Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, said he still wants to buy English Premier League soccer team Arsenal even after he was rebuffed by its owners in 2010.
Nigeria’s
Dangote, an Arsenal fan worth $15.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg
Billionaires Index, discussed buying a stake in the club five years
ago before talks with the owners fell through, he said. Since then his wealth
has grown more than sevenfold.
“I still
hope, one day at the right price, that I’ll buy the team,” Dangote, 58, said in
an interview as he traveled on a plane owned by one of his companies between
the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and the Nigerian commercial hub of Lagos on
May 1. “I might buy it, not at a ridiculous price but a price that the owners
won’t want to resist. I know my strategy.”
Arsenal is
one of England’s most successful clubs, having won 13 top flight league titles
in the country, the most after Manchester United and Liverpool. Arsenal
Holdings Plc., the owner, trades on the ICAP Securities & Derivatives
Exchange, or ISDX, and is valued at 988 million pounds ($1.49 billion).
A
successful bid would make Dangote the first African owner of a club in a league
where billionaires including Russia’s Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea,
and Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, who controls Manchester
City, have acquired teams.
Stan
Kroenke, worth $5.6 billion and owner of the National Football League’s St.
Louis Rams, holds 67 percent of Arsenal, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg. Red & White Sec Ltd., controlled by Uzbek billionaire Alisher
Usmanov and Farhad Moshiri, owns 30 percent.
Cement, Gas
Dan
Tolhurst, a spokesman for the London-based club, declined to comment as did
Rollo Head, a spokesman for Usmanov in London. Tomago Collins, a spokesman for
Kroenke in Denver, did not immediately respond to e-mails requesting comment.
Dangote
has interests in sugar and flour and controls Dangote Cement Plc, Nigeria’s
biggest publicly traded company. He is investing $11 billion in a 650,000
barrel-a-day oil refinery near Lagos and as much as
$2.5 billion in gas pipelines running to the city from Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger
River delta region.
His wealth
has fallen by $2.7 billion this year, the sixth-most globally, according to the
Billionaires Index.
Dangote,
who ranks 55th on the index, said he’s too busy with existing projects to mount
a bid now.
“We have
$16 billion-worth of investments in the next few years,” he said. “Right now I
want to take my own business to a certain level. Once I finish on that
trajectory, then maybe” an offer will follow.
Limited Success
Most
English Premier League matches are broadcast live in Nigeria, Africa’s most
populous country, by Supersport, a satellite television channel owned by South
Africa’s Naspers Ltd.
Arsenal
won the FA Cup, England’s main knockout tournament, last year, its first major
trophy since 2005, and is in the final of the same tournament this year. Over
the last decade London rivals Chelsea have won the English league four times as
well as the European Champions League and several other trophies.
Arsene
Wenger, who has managed Arsenal since 1996, has been criticized by fans
including Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame for the team’s limited success in the
last decade. Dangote said he is often too nervous to watch their games. The
team beat Hull 3-1 on Monday with two goals from Chilean striker Alexis
Sanchez.
While
Wenger has managed the club well from a financial standpoint, he “needs to
change his style a bit,” said Dangote. “They need new direction.”
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