Juventus parent Exor denies planning to put club on sale

Juventus was banned from UEFA competition for this season after finishing seventh in Serie A last term due to a 10-points deduction for alleged false accounting practices.

REPRESENTATIVE IMAGE: Juventus supporters show their tattoos of the club’s logo at their Italian Serie A match against Palermo at the Juventus stadium in Turin May 5, 2013. | Photo Credit: GIORGIO PEROTTINO/ REUTERS

The Exor holding company that owns Juventus has no plans to put the Serie A club up for sale, a spokesman said on Monday, denying a report in newspaper Il Giornale.

The spokesman said in a statement that the report was “groundless.”

Exor, which is controlled by the Agnelli family and listed in the Netherlands, considers Juventus’s recent financial results “no longer sustainable” and has been embarrassed by its judicial problems, the newspaper had said.

Exor believes that after operations to clean up the accounts of Italy’s most historically successful team it can put it on sale for at least 1.5 billion euros ($1.61 billion), Il Giornale added.

Juventus was banned from UEFA competition for this season after finishing seventh in Serie A last term due to a 10-points deduction for alleged false accounting practices.

Speculation has arisen in the past about the possibility of Exor selling Juventus, and in May a company spokesman told Reuters its commitment to the club “remains unchanged.”