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Soccer Football – Europa League – Semi Final – First Leg – Juventus v Sevilla – Allianz Stadium, Turin, Italy – May 11, 2023 General view of Juventus flags seen outside the stadium before the match REUTERS/Massimo Pinca/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
ROME, Sept 11 (Reuters) – Shares in Juventus (JUVE.MI) rose as much as 4.8% on Monday on takeover speculation, despite parent company Exor (EXOR.AS) saying it had no plans to put the soccer club up for sale, denying a report in newspaper Il Giornale.
Shares in Italy’s most successful Serie A club were up 3.2% at 1310 GMT, with trading volumes far exceeding their 90-day average. The was stock outperforming a 0.9% rise on the Milan bourse (.FTITLMS) as a whole.
A spokesperson for Exor said in a statement that Il Giornale’s report was “groundless”, after the newspaper said the holding company considered Juventus’s recent financial results were “no longer sustainable” and it had been embarrassed by the soccer club’s ongoing judicial problems.
Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family, owns around 64% of the shares and 78% of the voting rights at Juventus.
According to the report, Exor believes it could put Juventus – which has a market value of around 800 million euros ($858 million) according to Refinitiv data – up for sale for at least 1.5 billion euros, after taking measures to resolve its accounting issues.
A Milan-based trader said the 1.5-billion-euro valuation cited by Il Giornale was helping support Monday’s share performance.
JUDICIAL AND FINANCIAL TROUBLES
Juventus, its former Chairman Andrea Agnelli and 11 others could face trial after judges in Italy last year launched a criminal case against them over allegations of false accounting.
The club has denied wrongdoing and said its accounting is in line with industry standards.
Reuters reported in May that representatives of the Agnellis had become more open to ideas about the financial future of the club, citing five people in regular talks with them.
Exor said then its commitment to Juventus was unchanged and that any suggestion to the contrary was without foundation, misleading and intended only to create uncertainty.
The people told Reuters that no imminent changes were expected and that a possible decision would only come once there was clarity on the accounting and judicial clouds hanging over the club.
The investigation into Juventus’s accounts also triggered separate inquiries by Italy’s soccer authorities which eventually cost Juventus a 10-point deduction in the last Serie A season, a 718,000 euro fine and a ban, decided by UEFA, from this season’s European competitions.
Juventus has absorbed some 700 million euros in cash from shareholders over the past four years, roughly two thirds of which has come from Exor, in whose portfolio the club is the only major business not currently making money.
($1 = 0.9327 euros)
Reporting by Gavin Jones and Claudia Cristoferi; Additional reporting by Giancarlo Navach; Writing by Giulio Piovaccari; Editing by Alvise Armellini and Mark Potter
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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