A report from Italian newspaper Il Giornale claims that Inter are a step away from being sold to a US based fund, bringing an end to the ‘Zhang era’. The club have been owned by the Suning Holdings Group since 2016 when the Chinese company purchased a 70% majority share in the club.
Il Giornale report today that despite denials from club president Steven Zhang regarding a potential sale, two investment US banks (Goldman Sachs and Raine Group) have been sounding out the international market for some years now in search of potential buyers for the club.
The suggestion is that the Suning Group are looking to sell the club or at least find a partner to help with the management of Inter who are losing a reported €10m a month. The report claims that a US based fund is now ready to make a significant investment and that ‘everything will be clear in the next two weeks’ with the turning point expected to come in the summer.
Zhang has set the sale price at €1.2 billion after he saw the sale of AC Milan from Elliott to RedBird capital, although the market has rejected that valuation so far. Zhang could lower the price in the months ahead as he faces an ongoing lawsuit filed in Hong Kong by a Chinese bank, which accuses Inter’s president of unpaid debt of €300 million, a debt that could jeopardise the Nerazzurri’s own shares.
Grand Tower Sarl, one of the holding companies through which Zhang controls Inter, must also repay a loan of €275 million, obtained in 2021, to the Oaktree fund, of which only a part has so far been injected into the Nerazzurri company.
In December last year, there was talk of an attempt to refinance this loan, extending its maturity, and aiming to improve the current 12% interest rate. It does not appear that this refinancing (which is a synonym for making new debts to pay off old ones) has yet taken place.
Under current conditions, since this is a so-called Pik (payment-in-kind) loan, interest is added to the principal and is paid at maturity. In May 2024, the debt will amount to around €350 million and if Zhang does not honour it, he will lose control of Inter, having pledged the club’s shares to Oaktree. It is precisely this not insignificant detail that suggests that the investment fund currently in the running to buy Inter Milan is not Oaktree, which has already stated in the past, through its representatives, that it does not aim to go the way of Elliott with Yonghong Li and Milan.
