There was a big after-hours trade in Arsenal shares last night.
Lansdowne Partners, a hedge fund based in Mayfair, sold their 3%.
Alisher Usmanov’s Red & White Holdings bought Landsdowne’s shares and paid over £10,000 per share.
Having bought 320 shares for £2,643,200 earlier on Monday, Red & White last night acquired another 1,953 shares and paid £10,250 for each share.
That’s £20 million quid.
It’s exactly £20,018,250.
So Usmanov now owns 21% of Arsenal.
If he buys Stan Kroenke’s stake that would put him over 30%, which he does not want at this stage, it’s believed.
The board and their friends have about 50% of the club and Kroenke has 12% and the small shareholders have 17%.
With the AGM coming up next month, and some shareholders cashing in on wealth created by 11 years of hard work by Arsene Wenger, who has just signed up till 2011, the Russian is not letting grass grown under his feet.
Usmanov is not the kind of guy who wants to own 21% of a business that does not pay a dividend and where he has no input into the running of the company. Unless he just wants to sell his shares later for a profit. Which looks unlikely.
The 1,200 small shareholders are mainly fans from Arsenal families.
If a man and his wife have 8 shares between them, and those shares can be sold for £80,000, that cash could pay off their mortgage.
The man may have gone to Highbury at the age of eight with his dad or his uncle, and supported Arsenal ever since, but £80,000 is eighty thousand quid. Those fans have a strong sentimental attachment to Arsenal Football Club. But, day by day, it’s getting harder to be sentimental.
More at noon today. A few corrections, perhaps !
And also I’ll write something about the Seville game this afternoon.