Brera FC operates at a level far below other Milan clubs Inter and AC. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty ImagesBrera Holdings, an Irish-based company set up last year to hold an Italian amateur soccer club with a “mixed” competition performance, has seen its shares slump by 45 per cent in its first six days of trading on the Nasdaq in New York.
The company, registered in Ireland for tax purposes with an address on Burlington Road in Dublin 4, controls Milan’s Brera FC. It raised $7.5 million in an initial public offering late last month, which was priced at $5 per share, the lower end of a $5-$6 range. It has since fallen to $2.75, giving it a market value of $31.6 million.
Brera FC, the so-called “third team of Milan” after Inter Milan and AC Milan, has been in existence since 2000. Brera Holdings was set up in Dublin in June last year to hold the “cult club” as it went about raising money in an IPO to expand by acquiring and developing a portfolio of football clubs in emerging markets including eastern Europe, Africa and South America.
Brera Holdings chief executive Sergio Scalpelli said last week that the company was “currently negotiating confidential deals for top division clubs in various European countries, starting from North Macedonia, while exploring opportunities primarily in Africa, but also in South America and other non-European countries”.