AS Saint-Etienne Enters Unique Negotiations with Canadian Firm Kilmer Sports activities Ventures: Potential Sale of the Membership on the Horizon

2024-05-14 09:01:52

After a number of failed makes an attempt to discover a purchaser, AS Saint-Etienne, third in Ligue 2, introduced on Monday that it had entered into unique negotiations with Canadian firm Kilmer Sports activities Ventures (KVS), which focuses on investments in sports activities and media.

ASSE’s Social and Financial Committee (CSE) is because of meet in a unprecedented assembly on Wednesday to analyze this supply to take over the whole membership. The agenda doesn’t include an merchandise “linked to a doable job safety plan within the firm”, which has 270 workers (210 full-time equivalents), gamers and coaching heart understood, based on the membership administration. A board assembly of the ASSE Groupe firm, the holding firm that controls SASP AS Saint-Etienne, can also be scheduled for Wednesday, based on the identical supply.

KVS is a division of funding agency Kilmer Group, a Toronto-based agency specializing in personal fairness, actual property and the sports activities and media sectors. The president and founder, Canadian Lawrence Tanenbaum, 78, has been concerned for a number of years in sports activities, basketball, hockey and soccer.

He’s a shareholder and chairman of Maple Leaf Sports activities & Leisure Ltd. (MLSE), a Canadian conglomerate that owns the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey franchise, the Toronto Raptors NBA basketball crew, the Toronto Argonauts American soccer membership, Toronto Toronto FC and the Toronto Marlies ice hockey franchise. Forbes journal estimates his fortune at $2.5 billion, and Canadian media describe him as probably the most influential figures in North American skilled sports activities, with a number of successes for his groups in recent times.

Gazidis, future president?

Ivan Gazidis, a 59-year-old former Arsenal and AC Milan supervisor, was appointed CEO of Kilmer Sports activities Ventures on 5 March. If the sale goes by, this Greek origin, born in Johannesburg and raised in England, may very well be put accountable for the Saint-Etienne membership.

In keeping with a supply near the matter, Jean-François Soucasse, CEO of ASSE since July 2021, ought to stay in his place, not less than initially. KSV ought to affiliate two companions as relays within the place of Gazidis, who would however change into the membership’s new strongman.

On the market

In keeping with the provisions of French legislation, the switch, for which discussions started in November, can’t be formalized till round a month, the time for the staff to offer an opinion. Removed from their glory days, the Greens have been on the lookout for a purchaser for a number of years, however their leaders have suffered some setbacks. In 2018, the membership had already entered into unique negotiations with the American fund Peak 6, which withdrew just a few days earlier than the top of the exclusivity interval.

Subsequently, AS Saint Etienne was formally put up on the market once more in 2021 beneath stress from supporter teams and the municipality. On the time, mayor Gaël Perdriau referred to as for “a brand new life” which sparked the curiosity of kind of critical, even eccentric, candidates. Overseas buyers such because the American David Blitzer or the Russian Sergeï Lomakin, Frenchmen equivalent to Jacques Pauly, a businessman from Gers, or the Drôme founder Olivier Markarian, former sponsor of ASSE, but additionally the Cambodian prince Norodom Ravichak, confirmed their curiosity with out something. materializes.

The monetary state of affairs of the membership, which has a price range of 27 million euros this season and a structural deficit of 15 million, requires a brand new monetary enhance between now and the top of the season, in a metropolis already affected by the dismantling. through the on line casino mass distribution group, on the origin of ASSE.

“Good distance”

Bernard Caïazzo (age 70), Parisian businessman, took management of the membership in 2004 for an quantity of 5 million euros, shortly earlier than the return to Ligue 1. He bought all his shares to Kilmer Sports activities Ventures. It’s “an organization that is aware of sports activities with robust human values”, he assures in a press launch. Discovering such a purchaser “would have been a protracted highway, however it was my most necessary mission to make sure a sustainable future for ASSE”.

In 2006, he was joined as co-shareholder by Roland Romeyer (age 78), a Loire entrepreneur who allowed him to determine his legitimacy within the face of reluctance from supporters and the native monetary world. Romeyer would retain the presidency of ASSE-Coeur Vert, the membership’s basis. In 2010, as a part of an overhaul of the ASSE organizational chart, Bernard Caïazzo turned head of the consultant council whereas Romeyer took over as chairman.

The 2 males have continued in these positions, however Romeyer has left the operational administration to Jean-François Soucasse (51 years outdated), former participant in Verts (1995-1998) and in Toulouse for which he was additionally supervisor, employed in January 2021 in a primary time as common supervisor of companies.

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