Santander (EFE).- The Pitma group, majority shareholder of Racing de Santander, has decided to sell its entire stake in the club to a company created by the Argentine businessman and mathematician Sebastián Ceria and the former racinguista president Manolo Higuera.
Through this divestment process, the Cantabrian business group has transferred all its shares in the club, 74 percent of the total, to Sebman Sports International, which will become the largest shareholder after the sale of Racing, as reported by Alfredo’s company Pérez and Pedro Ortiz, president and vice president of Racing.
The operation has been closed after “several weeks” of negotiations under the financial advice of Santander Corporate & Investment Banking, and legal advice from Cuatrecasas.
Pitma has stated that this transaction will serve to “give a boost to the development of the club” in its second consecutive year in the Second Division, “once financial stability has been achieved” for this sports company with 110 years of history.
Alfredo Pérez and Pedro Ortiz, who have run the Real Racing Club since June 2018, stated in a statement that with this decision “they complete a cycle at the helm of the sports club they joined with the aim of safeguarding their continuity in the social, economic and sporty.”
“It is not a speculative operation,” says Higuera
Manolo Higuera, lawyer and former president of the club, explains in a statement sent by his office that “no other person, company or investment fund” is involved in this operation, apart from him and Sebastián Ceria and that the sale is pending only from the authorization from sports institutions to “be able to make the agreement public”.
“As soon as the government’s approval is received, which we hope will be shortly, we will present our project for Racing to racing fans and to Cantabria in general,” said Higuera, who has advanced “that it is not a speculative operation, but a plan designed to provide long-term institutional stability to the entity”.
“All the extremes” of the sale and the future plans proposed by this new shareholding group to make Racing “increasingly solid” will be made public shortly.
With a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, Sebastián Ceria, who is also a Spanish national, is CEO of a technology-based company called Qontigo and was previously a director of Axioma, a company that he himself founded and has directed since 1998.
Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he was a professor at Columbia Business School and has written numerous articles in industry and academic journals, as well as being a member of the US National Academy of Engineering.