Caixa demanded revenue from TV and sales of athletes to renegotiate, says director of Corinthians

Three years after Caixa Econômica Federal executed the financing debt for the construction of the Corinthians stadium, in Itaquera, the club and the bank announced last Monday (25) an agreement to renegotiate the debt.

To arrive at a new payment flow, the Alvinegra club had to accept demands from the state bank, including the inclusion of new guarantees for the contract, such as revenue from the sale of athletes and TV rights, as explained by the club’s financial director. , Wesley Melo.

The manager, however, stressed that the stadium will be self-sustaining and said he did not see any risk to the team’s coffers.

“It’s not that I’m setting up a reserve fund. These are guarantees that we ended up agreeing to, it was Caixa’s requirement. So, there’s a percentage of the revenue from the sale of players and from the sale of broadcasting rights. not honor the installments or interest, they will be able to exercise that guarantee,” Wesley told Sheet.

Without citing the percentages of revenues that were included in the negotiation, the top hat said that the payment flow is “feasible with the arena’s revenues”. According to him, the money generated at the stadium is “enough to pay the entire cost of maintenance and financing”.

There is an expectation in the club that it will not even be necessary to use all the revenue, especially from the box office, to honor the debt. Under the original contract, all the money generated in the arena was destined for the fund that manages the financing. Now, the club can also use these funds in case of surplus.

The information about the inclusion of new guarantees in the agreement between the parties was revealed by Caixa’s president, Daniella Marques, in an interview with TV Jovem Pan.

Newly sworn in as president of the bank after the removal of Pedro Guimarães, involved in allegations of harassment, Daniella even said that the financing of the alvinegra arena was a “very unsuccessful credit operation”. After a negative impact on the speech, she commented that the new agreement “was a great goal and solved the renegotiation of old obligations”.

Wesley said that “now it’s easy to look back and talk”, but that the initial payment plan made sense at the time of the stadium’s opening in 2014. According to him, there may have been exaggerations in revenue projections, but the economic situation of the country was the biggest obstacle for the club to honor the debt. “Brazil was greatly impacted by the global crisis in 2016, which affected all businesses.”

Since 2019, when the bank executed the contract, the parties had negotiated new terms. As a result, the court case had successive suspensions requested by the club and the bank. The payment of the loan during this period was also suspended.

According to the financial director, the club has already paid R$ 165 million in debt, between interest and the loan amount.

Now, it has been agreed that the club will be exempt from paying the debt this year and, from 2023, it will start paying interest on the financing. The principal amount will begin to be paid in 2025.

“In 2023 and 2024, we will pay interest only, on a quarterly basis, in March, June, September and December. The principal we begin to amortize in 2025, also on a quarterly basis”, explained the director.

The original amount transferred by the institution to the club was R$ 400 million. This amount has been corrected since then, and the current value is calculated at R$611 million.

Initially, the deadline for repayment of the debt was 2028. Now, the deadline is 2041. “It was a necessity of the flow [fazer esse prolongamento]to guarantee a value that we don’t get squeezed with”, said Wesley.

Neither the club nor Caixa revealed the amounts of the agreed installments. The original agreement provided for monthly installments of R$ 6 million.

Part of the loan will be paid with the sale of the stadium’s name, the so-called “naming rights”. To name the Itaquera stage Neo Química Arena for 20 years, Hypera Pharma agreed in 2020 to disburse BRL 300 million in annual installments of BRL 15 million. There is an annual correction by the IGPM (General Market Price Index), and the current calculation points to a total payment of R$ 400 million.

Built to host the opening of the World Cup in Brazil, the stadium was opened in May 2014. Six World Cup games were held there.

The report sought out Caixa, but the institution informed in a note that it “does not comment on the specific aspects of legal proceedings or renegotiations in progress”. He only stressed that the renegotiation was a “historic agreement”.