The Sunday Times says a Nigerian billionaire wants to buy Lady Nina’s shares.
The story says that Stan Kroenke will bid for her shares.
If that is true.We have no idea if it is true.
The story by Ben Marlow claims that “Sources close to Kroenke say he is favourite to buy the holding.”
Clearly, someone who wants to sell 15.9% of Arsenal needs to create a market, an auction, so they hire an investment bank to do that. Lady Nina hired Blackstone, who apparently claim they have a “shortlist” of ten interested investors. Are those ten parties people Blackstone would like to be interested ? Or are they people who have registered an interest?
Timing is a big part of any auction process.
The big news in that story, really, is that silent Stan has apparently let it be known that he intends to bid for her stake. That would give him about 45% of Arsenal.
But we are still in the dark. Having read the whole story through twice, it does not fit with what we know, so it’s garbage.
We still don’t know what Arsenal game Stan is playing.
Until now he has wanted to buy the club for £8,500 a share. I was told two weeks ago she wanted £13,500 per share. Now we are told she wants a whopping £15,000 a share. She wants £160 million for her stake. £160 million? But what use is 15.9% of Arsenal to an African tycoon if he doesn’t have a seat on the board ?
The whole story is rubbish. It makes no sense.
My gut feeling is that if Kroenke buys Arsenal he will take it private and file his accounts in Delaware and nobody will know anything about the money. I seem to remember that his other companies file their accounts in Delaware.