Arsenal’s majority shareholder Stan Kroenke is set to take full ownership of the football club in a deal valuing it at £1.8bn after the second largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov indicated he would accept the offer.
Stan Kroenke launched the bid to take full ownership of Arsenal, in a deal that values the Premier League club at around £1.8billion. The American billionaire, who already owns 67 per cent of the Gunners through his company KSE, has reached an agreement to buy out Alisher Usminov’s stake in the Premier League club.
“We at KSE are moving forward with this offer leading to 100% ownership of the club. We appreciate Mr Usmanov’s dedication to the Arsenal Football Club and the storied ethos and history the club represents,” read a statement from Kroenke to the London Stock exchange.
Usmanov, who doesn’t have a seat on the club’s board despite being the second biggest shareholder, made a £1bn offer to buy out Kroenke in May last year but was rejected. KSE, the corporation owned by Kroenke, currently holds 41,743 shares in Arsenal equating to 67.09 per cent control.
Kroenke grew up in Mora, Missouri, an unincorporated community with a population of approximately two dozen, where his father owned Mora Lumber Company.
His first job was sweeping the floor at his father’s lumber yard. By age 10 he was keeping the company’s books. In a September 2011 interview with The Telegraph newspaper, Kroenke said he was lucky — both as a youngster and later in life — to be surrounded by family and friends who saw the value of attaining a good education, which he said contributed to his success. At Cole Camp (Missouri) High School, he played baseball, basketball and ran track.
Kroenke obtained a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Missouri.
He founded the Kroenke Group in 1983, a real estate development firm that has built numerous shopping centers and apartment buildings. Since his marriage to Walton, he has been in the special position to develop many of the plazas near Walmart stores.
He is also the chairman of THF Realty, an independent real estate development company that specializes in suburban development. He founded this corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1991. In 2016, THF’s portfolio was valued at more than $2 billion, including more than 100 projects totaling 20 million square feet, primarily in retail shopping centers.
In 2006, Kroenke, in partnership with the money manager Charles Banks, acquired the Napa Valley winery Screaming Eagle. (In April 2009, Banks said he was no longer involved with Screaming Eagle.)
Kroenke is a major owner of working ranches, owning a total of 848,631 acres. The Land Report magazine ranked him as the United States’ ninth-largest landowner in 2015. Among notable purchases is his February 2016 acquisition of the famous Waggoner Ranch in Texas, the largest ranch within one fenceline.
In August 2017, he came under fire for launching a new outdoor sports television channel that was unveiled in the United Kingdom and will show regular hunting programmes that include killing elephants, lions and other vulnerable African species.
Kroenke is the largest shareholder of Premier League association football club Arsenal. Arsenal already had a technical link-up with Kroenke’s Colorado Rapids when in April 2007 Granada Ventures, a subsidiary of ITV plc, had sold its 9.9% stake in Arsenal Holdings plc to Kroenke’s KSE UK inc. Kroenke went on to buy further shares in the club, taking his total stake up to 12.19%. The club’s board initially expressed skepticism that a bid would be in its best interests, but gradually warmed to him as part of counteracting Alisher Usmanov’s rival bid for the club.
By June 2008, the board had prepared to let Kroenke take over the club, and on September 19, 2008, it was officially announced that Kroenke had joined the Arsenal board of directors. Kroenke had a beneficial interest in, and controlled voting rights, over 18,594 shares, representing 29.9% of the issued shares. Thus, he was nearing the maximum 29.99% threshold, beyond which he would be forced to make an offer for all remaining shares.
On April 10, 2011, it was reported that Kroenke was in advanced talks to complete the takeover of Arsenal. The following day, it was announced that he increased his shareholding in Arsenal to 62.89% by purchasing the stakes of Danny Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, and agreed to make an offer for the rest of the club at £11,750 per share, valuing the club at £731M.
In July 2018, he made an offer to take complete control of the club