After renegotiating a 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 billion) financial plan with Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and JP Morgan (JPM.N), Barcelona will finish repaying the debt incurred to finance a renovation of their stadium five years sooner than originally anticipated, according to reports published in the Spanish news websites El Confidencial and newspaper La Vanguardia on Thursday.
According to the sources, the interest rate would be 5.5%, but the club has insisted on the ability to refinancing the loan after five years, with the intention of renegotiating and decreasing the cost once the stadium is operational.
Barcelona agreed to make the final payment under the modified conditions in 2047 rather than 2052.
On Thursday, club insiders told Reuters that “this is a highly intricate operation and as soon as it is formalized, we will make an announcement.”
The renegotiation took place in the midst of a refereeing crisis involving Barcelona, which UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin dubbed “one of the most severe” situations in football on Monday.
With regards to payments made by the team to a business controlled by a top officiating official, UEFA launched a formal inquiry against Barcelona last month.
The alleged payments of 7.3 million euros ($7.96 million) are said to have been paid by Barcelona to businesses controlled by Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, who was the vice president of the Spanish Football Association’s refereeing committee at the time, between 2001 and 2018.
In a statement released in February, the club denied any wrongdoing, claiming that it had engaged an outside consultant to provide them with technical studies on professional referees, which it said was standard procedure among professional football teams.
