French football club Olympic Lyon have announced ambitious plans to float on the stock market.
They will become the first French club to float its shares after the country lifted laws that prevented football clubs from listing on the stock exchange.
Lyon, the current French champions, said the flotation would generate at least 84m euros (£55.3m).
The club will use some of this money to help fund the construction of a new 60,000 capacity stadium.
Jean-Michel Aulas, Lyon chairman and chief executive, said: "With this initial public offering project OL Groupe enters a new stage of its history.
"This will allow the group to access new financial resources in order to accelerate our growth strategy and continue our focused development, based on the diversification of group revenues and profits."
Lyon said it planned to sell 3.7 million new shares priced at between 21 euros and 24.4 euros each.
An additional 550,000 shares could also be offered if demand is healthy.
Lyon, who lead the French championship by 14 points, reported a net profit of 15.9m euros for the year ending June 2006.
Full-year turnover at the club was 161.1m euros.
According to global accounting firm Deloitte, Lyon are currently the fifteenth richest club in world football.
comments
What do you think? Give us your opinion on the comments page.