what Joan Laporta’s board has not explained about financing

2023-06-12 08:00:24

BarcelonaMany times the fine print is the most important part of the contract. But, in the case of the Intermoney securitization fund that has been set up to manage the financing of Espai Barça, you don’t have to go there to realize that the reality departs in some points from the explanations given by the board of Joan Laporta once signed the agreement with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and other investors. The ARA has been given access to the 550-page document which sets out how payments will be made on the loan operation for the biggest heritage project in the club’s history. Among other aspects, interests higher than the 5.5% that were announced are revealed, the confirmation that the new Palau Blaugrana is not an explicit part of the financing and an external control that can come to tie the intentions of the members of the Boat.

In the press conference that Eduard Romeu, the economic vice-president of Barcelona, ​​and Maribel Meléndez, the corporate director, held to present the agreement for the financing of Espai Barça, the former congratulated himself that the club had finally obtained some 5.5% interest. But the real figures are not quite like this. The annual interest on the bonds issued, one of the liabilities of this securitization fund, ranges from 5.62% to 7.22%. All of the interest on the bonds are within these two percentages, with an average of 6.49%, clearly higher than that announced by the Barça leadership.

On the other hand, despite the insistence to half-heartedly deny it from Arístides Maillol, one of the main aspects confirmed by this document is that the construction of the new Palau Blaugrana is not part of the financing of Espai Barça. The text makes it clear that the club will have to allocate all the amounts it receives, above all, to the following three concepts: the costs of the remodeling of the Camp Nou, return part of the bridge loan advanced to it by Goldman Sachs and, with the prior consent and in writing from the fund, certain previous expenses related to the development of the new Palace.

A group of members complain to the club

A set of opinion groups and members of Barça, headed by Jaume Llopis, economist and former member of the Barça Space Commission, have sent a burofax to the economic commission of Barça in which they criticize that it has not been sufficiently explicit in relation with the Palau: “It is a serious breach of the mandate of the partners agreed at the general assembly of October 17 and 21, 2021”. The compromise partners were then assured that 420 million euros of the Espai Barça funding would be used to build the Palau, the Petit Palau and the ice rink. The old venue for the ice hockey section, which has not been able to play a home game this year, has become the organization’s temporary museum.

Barça, according to the deed of the securitization fund, has constituted “a real right of pledge of the first rank” for all credit rights in favor of the club derived from the following concepts: the contracts in the annex to the guarantee contract, the account balances of the Blaugrana entity and any insurance that the club may take out in the future. The collective of opinion groups and partners that sent the burofax assures that “the real right of pledge of the first rank”, in practice, legitimizes the fund to exercise “rights that correspond to the partners”.

On the other hand, the deed of the securitization fund announces that “the club has granted in favor of the fund an irrevocable power of attorney, as broad in law as is necessary”, so that “on behalf of the club it can execute the actions that are necessary or convenient to fulfill and enforce the terms of the guarantees”. In other words, if the numbers of the Espai Barça project do not come out as planned, Barça and its members will lose sovereignty over the future of the entity.

In addition, if Barça does not achieve the revenue expected from the new stadium, the fund can appoint a consultant, require the club to hire, replace or jointly appoint an external sales agent and request the replacement of the club’s sales agents by a company that the fund will be able to choose from the ceded income that, according to the external consultant, is underperforming.

Apart from all this, the securitization fund will be attentive to the criminal developments in the Negreira case, currently in the hands of Spanish justice. Thus, at least once every three months, Barça will have to report on the state of the criminal proceedings. And you will also have to do it quickly in case the fund requests it at a specific time. Before signing the financing of Espai Barça, Laporta had to answer a series of questions from investors on this subject, which led to the financial cost of the operation increasing.