AC Milan's president Paolo Scaroni, present with Napoli's president and owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, at the 'M&A Summit', organised by IlSole24Ore spoke about "Mergers and Acquisitions in Italy, major investors, areas of interest, and industry players". Here are his words, as relayed by Milannews.it:
"Elliott became the owner of Milan because they had loaned money to the old shareholder, not because they pursued the acquisition of the club; they had it as collateral. Then they entrusted professionals with the task of restoring Milan to economic and then sporting equilibrium, and they succeeded unexpectedly, especially in terms of sporting results."
Scaroni continued:
"My contribution to the Scudetto is zero: it happened because the people who work there are good. We did well from an economic point of view. I was on the Milan board with Yonghong Li to protect the money loaned by Elliott; at that time, we generated less than 200 million in revenue, while this year we generate 350 million euros. Elliott came out satisfied, realising a typical profit for what hedge funds do and selling Milan to a fund with different objectives, a sports professional with growth interventions and actions for Milan different from Elliott's. It's a new phase. There are many professionals around us who help us. We look to the future with optimism. In football, there are two mountains to climb simultaneously: sporting results and economic results, which are interconnected, and balance must be maintained between them."
Scaroni also talked about the television rights issue:
"I agree that the ideal situation would be not to sell anything and for us to manage our own clients. For decades, the Lega Calcio gave television rights to a gentleman who took care of everything, so there is no such expertise within the Lega... For historical and logical reasons, the Lega has a governance structure that is so complicated that it is not easy to understand how to intervene on these issues. I am not here dreaming of the entry of funds either... Occasionally, I hope that the entry of some funds, perhaps with a loan, will be a catalyst for giving us a simpler governance structure than the one we have lived with for so many years."
