City owner scores $4.8b price tag with stake sale
Manchester City’s Abu Dhabicontrolled owner has agreed to sell a $500 million stake to US private equity firm Silver Lake, making it the world’s most valuable soccer group with a $4.8 billion price tag.
Silver Lake will buy just over 10 percent of City Football Group (CFG), which owns reigning English Premier League champions Manchester City and teams in the United States, Australia and China, the companies said Wednesday.
The investment crowns a rags to riches story for Manchester City over several decades which spent much of the 1990s in the doldrums but then broke into the big league of world soccer with the help of Middle Eastern cash.
Europe’s top soccer clubs have drawn in big money from some of the world’s richest investors over the last decade, as the game attracts more and more fans in lucrative markets such as Asia, the United States and the Middle East.
City’s big domestic rival Manchester United are owned by the American Glazer family, while Chelsea are owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and America’s Fenway Sports Group controls current European champions Liverpool.
“Silver Lake is a global leader in technology investing, and we are delighted by both the validation that their investment in CFG represents, and the opportunities for further growth that their partnership brings,” CFG Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in a statement.
CFG, which also owns or part owns New York City FC, Melbourne City FC, Yokohama
F. Marinos in Japan, Club Atletico Torque in Uruguay, Girona FC in Spain and Sichuan Jiuniu FC in China, said none of its existing shareholders were selling equity stakes as part of the Silver Lake deal.
It added that Abu Dhabi United Group would remain the majority CFG shareholder with a stake of around 77 percent.
Silver Lake, based in Menlo Park, California, helped Michael Dell take the PC maker he founded private in 2013, and has invested in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, US chip maker Broadcom and global sports talent agency IMG.