Shareholders in Amsterdam football club Ajax, which is in the middle of a bitter dispute over control, are getting fed up with the feuding, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.

The paper says major shareholder Delta Lloyd is considering selling its 8.5% stake in the club because of the problems and says CEO Niek Hoek has described the investment as ‘not our most successful’.
The club’s supervisory board is currently refusing to stand down despite losing the support of members in a row over the appointment of Louis van Gaal as new general director. The appointment was made without consulting Johan Cruijff, also a supervisory board member, who has been campaigning to improve the club’s fortunes on the pitch since last year.
Opportunistic
Shareholders’ lobby group VEB says ‘tens of millions of euros is being lost because of opportunistic policies’. ‘Since the flotation, Ajax has not had a properly thought-out long-term strategy,’ VEB economist David Tomic told the paper.
Even main sponsor Aegon views the dispute ‘with leaden eyes’, communications director Jan Driessen told the paper. Aegon is half way through a seven-year sponsorship period, at a cost of €10m a year.
Ajax, the Netherlands’ only stock exchange-listed football club, listed in 1998 at 25 guilders (€11.34) a share but the price now hovers between €6 and €7. Some 27% of the club’s shares are listed, the rest are owned by the Ajax Association.