Britain's highly touted soccer team Manchester United, owned since 2005 by the family of the Florida-based businessman Malcolm Glazer, is hitting the street—Wall Street, that is. Two separate management teams will go on a roadshow for two weeks to drum up interest among investors in the U.S., Europe and Asia prior to an IPO scheduled for the U.S.
Reuters reported Tuesday that the move came after IPOs were canceled in Singapore and Hong Kong, and that it riled fans of the team once they heard that a substantial portion of the proceeds would go to the Glazer family rather than paying off team debt fans say impedes the progress of the players' success.
If soccer fans aren't 100% behind the move, neither are members of the financial sector. Aside from the facts that stock in a British soccer team could be a tough sell here in the U.S. thanks to a lack of a basis for comparison—no publicly traded sports teams against which Manchester can be compared—and because soccer comes in a distant second on this side of the pond to football, the numbers themselves could give one pause.
The team plans to offer 16.67 million shares at between $16 and $20 each. That values the club, at the top of the range, at $3.3 billion. The shares will come half from the club itself and half from the Glazers, in an offering intended to raise as much as $333 million. While the club's IPO take will be used to lower its debt—from 423 million pounds ($664 million) as of March 31 to 345.4 million pounds ($543 million)—the team will still be left owing a hefty amount, while the Glazers will profit.
In addition, the Glazers will still be dominant after the offering, with 89.8% of the combined class A and B shares. They will retain control after the sale because their Class B shares will have 10 times the voting power of average investors' Class A shares.
