Juve sinks on market debut

December 20, 2001 Posted: 1222 GMT

LONDON (CNN) -- Italy's most successful soccer club Juventus made an altogether disappointing start to its life on the Milan stocks market.

Its stock plunged 8.1 percent to 3.40 in early Milan trading on Thursday, valuing the club at 419 million ($377 million), slicing almost 75 million from its market value overnight.

The Turin-based football club sold more than 44 million shares to institutional investors and the general public, raising 164 million ($147 million) on Wednesday, to develop its off-field activities.

A disappointing start had been expected amid growing concerns about spiraling player wages, huge transfer fees and mounting debts. Juve's stocks had been priced at 3.70 a share, at the low end of a price range of between 3.50 and 4.20. 

	Del Piero (front) is one of Juventus' top earners

Juve is still Italy's biggest publicly traded football club, ahead of AS Roma and Lazio.

Juve, known as the Old Lady of Turin, is Italy's most successful and best-supported club, having won a record 25 Italian league titles as well as two European Cups – in 1985 and 1996.

Having finished runner-up the past two season, Juve is desperate for success and has splashed out more than $100 million on players before the start of the season.

That outlay was partially covered by the record $66 million it received from the sale of Zinedine Zidane to Real Madrid.

Juventus made a 5.8-million net profit last year and was recently ranked fifth in a list of the world's wealthiest by auditor Deloitte & Touche.

The richest club Britain's Manchester United (MNU), currently valued at 566 million, has also seen its stock and market value tumble more than 40 percent this year. At the height of the tech and media boom in 2000, Manchester United was valued at £1 billion.

The club warned in its prospectus that buying its stocks could be a risky business.

"If we don't manage to achieve the prestigious sporting results that characterize our history, the balance sheet could be hit by lower revenues," the company said.

It also has pending doping charges against staff, and a planned merger of Italy's two pay-TV channels could end the fierce bibbing war for soccer rights. Television rights accounted for 44.8 percent of Juve's turnover last year.