InterSpac

CafeCordoba

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Let's open a separate thread for this initiative.

So what is InterSpac? It's basically an initiative to collect money from Inter fans around the world to buy a piece of Inter. To finance the club and own piece of it.

https://interspac.eu/

The base idea of this thing is that Inter would be owned like Bayern Munchen or any other club in Germany where there is a law that at least 51% of a club needs to be owned by fans (regular people). Of course it's harder to achieve in Italy because the valuations of the (big) clubs in Italy are much larger than clubs in Germany. If the starting point is 1 bn € like Zhangs have set Inter's value, we can calculate pretty easily it's impossible to get to 51% shares (500m€ from the fans).

Anyway, this is an interesting case. InterSpac is lead by Carlo Cottarelli, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) director. The initiative has gathered some 50 celebrities or other recognizable names to be the pull for this initiative. Among them are some famous Nerazzurri names like Materazzi, Altobelli, Bergomi, Zenga.

InterSpac put up a survey to gather info how much interest there would be for this kind of thing, how much would people put money into this kind of thing and so on. Whispers today tell that around 100k people answered to the survey around the world. That number is my opinion way too low but let's not worry about that yet.

browha's (@.h.) opinion is that nothing will come out of this ever because there's just not enough willing participants. I'm not yet downplaying it although I'm also sceptical if anything will ever come out of this. Starting from the case that what would be the motive for Zhang's to sell some minority shares. Unless the valuation in the deal would be favourable to them which then would feel strange for the fans to pay a premium price for a minority shares.

And all that would require this SPAC to collect like AT LEAST hundred million, maybe double-triple amount. 200-300m€ is close to impossible in my view. Even 100m€ will be extremely hard and requires many, many high rollers willing to put in millions of their own money.

But let's not worry about that, it's interesting to follow this case because at least the front guy is not some shady conman.
 

.h.

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whatever happens itll be interesting to follow. I wonder if they'll do something like Utd/City and set up a new club from scratch.

Early days, we need to see the monetary figures. I really hope it succeeds, but it'd basically be the biggest by a factor of 5-10x in world football history if it does :D
 
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brehme1989

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Quite premature to have a thread imo. There's nothing solid about this. Yet.
 
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CafeCordoba

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This is a good place to have discussion over this. If this dies down after the survey results, so be it.
 

Mr-Intermilan

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owning a stadium
or call it BS.
the major weakness of
inter, besides the rubbish
market transfer money drain.
 

.h.

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nice limerick
 

CafeCordoba

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Antonello said he's not sure if this InterSpac can work as there's already one minority shareholder in LionRock.

Dunno if this is Zhangs talking, trying to downplay the excitement or something.
 

DARi0

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Former Inter Director Ernesto Paolillo:
ernesto-paolillo-2048x1365.jpg

“It is absolutely a beautiful dream, romantic, but in my opinion impossible to realize.”

He explained, “The German model cannot be suitable for us, because the rules are different here. The first year you can find someone who buys the shares. Should it happen that the owner is unable to cover debts or to cover salaries and it is necessary to make capital increases, how will private individuals be able to sustain these losses and continue to put in money? Or does it mean having a team that gets by with very few resources?”
 
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Sawyer

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Didn't Hearts just achieve this in Scotland? Amazing thought and interesting to see what happens.
 
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CafeCordoba

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Former Inter Director Ernesto Paolillo:

“It is absolutely a beautiful dream, romantic, but in my opinion impossible to realize.”

He explained, “The German model cannot be suitable for us, because the rules are different here. The first year you can find someone who buys the shares. Should it happen that the owner is unable to cover debts or to cover salaries and it is necessary to make capital increases, how will private individuals be able to sustain these losses and continue to put in money? Or does it mean having a team that gets by with very few resources?”

This is the very issue I think they need to figure out. If they can gather few hundred millions, then what? Current owners sell part of the club to this collective. Then comes exactly this thing Paolillo explains when the time comes to pay the bills. Inter is not doing profit, it takes money to run the club. :D

Basically only way for this SPAC thing to work is to downgrade to a level where Inter never makes losses. Basically would mean Inter would be a selling club. Every time a top player becomes so good at Inter that buyers coming in everywhere to offer money, Inter would sell the player. That is perhaps not the worst strategy to be honest but it would seriously hamper Inter's realistic sporting targets.

That kind of strategy would probably go hand in hand with some fund owner like Oaktree. No money from the owners to the club, club needs to run on its own. It's very hard to achieve that in Italy while being competitive at the same time (Scudetto, any kind of CL success).
 

.h.

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and it'll be basically impossible to make any real decisins, either. At least now with mjority ownership one person can make all the calls. In a mass-owned Inter, suddenly every AGM is important..


I can see Inter being listed on the stock market as a half-way house, but you'd still need a majority/near-majority owner.
 

brehme1989

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and it'll be basically impossible to make any real decisins, either. At least now with mjority ownership one person can make all the calls. In a mass-owned Inter, suddenly every AGM is important..


I can see Inter being listed on the stock market as a half-way house, but you'd still need a majority/near-majority owner.
The AGM will be there just for the management to inform the members of what happened last season and what will happen in the next, just like all AGMs are.

A management is appointed. You think Laporta, Perez or Rummenigge are acting like Switzerland asking the club's members about everything before making any decision?

The only difference between being listed and being non-profit for clubs is that you ensure that vultures are far less likely to come anywhere near.
 

.h.

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No, of course I dont expect every decision to go to members, like you say you still appoint members every AGM etc, but with such a disperse minority-based share holding you end up with so much potential volatility in the decisions - e.g. chairman or other board appointees will actually have to spend effort getting re-elected. With a single majority share holder, you can just keep cracking on with the business.

Imagine if we just had a summer like the one that just passed - they're all getting voted out realistically.

It'd be a crapshoot.
 

Adriano@10

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There s a lot of things standing in the way of this and i honestly think gathering the money is the least of all problems.. Out of the 40+ listed most are milionairs and could chip in a significant amount if they want to. Plus i d assume they all have some connections to even wealthier people the theres people like Nicastro and Tarantola who should have great connections within the banking world. On top of that theres a shit ton of poor (not rich) interistas who d gladly chip in 10-100 bucks.

Really think the problem is more what would happen if we need to refinance the club? As in what if owners funds are needed? Yes that group could theoretically take a loan and give that money to the club but then how would the group repay the loan unless they take out money of inter or they keep finding new investors?

The other problem i guess lies with suning it s probably easier for them to sell the club as a whole or sell their remaining stake when it s the majority stake rather then sell what ever they have left. Seeing as the spac would want to get 40% if the club suning could not remain the majority owner or the spac would have to deal with both oaktree and suning.

One other thing i m skeptical about is if this goes through who is calling the shots? Yes we d appoint managers but who decides who to appoint how long till we d have infights within the spac?
 

brehme1989

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The issue is a fundamental one.

In sports, the holding...company is not a company. It's a non profit organization, protected by law as such. In Italy this has been eliminated in the 1920s iirc but other parameters exist which are not directly related to ownership.

So fundamentally what we need is a legal transition. If Inter does this and then we have something similar across the board (Serie B and Lega Pro in particular), we may force the hand of the law to change things up.

A company that's funded by fans to hold another company's is doomed to fail. The whole idea is to reshape the landscape, not just to raise funds to buy some shares.
 

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Btw, have you read news about the InterSpac? That they added 13 VIP members. Now they reported that the share capital of this spac is 67k. 67K! They have 67 VIP members so each have put 1000 euro. Fucking one thousand euros! :lol: I could put 1k in principle (probably wouldn't though).

How fucking VIP is this? They should put at least 10k, preferably 100k. 1k is fucking pathetic.
 

Puma

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At least they are trying.
 

.h.

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What did I say:)
 
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