Wall Street Journal: Milan owners RedBird now have €4.3bn ‘arsenal’ after big recent deals | OneFootball

While the rumours from across the navigli speak of Inter being in a very precarious financial position, AC Milan’s owners RedBird Capital Partners continue to go from strength to strength.

According to Calcio e Finanza, RedBird – the private equity firm that controls AC Milan – has ‘renewed its arsenal of deals’ with $4.7bn (at current exchange rates, €4.3bn) to invest in more sports, media and financial services businesses after two years filled with some high-profile transactions.

This was reported by the US newspaper The Wall Street Journal, taking data from the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), the US federal body responsible for supervising stock exchanges.

Currently, RedBird are backing Skydance Media, which is negotiating an acquisition of Paramount Global. They recently completed the acquisition of British production studio All3 Media for €1.37bn through a joint venture called RedBird IMI, which has Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan ‘s International Media Investments as another partner.

Paramount received an all-cash offer of $26bn from Apollo Global Management and Sony Pictures Entertainment, which includes the assumption of debt, estimated to be $14.6bn.

RedBird first backed Skydance in November 2019. The latter is seeking to acquire Shari Redstone’s stake in National Amusements, which would give her control of Paramount, initially offering to pay up to $2bn, and then combining it with Paramount.

After receiving expressions of interest in May 2022 for its fourth flagship vehicle, which closed on over $3.28bn, RedBird closed investments in asset manager and financial advisor Arax Investment Partners, in Renault’s Alpine F1 auto racing team and in the creation of EverPass, which broadcasts live games to bars and restaurants via the NFL Sunday Ticket Network.

As for return on investment, RedBird has achieved returns of more than three times its invested capital through sales of Compass Datacenter and professional football and baseball player marketing firm OneTeam Partners.

The US fund sold Compass to an affiliate of Brookfield and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund last year. The deal was valued by PitchBook Data at around $5.7bn. RedBird invested in the company starting in December 2016 along with Ontario Teachers’.

In such a complex whirlwind of operations, RedBird obviously made mistakes too. For example, in March a political case arose in London over the attempt by the RedBird IMI joint venture to acquire The Telegraph newspaper and the Spectator magazine.

The protests, which opposed foreign ownership for one of the country’s most important publishing groups, led RedBird IMI to abandon the negotiating table.

What does this mean for Milan? Well, fans never have to worry about the owners failing to meet capital requirements, given the sheer magnitude of assets under management. Such aggressive expansion is also indicative of ambition that will hopefully be shown this summer.