Spurs fans have a good reason to boycott social networking site
In addition to owning nearly 30 per cent of Arsenal football club, lovable Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov owns a chunk of Facebook. Digital Sky Technologies (DST) - a company in which the rotund ex-con* has a 32 per cent share - have already invested $200m into the popular social networking site, and are looking to strengthen their grip:
[A further investment] will give DST 1.54 percent more of Facebook, for a total of 3.5 percent of the company. That makes DST-based in London and Moscow-one of the bigger Facebook investors, with a stake larger than one owned by Microsoft (MSFT).
Tottenham fans who like to spend half their day updating banal statuses and stalking ex girlfriends should bear this in mind: each time you log on to Facebook, you are helping to line the pockets of the man who owns your biggest rivals.
*Usmanov has been known to crush websites that make reference to his incredibly shady past, so you’ll have to do your own research on that one.
American rents out stadium on night of huge basketball match
WWE owner Vince McMahon has challenged Arsenal’s majority shareholder Stan Kroenke to a steel cage match after an embarrassing scheduling screw-up.
Kroenke owns the NBA team Denver Nuggets, who are scheduled to face the LA Lakers in a home Western Conference final match next Monday. However, Kroenke Sports Enterprises agreed last August to rent out the Pepsi Center to the WWE for their televised Raw show - an arrangement that was confirmed last month with no escape clause.
As Gabriele Marcotti in The Times points out, it’s the equivalent of Arsenal
Britain’s super-rich were crying in their corn flakes yesterday morning as The Sunday Times Rich List detailed the damage to their collective banks accounts. In the past year, the number of billionaires has fallen from 75 to 43, and the cumulative wealth of the nation’s 1,000 richest people has fallen from £413bn to £258bn.
Roman Abramovich - who has had to cut back on his expensive yacht habit this year - remains in second place with an estimated fortune of £7bn, down 40 per cent from £11.7bn.
Popular Newcastle Utd owner Mike Ashley has also suffered from the nation’s reticence to buy Lonsdale hoodies
Arsenal this morning confirmed that American billionaire Stan Kroenke - the gent on the right in the picture above - has been invited onto the board to take a non-executive director role. The owner of the the MLS’ Colorado Rapids and the NBA’s Denver Nuggets has held a 12.4 per cent stake in the club since last year, and his invitation to the board appears to counter the takeover ambitions of Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
On the club’s official website, Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood says:
“We are delighted to welcome Stan to the Board of Arsenal. He brings with him a wealth of experience through his direct involvement in sports clubs in the US and we expect to benefit from his commercial insights and knowledge.”
It’s great that Hill-Wood is so welcoming, particularly as he once remarked of the American: “We don’t need his money and we don’t want his sort.”
Kroenke is not party to last year’s lock-down agreement (whereby directors can only sell their stakes to board-approved persons), but has agreed not to extend his shareholding beyond 29.9 per cent in the next year. If either Usmanov or Kroenke reach thirty per cent, they would have to launch a formal takeover.
Next week, Arsenal’s annual results will be formally announced, revealing a huge £225m turnover and record pre-tax profit of £36.7m.
While balancing the books may win Arsenal plaudits in the business world, supporters fail to see the honourable value of trading within one’s own means, and are becoming increasingly impatient with the lack of investment in the playing staff. Arsenal currently have three holes shaped like Mathieu Flamini, Alexander Hleb and Gilberto Silva and no one willing to splash out and fill them.
Unless, that is, Alisher Usmanov, with a twenty four per cent stake in the club, launches a formal takeover, as he is entitled to do, starting today. His advances have so far been greeted with boardroom skepticism - unsurprising, being that the Arsenal board appears to be made up of very grand old English ladies and gentlemen (plus American Stan Kroenke) with little apparent appetite for relinquishing power to anyone so vulgar as an Uzbek oligarch.
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