Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he has sold football club AC Milan to a Chinese consortium.<\/p>\n
Berlusconi, who owns the Serie A team, made the remarks to local newspapers on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He said they will be paying at least \u20ac400m (\u00a3220m) over the next two years, which may value the club at up to \u20ac750m including debt.<\/p>\n
“Milan has now embarked on this path towards China,” he said without disclosing the identity of the buyers.<\/p>\n
However other media outlets, citing their own sources, said the terms of the deal are still being finalised.<\/p>\n
Berlusconi, 79, has served as prime minister four times but was convicted of tax fraud and bribery.<\/p>\n
His family holding company Fininvest reportedly entered into exclusive talks with the Chinese investor group in May.<\/p>\n
The consortium is looking to buy 80% of the club immediately before eventually taking over the remainder.
\nThe deal could even result in the club being listed in China, according to Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
Asian investors
\nAC Milan is one of Europe’s most successful clubs but is seeking new capital to enable it to better compete against other well-funded rivals.<\/p>\n
It posted a loss of \u20ac93.5m ($104m) last year.<\/p>\n
Berlusconi came close to selling a majority stake in AC Milan to a Thai businessman last year but changed his mind.<\/p>\n
Many European teams are now owned or bankrolled by wealthy Asian or Middle Eastern investors or companies.<\/p>\n
Local rival Inter Milan was sold to Chinese electronics retailer Suning Commerce Group last month.<\/p>\n
And last month Chinese businessman Dr Tony Xia completed his \u00a376m takeover of Championship club Aston Villa.
\nFootball is a popular sport in China and the government has pledged to develop its local industry to become a world “superpower.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi says he has sold football club AC Milan to a Chinese consortium. Berlusconi, who owns the Serie A team, made the remarks to local newspapers on Tuesday. He said they will be paying at least \u20ac400m (\u00a3220m) over the next two years, which may value the club at up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":228419,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/228419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}