The Arsenal shares deal was brokered by Keith Harris, who brought Randy Lerner to Aston Villa, the Icelanders to West Ham and Thaksin to Man City.
The sale of David Dein’s shares for £75 million is one thing.
But this already has some of the hallmarks of Chelski II.
Significantly, it’s Gazprom.
Gazprom is one of the world’s biggest companies.
Therefore Alisher Usmanov, the man in charge of Gazprom’s investment arm, is not just the most trusted businessman in Russia. He is one of the heaviest players in global business.
Gazprom is the strategic political weapon of the Putin administration and whatever replaces Putin next year
Gazprom’s pipelines bring natural gas to the EEC.
Gazprom’s pipelines can bypass the former satellite states of the Soviet era. Gazprom can get tough with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, as we have seen.
Gazprom have a 10-year sponsorship deal with Bundesliga big boys Schalke, and that is one of the most interesting sports deals of the last 50 years.
Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl brokered that deal and Putin and Merkel met in Strasburg to sign it last October, although it wasn’t enacted until January.
Think about it : A sponsorship deal, giving big money from a Russian energy company to a German football club for the next 10 years, is signed in the presence of the Russian president and the German Chancellor and it’s brokered by the former German Chancellor !
The irony was that Kohl’s club is Borussia Dortmund, Schalke’s neighbour. Dortmund are sponsored by a German electricity company.
My guess is that this Arsenal takeover will go hostile. How quickly? Well, Russian billionaires don’t let the grass grow under their feet. Oligarchs don’t wait. They don’t hang about. They make you work to their time-scale. They’re not as patient as Stan Kroenke
Red and White Holdings will now buy shares on the open market, and from the hedge funds, and try to acquire Stan Kroenke’s shares ASAP.
Stan paid £6,800 for each of his ITV shares while Dein sold his shares to the Russians for £8,250 each. So if Stan sells at £8,250, he makes a nice profit.
No AFC shares had been sold for two weeks until yesterday.
Today 60 shares were sold at £8,000 each and if you click on Arsenal Holdings here you can update that.
Arsene Wenger said at 1.30pm today that yesterday’s events will NOT impact on his signing a new three-year contract.