By Giulio Piovaccari and Elvira Pollina
MILAN, Dec 13 (Reuters) – The Agnelli family has no intention of selling Juventus to Tether or any other person or company, the CEO of the family holding declared on Saturday, rejecting the crypto group’s offer for Italy’s most successful football club.
‘Juventus, our history and our values are not for sale,’ declared Exor chief executive John Elkann, wearing a Juventus hoodie in a rare video address posted on the Turin-based Serie A club’s website.
Tether, based in El Salvador and run by Italian Juventus fan Paolo Ardoino, declared on Friday it had submitted a cash proposal to acquire Exor’s stake in the Turin club.
Tether declared it will build a takeover bid for the remaining Juventus shares at the same price offered to Exor and plans to invest 1 billion euros to support the club known in Italy as Juve if the deal goes through.
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The cryptocurrency company is offering Exor €2.66 per share, according to a source familiar with the matter, valuing Juventus at just over €1 billion. The price offered represents a 21% premium over Juventus’ Friday closing share price of €2.19.
Amsterdam-listed Exor declared in a statement that its board of directors unanimously rejected the offer and that it has ‘no intention of selling any of its shares in Juventus to third parties’.
Juventus has not recorded an annual net profit for almost a decade, and its shares are down 27% so far this year.
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Tether, issuer of the USDT stablecoin, which has the US dollar as a reference, has already acquired a stake of more than 10% in Juventus this year, becoming its second largest shareholder, after Exor.
By purchasing a storied European football club, Tether – whose business faces increasing regulatory scrutiny in the European Union – could gain a powerful tool to build ties with that continent’s parliamentarians while increasing its popularity with the general public.
Tether stated that it proposed to acquire all of Exor’s shares in the club, representing 65.4% of Juventus’ share capital, without officially revealing the price at which it intconcludes to purchase the shares.
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Exor, the largest shareholder in carbuildr Sinformantis and which controls sports car buildr Ferrari, has been simplifying its Italian portfolio.
This year, the company agreed to the sale of truck buildr Iveco to India’s Tata Motors, and announced on Monday that it was in talks with Greek media company Antenna to sell its news operations, including two major newspapers and three popular radio stations.
The sale of Juventus — a club that has been owned by the Agnelli family for nearly a century — would likely be seen as the clearest sign yet of the family’s gradual shift away from its home counattempt. The family’s ties to the club date back to 1923, when Edoardo Agnelli became president.
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Over the past seven years, investors, led by Exor, have injected around €1 billion of new capital into Juventus through a series of capital increases.
(Reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru, Giulio Piovaccari and Elvira Pollina in Milan)
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