Renewables tycoon Enrique Riquelme confirmed on Saturday that he would be running for the presidency of Real Madrid, presenting the first challenge in more than two decades to Florentino Perez’s hold on the world’s richest football club.
On May 12, Perez, 79, called new elections despite having two years left on his mandate. It followed a second successive season without silverware for the record 15-times European champion. Real’s arch-rival Barcelona retained the La Liga title.
Riquelme founded Cox Energy in 2014 to specialise in solar power in Europe and Latin America, winning significant projects in Chile, Mexico, and Spain. The company manages more than 1.2 gigawatts of energy projects in Spain through Ibox Energy.
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One of Cox’s largest operations was the acquisition in 2025 of Iberdrola’s assets in Mexico for $4.2 billion including debt.
In his May 13 open letter to Perez, who is an infrastructure development mogul and CEO of civil engineering ACS Group, Riquelme said the club needed to have a more democratic electoral process and that the best institutions were those that combined “experience and renewal, past and future”.
Published on May 23, 2026