Il Milan ends up at Harvard. The American university has published a substantial study on the Rossoneri club. Various statements from Gerry Cardinaleowner of the company through Red Bird: “When we bought AC Milan many owners of American sports teams called me to say: 'You're crazy'. They told me that 'You can't do business in Italy' and 'It's impossible to make money in European football'. Most of those who invest in sports clubs do so because they are emotionally invested. They put winning championships above everything else and this often leads them to make the mistake of thinking that they spend too much on the team. a team of stars is linearly related to victory. But that's the worst thing you can do as an investor.”
The scudetto won with Pioli.
“The passion of the fans was incredible. I had never seen anything like it. I sent the photos to my team in New York and told them, 'You better get ready.'”
The terms of the purchase of Milan.
“We bought him for a sum that corresponded to 3.6 times the club's revenues; the new owners of Chelsea FC bought him for a multiple of seven times the revenues if you consider the earn out. I brought with me the New York Yankees for a small minority stake, given our long-standing partnership with them and our desire to bring the best practices of US sports to Italy. I think Milan has the potential to become a 5 billion company of euros”.
The choice of Furlani as CEO?
“I could have hired someone with a casting in European football. But Giorgio thinks like we think in RedBird. He, like Stefano Cocirio, is a bit unique for European football: young, free from doing things because 'that's how they have always been made', he has an investor background, Italian but educated and trained in the United States and the United Kingdom. I understood that the most important element of the role of CEO in European football is financial responsibility and the ability to integrate performance on and off the pitch field Bringing disciplined financial sophistication to the player transfer market and maintaining a positive cash flow position – this is the core of our investment thesis, and this is where Giorgio comes in. Where it is lacking is that it is not a CEO: I think he managed four people when he was at Elliott, whereas at Casa Milan alone we have 260. So it was intriguing for me to not approach this as a typical private equity search for a CEO, but rather create a CEO office ' that operates below my direction and bring together the various disciplines necessary to evolve the ownership of European football: Giorgio, Stefano (Cocirio, CFO Milan, ed.), Geoffrey Moncada, Zlatan Ibrahimović and my team at RedBird. Each of us brings something and we are all part of an integrated team. I'm not throwing Giorgio to the wolves.”
