International media reports say Stan Kroenke is set to take full control of Arsenal after submitting an offer to Alisher Usmanov which values the club at £1.8 billion.
Arsenal’s majority owner Stan Kroenke has had a bid accepted by the club’s second largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov to complete a full takeover at The Emirates, according to The Telegraph.
Kroenke has reportedly offered to buy Usmanov’s 30 per cent stake in a deal that values Arsenal at £1.8 billion and Usmanov has already decided to accept these terms.
Metro says Kroenke is currently Arsenal’s majority owner with a 67.09% stake, while Usmanov has a 30.4 per cent share but has never had a seat on the board or any say in the running of the club.
The Kroenke statement also say that Kroenke Sports Entertainment, a company wholly owned by Kroenke, has received an irrevocable undertaking from Red and White Securities – the company owned by Usmanov – to accept the offer for his 18,685 shares.
Usmanov, then, will receive around £540 million from Kroenke for his Arsenal shares.
Usmanov's business partner Farhad Moshiri already sold his Arsenal investment in 2016 so that he could buy a 49.9 per cent stake in Everton. There is now an expectation that Usmanov, whose wealth is estimated at $15.1 billion, may now join his friend at Goodison Park, says The Telegraph.
Alisher Usmanov (born September 9, 1953) is an Uzbek-born Russian business magnate. As reported by Forbes, in 2017, Alisher Usmanov has an estimated net worth of $15.1 billion. Usmanov built his wealth through metal and mining operations, and investments, and is the majority shareholder of Metalloinvest, a Russian industrial conglomerate, which consolidated in 2006 JSC Metalloinvest's assets (the Mikhailovsky Ore Refinery and the Ural Steel) with those of Gazmetall JSC (the Lebedinsky Ore Refinery and the Oskol Electrometallurgical Plant). He owns the Kommersant publishing house. Usmanov is also a co‑owner of Russia's second-largest mobile telephone operator, MegaFon, and co-owner of the Mail.ru group, the largest internet company in the Russian-speaking world, which owns stakes in popular web portals like Odnoklassniki, Vkontakte and others. Usmanov is the largest investor of Digital Sky Technologies ("DST") funds, and holds shares in a number of international technology companies. Usmanov is the president of the FIE, the international governing body of fencing, and he has invested in fencing programs and fencing development around the globe.
Enos Stanley Kroenke (born July 29, 1947) is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He is the owner of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, which is the holding company of the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, Denver Nuggets of the NBA, Colorado Avalanche of the NHL, Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer, Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League, the largest shareholder of English Premier League football club Arsenal and the newly formed Los Angeles Gladiators of the Overwatch League. The Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche franchises are currently owned by his wife, Ann Walton Kroenke, to satisfy NFL ownership restrictions that forbid a team owner from owning teams in other markets. Ann is the daughter of Walmart co-founder James Walton. Enos Stanley Kroenke was estimated to be worth US$8 billion by Forbes in 2016.
