Not deterred by a failed attempt in 2010, Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, said he still wants to buy English Premier League soccer team Arsenal.
“I still hope, one day at the right price, that I’ll buy the team,” Dangote, 58, said in an interview with Bloomberg 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.
With air of confidence, he adds
“I might buy it, not at a ridiculous price but a price that the owners won’t want to resist. I know my strategy. I know my strategy.” he reportedly saidWhile Wenger has managed the club well from a financial standpoint, he “needs to change his style a bit,” said Dangote. “They need new direction.”
Arsenal Football Club which is one of England’s most successful clubs, having won 13 top flight league titles in the country is owned by Arsenal Holdings Plc., with a current valuation of 988 million pounds ($1.49 billion). The club trades on the ICAP Securities & Derivatives Exchange, or ISDX.
With a net worth of $15.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, almost $13 billion more than Arsenal’s current valuation, 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.
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.
“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.
