n If the new shareholders wished to sell their stakes, Real Madrid would always have the first right of refusal to buy them, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe must avoid losing the ownership and control of the club\u2019s destiny to a few individuals, as has been the case at other clubs,\u201d P\u00e9rez said.<\/p>\n Recommended<\/p>\n He said the corporate changes would \u201cformally recognise\u201d the existing 100,000 members as the \u201ctrue owners\u201d of the club, setting that number in stone and also putting a price on the value of membership.<\/p>\n \u201cHolding a Real Madrid membership card will no longer be solely a sentimental matter,\u201d P\u00e9rez said. \u201cIt will also have a tangible and real value.\u201d<\/p>\n The billionaire businessman said that when he joined the club in 2000 it was practically bankrupt and \u201cI even had to personally guarantee \u20ac147mn from my own assets to save\u201d it.<\/p>\n With the planned ownership changes \u201cno one will be able to dilute our status as owners or alter the balance that guarantees Real Madrid\u2019s independence and stability\u201d, P\u00e9rez said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Real Madrid president Florentino P\u00e9rez has outlined plans to sell 5 per cent of the club through a newly created subsidiary as part of a revolutionary push to bring in outside investors for the first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[3106,1408,3071,455,5087,9351],"class_list":{"0":"post-34847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-investors","9":"tag-madrid","10":"tag-prepares","11":"tag-real","12":"tag-sell","13":"tag-stake"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}