
Valencia CF secures $377 million financing for Nou Mestalla stadium
SINGAPORE, June 26 (Reuters) - Valencia CF has secured financing totaling 322 million euros ($377 million) for the development of the Nou Mestalla stadium, the Spanish football club said on Thursday.
The financing, comprising 237 million euros of notes and 85 million euros of a short-term loan, is one of the biggest transactions ever completed by a professional football club in Spain and across Europe, Valencia said in a statement.
"Securing this landmark financing gives us the green light to deliver Nou Mestalla - a world-class stadium that will power the club's growth for generations," Kiat Lim, Valencia CF President, said in the statement. Lim is the son of Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim, who is the club's majority owner.
The stadium, which is located in the city of Valencia and will have over 70,000 seats, is scheduled to open in 2027. It is expected to multiply the revenue currently generated at its old Mestalla facility, Valencia CF said.
"Given the expanded hospitality, greater capacity, and multi-purpose event hosting, early estimates suggest that we will be more than tripling the current revenue," Kiat Lim said.
Valencia CF was advised by Bibium Capital, Addleshaw Goddard, Beka Titulizacion and Goldman Sachs (GS.N), opens new tab, with Spain's La Liga providing support to the club in the process, according to the statement.
($1 = 0.8547 euros)
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Britain has just spent £1bn on new F-35s. Were we right to do so?
For a Labour government keen to showcase its defence credentials to the world – and particularly Donald Trump – it was the perfect party piece. Ahead of this week's Nato summit in the Hague, Sir Keir Starmer announced the purchase of 12 new F-35A fighter jets, ordered from the United States at a cost of nearly £1 billion. Armed with state-of-the art technology and radar jammers, the so-called 'flying computer' can operate almost invisible to enemy eyes: as its maker Lockheed Martin boasts, 'it is built to conduct missions others can't'. More importantly, it can carry bombs that others can't. The F-35A will enable Britain to carry US B61s – tactical nuclear weapons that could be deployed on a battlefield in the event of a war with Russia. The idea is to widen Britain's range of nuclear response options, which currently rest only in the much bigger strategic missiles carried on its Trident submarine fleet. In nuclear weapons terms, that is the difference between a scalpel and a sledgehammer – and while the purchase has horrified disarmament campaigners, Sir Keir insists it is a necessary evil. 'In an era of radical uncertainty, we can no longer take peace for granted,' he declared. What has also not been taken for granted, however, is the F-35's complete reliability. For despite being billed as America's foremost combat jet, critics say it has suffered more than its fair share of glitches during its 19-year flying history. In 2019, the military magazine Defense News revealed that Pentagon chiefs had identified precisely 857 'deficiencies' in the aircraft's design, including seven that were potentially 'critical'. Most have since been dealt with, but to this day the F-35 programme remains dogged by technical hitches and concerns about reliability and maintenance. Britain has been a major customer of the F-35s, and already owns 48 F-35Bs – a variation on the F-35A that also has vertical take-off and landing capabilities, making it suitable for use on aircraft carriers. Worldwide, however, at least a dozen F-35s have been involved in accidents or serious technical failures since 2018. Sometimes the cause has been malfunctioning headsets or software failures; on other occasions pilots have simply struggled with the complex technology. In January, an F-35A fighter jet crashed during a training session at an Air Force base in Alaska after an in-flight malfunction, forcing the pilot to eject. Three years ago, a South Korean Air Force F-35A made a belly landing after a bird strike and a landing gear malfunction. Just this week, it was revealed that a British F-35B serving with an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean has been stranded on the Indian mainland for more than 10 days after monsoon rains forced it to make an emergency landing. A technical issue with the craft was reportedly identified after it landed, and a British Merlin helicopter from the aircraft carrier flew technicians in to try to fix the suspected hydraulic failure. But like a fancy sports car that can only be repaired by authorised dealers, the F-35 was deemed in need of a team of specialists from the UK. Meanwhile, Royal Navy chiefs are said to have turned down an offer by the Indians to move the jet out of the rain and into a hangar, for fear they might take a sneaky peak at its sensitive technologies. Problems with software updates have meant that hundreds of the planes have at times lain in hangars in the US, hindering ongoing roll-out programmes to Europe's other Nato players. Like much high-tech Pentagon equipment – especially anything nuclear-capable – the US military is cagey about the exact nature of the issues. But outsiders have not been shy in airing criticisms, among them aviation expert Bill Sweetman, a Hampshire-born former editor for Janes (a global open-source intelligence company), who now lives in the US. While Lockheed Martin hails its product as 'stealthy, speedy and the future of air dominance across the world,' Sweetman is rather less complimentary. In a book published last year, detailing the programme's problems and vast cost overruns, he famously dubbed the F-35 a ' trillion-dollar trainwreck '. Others – including a former acting defence secretary under Trump – have been equally damning, dismissing it as a 'rathole' and 'f----d up.' Sweetman paints a picture of a vast, outdated flight development programme, which began in the late 1990s when computer technology was far less developed than it is now, and has been playing catch-up ever since. As a result, he argues, the F-35 is rather like a clunky late-1990s laptop onto which lots of additional hard-drives and software have had to be awkwardly grafted. 'Operating a stealth aircraft [one designed to be invisible to radar] is always a unique challenge, in that you are also trying to minimise all the electronic signals that the plane might emit,' he says. 'But a big problem has been the design of the electronics, as how one did these things 25 years ago is very different to how they might be done today. By the late 2010s, for example, they were already running out of memory for the plane's computers, so they had to install first one new computer control system, and then another. That's very complicated and also affects the jet's avionics – how it flies. It might have been better to have had a design that kept the avionics separate from the control systems.' Lockheed Martin disputes that assessment, and compares the updates to 'how an iPhone receives a software update on a base operating system'. John Neilson, the firm's director of international media and corporate affairs, says: 'We continue to release iterations of software that will further enhance combat capabilities, operational effectiveness and readiness of the aircraft.' More than 1,000 F-35s have already been produced, several hundred of which are already in use by Nato allies or due for delivery in coming years. Sweetman believes that the programme, like many large-scale defence contracts, ended up being simply too big to abandon, and that 'every failed fix made matters worse'. Last year, members of the United States House Committee on Armed Services even argued for scaling back procurement of the planes until the problems were ironed out for good. The programme, however, is already seriously behind schedule, making matters even worse. 'They were all supposed to be delivered before 2030,' Sweetman says. 'Now that target is more like 2054.' Greg Bagwell, a retired air marshal and distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, says the issues extend beyond 'teething problems'. 'The F-35 is a big and long programme, with some way yet still to go,' he says. 'And while you can excuse any teething problems… there are clearly issues.' Bagwell likens the F-35 to a thoroughbred racehorse or Formula One racing car, arguing that because of its high-performance capabilities, it was always likely to suffer occasional technical hiccups. 'But if you look at the total number of flying hours that have already been put in, the number of serious issues has been pretty low,' he adds. The plane was in action over Iran recently during the US-Israeli bombing raids, with no performance issues or combat losses. 'There is some truth to the criticisms of people like Bill Sweetman, but based on exercises and operations we've seen so far, the F-35 is well above anything else we have,' says Bagwell. Other defenders of the plane, which took part in its first combat missions against Isis in Iraq in 2019, agree that despite its problems, it is still currently peerless. Its 360-degree vision gives pilots unrivalled situational awareness, and it also has formidable electronic warfare capabilities that can overwhelm enemy air defences. As one writer put it in an article last year for the magazine European Security & Defence: 'If the task is to go and drop a pair of small precision-guided missiles through someone's roof, and return home safely – probably undetected, and certainly unmolested – then there is no better aircraft to achieve that than an F-35.' Defence analysts also point out that glitches are routine with any high-performance aircraft, and that most of the more serious ones with the F-35 – such as problems with cockpit pressure leading to pilots suffering sinus pain – have now been ironed out. The debate over the F-35s' effectiveness, however, comes amid a wider discussion about whether the military should continue investing in manned aircraft and ' Top Gun ' pilots at all. With drones now effectively dominating the battlefield in Ukraine, many wonder if the West would be better off focusing purely on unmanned planes, controlled in turn by AI technology. Among those who believe so is American entrepreneur Elon Musk, who made his feelings known on social media last year when posting a video of a drone swarm. 'Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,' he said, adding: 'Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs. A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot.' Even Sweetman, however, points out that no drones currently have anything like the speed, range or weapons-carrying ability that a fighter jet has. And as the US bombing raid on Iran's nuclear facilities proved earlier this week, manned flights still have their uses. In an interview with The Telegraph last year, Paul Livingston, the chief executive of Lockheed Martin's UK arm, insisted the F-35's capabilities were still 'beyond anything else out there'. 'Before the F-35, if I was going to fly a mission into a peer nation's territory to strike against a well-protected target, I would need a minimum of 16 aircraft,' he said. 'You would have jamming aircraft – which, by the way, says, 'Hello, we're coming' – then you'd send in suppression of enemy air defence aircraft, because you'd have to kill the radars off, then you'd send fast strike aircraft in. 'I can now do that same mission with four F-35s and no support. And they don't need protection afterwards, because they can fight their way out.'


Telegraph
22 minutes ago
- Telegraph
England U21s beat Club World Cup in TV battle between Channel 4 and 5
England's Under-21 upstarts are outshining the senior stars of the Club World Cup in a free-to-air TV ratings battle between Channel 4 and 5. A peak audience of 1.6 million for Chelsea's opening 2-0 win against Los Angeles remains 5's highest for the controversial Fifa tournament so far. Channel 4's U21 coverage has now overshadowed that high mark, however, with a peak of 1.8 million tuning in to England's semi-final win over Netherlands on Wednesday. The broadcaster, whose previous coups include Emma Raducanu's US Open triumph in 2021, claims the fixture was the most popular programme on all channels in the teatime slot on Wednesday evening. A total of 24 per cent of the key target growth audience of 18 to 34 year-old viewers were watching, with an average audience of just under 0.9 million. Channel 4 later disclosed that England's quarter-final victory over Spain was its highest audience of all, with a two million peak audience. Those numbers do not include those streaming the match online. Group stage England matches, meanwhile, reached a peak of 1.3 million. The other semi-final – which saw Germany beat France – featured on streaming channel Channel 4seven and had a peak audience of over 300,000. Executives at 5, meanwhile, confirmed privately that Chelsea's Group D opening match, which captured a 15 per cent share of the viewing audience, remains the best audience so far. For both broadcasters, rights packages were picked up for nominal fees and are said to have been in line with expectations. The Chelsea fixture averaged 1.4 million viewers, with Lee Sears, president of Paramount International Advertising Sales, describing numbers as a 'standout moment for 5, driving big numbers including new and hard to reach younger audiences to the channel'. 'It's a clear example of how premium live sport can outperform our channel average and deliver real value to both viewers and advertisers,' Sears added. 'We're delighted with the performance of the tournament so far for us,' a 5 spokeswoman added when contacted by Telegraph Sport. UK rights values for the Club World Cup and U21s are dwarfed by the huge fees commanded by the Premier League from Sky and TNT. The new four year domestic cycle is worth £6.7 billion and begins after a season in which viewer numbers fell by 10 per cent as Liverpool breezed to the title. Under Channel 5's sub-licensing deal for the Club World Cup, it is broadcasting 23 of the tournament's 63 matches free-to-air in the UK. DAZN, the main rights-holder, is showing every fixture free on its platforms. The tournament itself has received criticism, not helped by poor attendances inside stadiums for some matches. While 5 audiences are likely to grow in the Club World Cup latter stages, Channel 4's hopes are now resting entirely on Saturday's mouth-watering final against Germany. England are one match away from winning back-to-back Euros after Harvey Elliott's brilliant double set up the showdown in Bratislava. England won the tournament for the first time in 39 years in 2023, and Lee Carsley's side could now match the feat of successive triumphs in 1982 and 1984.


Reuters
24 minutes ago
- Reuters
Verstappen would welcome Vettel having a role at Red Bull
SPIELBERG, Austria, June 26 (Reuters) - Max Verstappen said he would welcome fellow four-times Formula One champion Sebastian Vettel back to Red Bull after the German spoke of possibly succeeding consultant Helmut Marko at the team. Austrian Marko, 82 and a former racer who was blinded in one eye after a stone pierced his visor during the 1972 French Grand Prix in Clermont-Ferrand, has a contract until the end of next year. Vettel, 37, won consecutive titles with Red Bull from 2010-13 and retired in 2022 after stints at Ferrari and Aston Martin. "It's more than normal that someone that has achieved so much with Red Bull, has been brought up by Red Bull (should return)," Verstappen told reporters at the Austrian Grand Prix on Thursday when asked for his thoughts. "In a sense there's always a spot available, right? "I think also Seb always kept a really good relationship with Helmut anyway, even when he left. I didn't know that of course they were talking but I'm sure that there's always a space for Seb in any kind of form." Marko was a close confidant of the team's late Austrian owner Dietrich Mateschitz, serving as his trusted representative in the paddock as well as also taking charge of the young driver programme. During Vettel's era the outspoken advisor was part of a leading trio with principal Christian Horner and technical ace Adrian Newey, who is now at Aston Martin. "We're in contact about this, though maybe not so intensively or in-depth yet, but it's possible," Vettel told Austria's ORF television recently. "He's already said a few times that he'd stop, but he's still here, and I wish him all the best so that he stays around for a very long time." Marko told Austria's Kleine Zeitung on Wednesday that Vettel was following everything very closely. "The question of succession is also one of the issues," he said.