The Alicante businessman Enrique Riquelme has announced in the last hour of this Sunday the members of his candidacy for the board of directors of Real Madrid. The president and majority shareholder of the renewable energy company Cox Energy presented his candidacy for the presidency of the white club on Saturday, after negotiating until the last moment the granting of a guarantee by Andbank Spain of 193 million, 15% of the team’s budget, as required by its statutes. About 24 hours later, the Real Madrid Electoral Board has given the green light to the candidacy, which means that elections will be held in the coming weeks for the first time in 20 years.
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In total, Riquelme presents a board of directors with 12 members, including himself as president. He has the lawyer Antonio Medina Cuadros as vice president and 10 more members. Among all of them there is only one woman, Rocío Sobrini, who is the financial director of the marketing consultancy QDQ. And a son of the former president of Real Madrid, Ramón Mendoza, Juan Luis Mendoza Solano, who was also president of the Movilnorte dealership network and a member of the board of directors for a brief period in 2006, with Ramón Calderón.
In addition, the candidacy is made up of investors, various personalities from the business world, executives and some lesser-known profiles. Perhaps the most media-friendly is Rosauro Varo, shareholder of Cabify and until December linked to Telefónica, where he became vice president of Movistar +. His business resume includes being the founder of the operator Pepephone, which he sold to MasMovil. Among the absences, David Mesonero stands out, corporate director of Iberdrola and son-in-law of its president, Ignacio Sánchez Galán, a personal friend of Riquelme and with whom it had been speculated that he could be linked to the candidacy.
Among the members accompanying Riquelme, several members of his own company stand out, such as his financial director, José Olivé Pina, who has experience in some large foreign investment banks such as JP Morgan, Credit Suisse or Morgan Stanley. The secretary of the proposed board, however, is Francisco Javier Riquelme Rubira, property registrar and current president of the agri-food cooperative Best Fruit.
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The lawyer Antonio Medina Cuadros, proposed as vice president, has a particularly prominent profile. He was already a member of the Real Madrid board of directors between 2006 and 2009, when Ramón Calderón was president, predecessor of Florentino Pérez. He is his trusted legal advisor and head of this area at Cox, as well as general director of the law firm Medina Cuadros, which his father founded in the 70s. In the sports field, he has been a councilor of Formula E, the motorsport championship presided over by Alejandro Agag. From the same law firm, Raul Rodríguez is also present on the team, its Director of Institutional Relations and head of the Mexico office.
In the rest of the board positions, as members, there are some businessmen. For example, Ángel Martín, the founder of the Grupo Menorca chain of aesthetic surgery centers. Also present is Daniel Vicente Nicolás, owner of the family jewelry store Nicols, on Goya street in Madrid. And the Mexican investor, Héctor Fabián Gómez Sainz, who has had several bets in medium-sized Spanish listed companies such as GAM or Cortefiel. Among the lesser-known profiles is José Alberto Martínez Cepero, executive of the Volkswagen distributor in Spain, Volkswagen Group Retail.
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