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- FootBiz newsletter #139: Elliott's unprecedented AC Milan trade cashes out
FootBiz newsletter #139: Elliott's unprecedented AC Milan trade cashes out
PLUS: Why football should care about the NFL taking a stake in ESPN
Ed Malyon
February 03, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
In July 2018, notoriously aggressive hedge fund Elliott Management faced a choice they hadn’t necessarily foreseen when they had provided €300m in high-interest financing for Li Yonghong’s €740m purchase of AC Milan a year earlier.
The Chinese businessman had defaulted on a €50m payment and Elliott had the right to take the club as collateral, but the prospect of finding a buyer seemed distant even with interest from a number of groups, including the Ricketts family (owners of the Chicago Cubs and later bidders for Chelsea) and Rocco Commisso, who would later buy Fiorentina and sadly passed away two weeks ago.
Instead, despite serious internal opposition to the move, Paul Singer’s hedge fund decided to take control of the club and one of the great experiments in football finance had begun.
As of this week it is over, and when all is said and done, Elliott’s Milan trade will go down in history as a wild success as Elliott Management exit their investment.
The club’s new owners, RedBird Capital Partners, have borrowed €700million in a major refinancing package that has resulted in Elliott being able to finally exit the club.
Indisputably one of global football’s biggest brands, Milan’s ownership has been messy since the club was sold by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2017. Berlusconi, as infamous for his Bunga Bunga parties and womanizing as he was famous for his political nous and success with the Rossoneri, had managed to negotiate a fairly hefty deal for nearly three-quarters of a billion euros. It was the second-biggest football club acquisition in history after the Glazer family’s 2005 purchase of Manchester United.
Milan’s iconic stadium at San Siro
The only problem was that Li didn’t have the money. He took on a that €300m debt from Elliott, known as a vulture fund for its deal for Argentinean debt when the country was on the brink of default, later suing the country for its full value and culminating in Elliott seizing an Argentine oil tanker off the coast of Africa.
That probably should have been the first clue.
When Li defaulted on the debt the following year — after the Chinese government imposed stricter controls capital leaving the country — it had major ramifications for many European football clubs but none moreso than Milan, where Elliott assessed its options and decided to take on management of the club.
In effect, they gained control of one of the biggest clubs on the planet for around €400m, just over half the price it had fetched on the market a year before.
Ivan Gazidis, formerly of Arsenal, was handpicked by Elliott to be CEO while Pablo Scaroni became chairman and Geoffrey Moncada arrived from Monaco to become one of the key sporting decision-makers alongside club legend Paolo Maldini. The fund had installed management that would stabilise the club and eventually win them a Scudetto in 2021/22.
Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird would acquire the club just days after that title win for €1.2bn but were only able to do so with significant seller financing, a fairly common mechanism by which a vendor will lend money to be paid back over time by a buyer that doesn’t yet have enough capital to complete the deal.
Paolo Maldini was hired by Elliott as they assumed control of Milan
New owners meant it wasn’t always plain-sailing on the sporting side. A year after they extended his contract, Maldini was told he must sign players from a list provided by RedBird’s data company, Zelus Analytics. According to FootBiz sources, Maldini told RedBird he “pisses on [their] list” and left the club.
Elliott retained a minority stake and two seats on the board having already locked in a profit but that changed this week.
As reported by Bloomberg and subsequently confirmed by Milan in an official statement, Elliott finally exited their unprecedented trade as part of a restructuring of the club’s debt.
RedBird’s new financing was arranged by Comvest Credit Partners, a Florida-based private credit asset manager, per the statement. New York-based RedBird continue to be majority owners in French club Toulouse and are also shareholders in Fenway Sports Group, owners of Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox. Efforts to sell Toulouse for the last couple of years have fallen flat in the wake of Ligue 1’s media rights collapse.
The new debt deal values Milan at around €1.2bn and finally gives RedBird complete control of the club. Along with crosstown rivals Internazionale they are planning to demolish the iconic San Siro and build a new, much more modern 71,500-stadium on the same site that will stage matches at Euro 2032, which Italy will co-host with Turkey.
The planned San Siro development
While footballing results have been up and down during the Elliott/RedBird era, peaking with that league title in 2022 but missing out on Europe entirely last year, the club is now profitable and looking towards better things under Cardinale’s watch.
“We have worked to consistently strengthen AC Milan’s financial and sporting performance,” said Cardinale, president of AC Milan and RedBird founder.
“With the San Siro project now under way, we are even more confident in the club’s trajectory and our ability to support its continued growth and success.”
In the end, it was quite the trade from Elliott.
