Inter in pledge to Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. This is what Corriere della Sera reports today, even if the story is more complex and begins on 4 December last. News that, moreover, FCinter1908 first gave last December 10 (read here).
“That day the two Zhangs plus their Nanjing Runxian company are seated on one side of the table while on the other there are representatives of Taobao (China) Software co, the Chinese eBay. The former put on the plate 100% of the capital of the family safe Suning Holdings Group (SHG): 51 thousand Jindong Zhang shares, 39 thousand the son and 10 thousand Runxian shares, for a total nominal value of 1 billion yuan equal to about 130 million EUR. What is the counterpart (liquidity?) Is still a mystery.
THE COMMENT OF SUNING
«The stock pledge – they say from the Nanjing group – it is a normal business arrangement that has no impact on Suning.com’s business development and usual business. ‘
“But the market value of family assets is presumably far higher than nominal. In addition to the rest, the owner of the group also puts his 65,000 shares of Suning Real Estate on the plate. SHG, where this family portfolio is concentrated, including Inter (the pledge therefore concerns the controlling stake upstream of the Nerazzurri club), is part of a parallel and substantially separate company structure with respect to Suning.com, the company listed with 35 billions of euros in revenues and over 8 thousand electrical equipment stores under management ”, explains the daily.
“All this passes from one side of the table to the other on 4 December with the result that the capital of the family holding, and therefore the control of” FC Internazionale Milano spa “, is now parked at Taobao which owns it ( but not the property) to protect, obviously, a credit or one of its contractual rights “.
It can be assumed that the family has decided to raise cash to meet the liquidity needs of the commercial group: on the market there were rumors of pressure on bond maturities. The company cut back on them just before Christmas by using its own funds to buy back 2 billion yuan in bonds. A message of strength and financial solidity
A delicate phase also because the entrepreneur, for years a member of the People’s Assembly, the national parliament under strict control of the Party, has Jack Ma as a strategic partner, who instead fell out of favor with Beijing. At the top of the Communist Party the harsh criticisms that Ma had pronounced at an event on October 24 did not go down. Beijing’s squeeze on its empire has already wrecked the mega IPO ($ 37 billion) of Ant Group, Alibaba’s fintech. In the meantime, the message of extreme cost control has arrived loud and clear from the Zhangs. The Nerazzurri company will also soon have its bonds (375 million maturing in 2022) to be refinanced.
(Corriere della Sera)
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