Billionaire George Soros has acquired a near-2 per cent stake in Manchester United following the football club’s controversial initial public offering earlier this month.
The veteran investor’s hedge fund, Soros Fund Management, owns 7.85 per cent of the class A shares, or about 1.9 per cent of the entire club, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Manchester United, which went public on 9 August, was priced below its expected range amid broad scepticism about the valuation the club’s owners wanted. It also made the identity of the eventual shareholders a matter of particular interest for other institutional investors.
The club is owned by the Glazer family, which has interests ranging from shopping malls to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers American football team.
Soros is one of the closely watched investors in the $2 trillion (£1.3tr) hedge fund industry, and oversees about $25 billion in assets, even after returning money to outside investors and converting his fund into a family office last summer. The firm now mainly manages money for Soros, his family and foundation.
This is not the first time that the 82-year-old has taken interest in a football club. In 2008, the billionaire eyed a takeover of Italian club AS Roma as the team struggled with debt issues, but later decided against it.
Soros was likely to have been drawn to Manchester United because of the team’s lucrative media rights deals, said Philip Hall, a partner at New York-based investment bank Inner Circle Sports.
