Who is (and what does he do) the former baseball champion who is about to buy the Panini stickers

14 July 20213 years ago babelfish

Slam Corp, former baseball player Alex Rodriguez's Spac, is in talks with Panini for a possible merger. All the details

The Italian publishing house Panini, famous for soccer cards and comics, is in talks with Slam Corp, the Spac of former American baseball player Alexander Rodriguez, for a possible merger. Bloomberg writes it.

HOW MUCH IS PANINI WORTH

If the transaction were to go through – and it is not taken for granted that an agreement will be reached, the agency specifies -, the merger would be valued at 3 billion dollars. In 2018 Panini recorded sales of over 1 billion.

WHAT IS SLAM CORP

Slam Corp is a Spac, an acronym for Special Purpose Acquisition Companies. These are particular companies – defined as "corporate vehicles" – which do not own physical assets but only financial resources. They go public to raise capital, which they then use to invest in other companies.

Slam Corp was born from a partnership between Alexander Rodriguez's investment firm A-Rod Corp (nicknamed A-Rod) and the hedge fund Antara Capital; last February, it raised $ 575 million through an initial public offering. Slam Corp's stated goal is to acquire companies in the sports, media, entertainment, health and consumer electronics industries.

WHAT ALEX RODRIGUEZ DOES

Alexander, or Alex, Rodriguez is forty-five years old and is considered one of the best baseball players ever. He retired in 2017, after playing for twenty-two seasons in the MLB (the North American professional league of baseball), mainly with the New York Yankees, from 2004 to 2016.

He is president and chief executive officer of investment firm A-Rod Corp which, the website reads , has acquired over $ 1 billion worth of real estate.

Rodriguez isn't the first sports celebrity to bond with a SPAC: former basketball player Shaquille O'Neal is a consultant for such a company, and football player Colin Kaepernick has one.

DO YOU WANT TO SELL?

Panini was founded in Modena in 1961; today it is led by Anna Baroni (president) and Aldo Hugo Sallustro (managing director). It has distribution channels in over one hundred countries and branches in Europe, the United States and Latin America.

Bloomberg wrote last February that the company was considering selling. Panini would have aroused the interest of several investment groups ( private equity ) such as Advent, EQT, Carlyle and KKR, writes ANSA .

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/panini-alex-rodriguez-slam-corp/ on Wed, 14 Jul 2021 13:41:14 +0000.