The investigation into RedBird Capital, AC Milan’s owning fund: everything on Cardinale-Mendes, Maldini and Ibrahimovic

The main points of journalist Romain Molina’s investigation into RedBird Capital’s sporting galaxy.

Sports journalist Romain Molina carried out the investigation into RedBird Capital, the fund that owns AC Milan. Over the course of his career, he has produced highly detailed investigations for The Guardian, The New York Times and the BBC. On his YouTube channel, the Frenchman shared a 25-minute video explaining the system behind RedBird Capital Partners' sports investments, the investment fund of Gerry Cardinale, founded in 2014 and owners of AC Milan since 2022.

Here are the main points of the investigation:

The relationship between Cardinale and his former right-hand man Scheiner

One key point concerns the relationship between Gerry Cardinale and Alec Scheiner, a former NFL executive who for some time was the right-hand man of the Milan owner in the fund's sports investments and also led the controversial Toulouse project from 2020 onwards. In 2022, Gerry Cardinale bought the reigning Italian champions Milan for €1.2 billion and then clashed with Scheiner, who saw it as a disproportionate investment, especially given the massive vendor loan granted by the Elliott fund. A year later came the definitive split with Scheiner, who was pushing to place his own men on the board of the Rossoneri club: in the summer of 2023, the same one as the irreparable rift with Paolo Maldini, Scheiner and Cardinale also parted ways. According to Molina, however, Scheiner set up a new fund, Otro Capital, financed with €200 million directly from RedBird/Cardinale's own pockets.

Two central figures in RedBird's time at AC Milan, for very different reasons, are Paolo Maldini and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Molina traces the rift between Cardinale and the former Rossoneri captain and director to one issue: Cardinale wanted to bring men from the world of finance into the sporting management structure, as Billy Beane, Mr Moneyball, is for example). Faced with those demands, Maldini is said to have always dug his heels in because he did not want men from the financial world making sporting decisions. Molina, meanwhile, underlines that Zlatan Ibrahimovic's position within RedBird is practically untouchable: to take on the role of Senior Advisor, the former Sweden player invested money in the fund and that acts as a guarantee of keeping him in place, even if his role has still not been clearly defined.