The Suning Commerce Group

[brehme1989]

So the money from the Oaktree loan given to Inter is actually something Inter needs to pay interest? Damn.

Yeap that's what I always had in mind too but never bothered to go deep with the finances. Felt like people here got ahead there and what was known here was that Oaktree loan is separate.
Zhang was supposed to do capital increases with that loan, not provide a separate loan!

At the same time, I wanna know if Zhang through Suning, another entity or personally, took any of that bond. Or most of it.

That'd make them x5 worse than the Glazers who at least are milking a few crumbs off of a profitable club.

 

[.h.]

Yeap that's what I always had in mind too but never bothered to go deep with the finances. Felt like people here got ahead there and what was known here was that Oaktree loan is separate.
Zhang was supposed to do capital increases with that loan, not provide a separate loan!

At the same time, I wanna know if Zhang through Suning, another entity or personally, took any of that bond. Or most of it.

That'd make them x5 worse than the Glazers who at least are milking a few crumbs off of a profitable club.

Theres no sign of them taking any of that money. As far as I'm aware, the bond raise allowed us to do some stuff with setting up Inter Marketing Co, buying back rights, etc.

RE capital increases - he has done some capital increases. We'll need to see what come out in th enext financial statements, but he loaned 75mil in and then converted 15m to equity. Zhang has continued to do quite a lot of D2E in recent years, I think >100m in covid year.

 

[brehme1989]

Theres no sign of them taking any of that money. As far as I'm aware, the bond raise allowed us to do some stuff with setting up Inter Marketing Co, buying back rights, etc.

I think you're nitpicking here.

I don't care if they're taking money into their pocket from the club directly. They're using means that are depriving the club its own revenues, forcing us to sell assets to fund this thing that's allegedly their own capital injection. So we've established that it's not.

If they are also the ones who took the bonds, then they're also asserting themselves in a way where they get their coupon payments via enforced strategies rather than look for the benefit of the club.

I really have to find some time to read the books and then make some calls to see what the fuck is going on. None of this makes sense and I'm drawn to believe that this is the case....

RE capital increases - he has done some capital increases. We'll need to see what come out in th enext financial statements, but he loaned 75mil in and then converted 15m to equity. Zhang has continued to do quite a lot of D2E in recent years, I think >100m in covid year.

So yeah, not really enough and in fact we're closing to realizing the statement that "Inter is held hostage by Zhang Jindong" than anything else...
15m equity is something that Inter Fund idea could raise within 1 month!

P.S. For those who are lost in the thoughts that I barely managed to get out of my head:
Basically what I'm implying here is that Zhang took a loan using his Inter shares, then possibly gave a loan to Inter (aka bonds) and uses Inter revenue [ie player sales] to fund both payments...

Just as a note that I haven't researched this, nor have I received any information that this is the case. It's just a hunch based on what I see here.

 

[.h.]

They're funding the club with a loan, which is what we need to survive. If it wasnt for the loan, we'd probably be insolvent right now. Between 20/21 and 21/22, we lost 400million euros. Just dwell on that for a minute - and thats ignoring COVID of 19/20 which was another 100mil or so.


There's no suggestion they took the bonds, after all - the whole point is they're struggling for capital. I think we'd seen somewhere that Oaktree was a big subscriber of the bonds?

Also, to be blunt, if they did buy the bonds, they're holding a massive bag of losses atm. Bank of England base rate in Feb 22 was 0.5% - now its 5.25%. We were yielding 6.75% in Feb 22, if you reckon our bonds now should have a yield of 12% - which is arguably conservative, but separate conversation, - those bonds are now half the value.


15mil is just an example. Like I said, they've done hundreds of millions in Debt2Equity in recent seasons. We'll see what the latest financial statements (due in 3 months or so) say for 22-23.


I would be interested in your view of the books, so please, have a go through them. Our bond repayment schedule, itnerest payments, etc are all in there. I didnt bother reading the pages of preamble, but just went straight to the P&L and balance sheet.

 

[brehme1989]

Oaktree got the share of Lionrock.

The bond was a separate deal and long before covid. Its refinancing may have involved Oaktree.

As for the bond, if they took it for their benefit (I don't care if it's losing) then refinancing it wouldn't be their concern, but the club's. Unless now you don't care about separating entities where the UBO is the same?

 

[brehme1989]

Oh and I know for a fact that they rejected 3 bids.
One was BC Partners that everyone heard of.
Then there was PIF.
And then another fund that was.... 20m short of the 1bn valuation. But they were told that they wouldn't sell even at 1bn. So that was weird.

Why don't they sell?
I'm not saying they want to hide something in the books, but I'm just perplexed by their attitude and constant mood swings on whether they're selling or not.

 

[.h.]

Oaktree got the share of Lionrock.

The bond was a separate deal and long before covid. Its refinancing may have involved Oaktree.

As for the bond, if they took it for their benefit (I don't care if it's losing) then refinancing it wouldn't be their concern, but the club's. Unless now you don't care about separating entities where the UBO is the same?

yes, the bond was re-financed a year or so ago i think

the bond was held by Inter, and always has been (e.g. we're the issuer of the bonds. Clearly no one knows who the subscribers are.)



Regarding your last point. Yeah, I agree. As much as I'm a "defender" of Suning, I also dont understand why the fuck they dont sell. I dont have a clue. I dont see what the end game is for them, the only real endgame is spiralling debt leading to default. Even if you get Inter to cost neutral, the mountain of debt is too significant to be easily tackled atm.

 

[ADRossi]

Oh and I know for a fact that they rejected 3 bids.
One was BC Partners that everyone heard of.
Then there was PIF.
And then another fund that was.... 20m short of the 1bn valuation. But they were told that they wouldn't sell even at 1bn. So that was weird.

Why don't they sell?
I'm not saying they want to hide something in the books, but I'm just perplexed by their attitude and constant mood swings on whether they're selling or not.

This, 100%. Why do they still own us? We don't make money. There's no real path to future profitability with them in charge given their incompetence. Their easiest way out in a juicy capital gain from the sale of the club.

 

[brehme1989]

This, 100%. Why do they still own us? We don't make money. There's no real path to future profitability with them in charge given their incompetence. Their easiest way out in a juicy capital gain from the sale of the club.

I'm just leaning to believe that they're not going to benefit from any of those billions (you can read this as a) the CCP will take it or b) it's an irrelevant dent in their pile of debt, don't care how one does read it)

The reason they're not selling is because they have a reason to not be in China. And Kangyang can pretend he runs a business in Italy so that no one asks his dad why his kid isn't over there doing CCP things...

 

[Nerazzurri_Ninja]

Maybe we can partner up with Blackrock they have trillions of dollars

 

[kurt0411]

Onana -> Sommer
Skriniar -> Bisseck
Hakimi -> Dumfries
Lukaku -> Dzeko/Arnautovic

It’s bad enough letting key players go but to replace them with bums is disgraceful

 

[.h.]

for those who care, btw
21-22

https://imgur.com/8DbhTy8

 

[Adriano@10]

Oh and I know for a fact that they rejected 3 bids.
One was BC Partners that everyone heard of.
Then there was PIF.
And then another fund that was.... 20m short of the 1bn valuation. But they were told that they wouldn't sell even at 1bn. So that was weird.

Why don't they sell?
I'm not saying they want to hide something in the books, but I'm just perplexed by their attitude and constant mood swings on whether they're selling or not.

As i ve always maintained Inter is their only asset of value that is out of reach of the CCP.... Imho only reason they have not sold yet... Either cause it s their backup plan in case shit in china goes even more south or they just know that the CCP will take a substantial amount of that money away from them so they need an insane offer for them to walk away with any money...
After getting "Bailed out" by the ccp but also loosing control of suning i d kind of understand...

On the loan i always thought that suning just passed on the interest cost to us so i m not sure what the problem is there... Like yes they could have done a capital increase but how the fuck would the lichtenstein LLC than pay back the loan? Dont think the zhangs have the necessary cash for that ATM...
As far as i know the only asset of that company is inter so as long as inter is making losses it s gonna be hard/impossible to repay that unless the Zhangs personally funnel money into the holding

 

[.h.]

As i ve always maintained Inter is their only asset of value that is out of reach of the CCP.... Imho only reason they have not sold yet... Either cause it s their backup plan in case shit in china goes even more south or they just know that the CCP will take a substantial amount of that money away from them so they need an insane offer for them to walk away with any money...
After getting "Bailed out" by the ccp but also loosing control of suning i d kind of understand...

On the loan i always thought that suning just passed on the interest cost to us so i m not sure what the problem is there... Like yes they could have done a capital increase but how the fuck would the lichtenstein LLC than pay back the loan? Dont think the zhangs have the necessary cash for that ATM...
As far as i know the only asset of that company is inter so as long as inter is making losses it s gonna be hard/impossible to repay that unless the Zhangs personally funnel money into the holding

I dont really know what the legal side is either for the loan

e.g.

Loan is held by Great Horizons SPA, who is the owner of Inter (I'm simplifying, but you get the point). The loan is secured against Inter.

Great Horizons SPA hold no other assets, so like, laws aside

They could sell Inter, pay out the cash to ownership, and declare bankruptcy/default on the loan as they no longer hold Inter

which surely is not okay

So, does that mean in order to sell Inter, Horizons would have to pay off the loan before they could transact for Inter, I guess?

OR, a buyer, would just buy Great Horizons SPA? Thus making the loan part of the portfolio?

 

[brehme1989]

So as long as we have established that we're hostages of the Zhang family rather than just a club in a bad financial situation, all good.

#ZhangOut

 

[Adriano@10]

I dont really know what the legal side is either for the loan

e.g.

Loan is held by Great Horizons SPA, who is the owner of Inter (I'm simplifying, but you get the point). The loan is secured against Inter.

Great Horizons SPA hold no other assets, so like, laws aside

They could sell Inter, pay out the cash to ownership, and declare bankruptcy/default on the loan as they no longer hold Inter

which surely is not okay

So, does that mean in order to sell Inter, Horizons would have to pay off the loan before they could transact for Inter, I guess?

OR, a buyer, would just buy Great Horizons SPA? Thus making the loan part of the portfolio?

There s an inbetween way here.. Most likely the money would just be paid to Great horizon and they d have to repay the loan then... Think about leveraged buyouts and what happens when the holding sells on the pofo company the loans dont have to be repaid before the sale of the company.
Then again both solutions are possible lke one could jsut buy great horizon and take over the debt of course valuation would have to be Lower in that case.

 

[Meysam]

I hate these motherfuckers Zhangs and their fucking strategies. if they can't spend money so they must fuck off. Meelan has been doing great in terms of finance and I'm sure if this last gamble works, they are gonna smash it.
We need either smart management like Meelan or a sugar daddy who can spend money like PSG, Man City. Fucking Zhang is neither.

 

[.h.]

I hate these motherfuckers Zhangs and their fucking strategies. if they can't spend money so they must fuck off. Meelan has been doing great in terms of finance and I'm sure if this last gamble works, they are gonna smash it.
We need either smart management like Meelan or a sugar daddy who can spend money like PSG, Man City. Fucking Zhang is neither.

You know "let's spend money" is different to "how Milan have done it" right?

 

[Meysam]

You know "let's spend money" is different to "how Milan have done it" right?

how about writing a book titled "comrade Zhang is always right"

 

[brehme1989]

@.h. just knock off the crusade. There's no point. The Zhang family owning Inter and calling the shots makes no sense. And even worse, it does appear that your stance has been incorrect. Zhang is milking the club indirectly rather than pumping money in for years now.

Any one of us could have been the owner under these circumstances....