Manchester United, exclusive negotiation with Al Thani (Qatar) for the sale of the club for 5.5 billion – Corriere.it

Manchester United deals exclusively with the Qatari consortium led by Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad al-Thani and for a figure exceeding 5.5 billion euros. The news agency writes it Reuters. The British entrepreneur Jim Radcliffe (Ineos) would therefore leave the scene definitively.

Jassim the brother of Tamim bin Hamad, owner of PSG and became the favorite conversationalist of the Glazer family, a minority shareholder but in control of the club thanks to a two-class shareholding structure. state cGranted a period of exclusivity to the offer from Qatar although the duration of this period is not yet known.

Last November United announced through the Board of Directors the start of a process to explore strategic alternatives for the club. An initial estimate of the value of the club – which the Glazers acquired in May 2005 for €1.16 billion – was around 4.3 billion.

Al-Thani’s offer therefore appears to be much higher than expected, but not only for this reason it cannot go unnoticed: Jassim in the past said the funds will come from the Nine Two Foundation, an entity for which there is little public documentation and whose wealth is linked to Qib (the Qatar Islamic Bank), which in turn is 50% owned by the Qatari Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. The president of Qib is the son of Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the powerful former emir of Qatar who was also head of the country’s sovereign wealth fund. And Jassim’s brother Tamim bin Hamad as mentioned
the current emir of Qatar and owner of PSG: this creates potential problems with UEFA given that

two clubs with the same owner cannot play the same competition or contiguous competitions such as the Champions League and the Europa League (United remained a long way from qualifying for the first).

In any case, once United has possibly been acquired, Jassim will have to prove that there is no overlap between him and the Qatari investment fund. Penalty, the exclusion of one of the two teams from European competitions.