Battle for £50m Arsenal shares
Arsenal football club has been the interest of foreign investment for some time now, and it would appear that foreign ownership could be on the cards. It was reported that explosive rows with shareholders took place last week and two of the share holders who are related through marriage just walked out of the board meeting this week. It’s believed that the walk out was from a Mrs Nina Bracewell-Smith and her husband Richard Carr who own a large amount of the shares in Arsenal football club, they have had connections through the club for 70 years now. Nina Bracewell-Smith’s husband has had the connections for over 70 years and owns around 4.5% of the clubs shares, with his wife owning 15.5% which stands to be around £50 million.
The largest single share holder of the club is a Mr Alisher Usmanov who owns 24% of the football clubs shares. Mrs Nina Bracewell-Smith is the third largest share holder and with her walking out of the clubs board meeting this week and wanting to sell her shares there could be a massive battle on who tries to buy them with Mr Usmanov being favorites to purchase the £50 million worth of shares.
Arsenal is the only club that has the majority share holders actually being British and fears are that if these shares were to get in the wrong hands that Arsenal could start to see big changes in it’s club and how it’s run.
Mrs Nina Bracewell-Smith denies any rumours of her selling her shares and says this is just not true, but speculation grows stronger each day. Other members of the board have said that these rumours could be fact as Mrs Nina Bracewell-Smith did not like the choice of director about to be put in place next month a Mr Ivan Gazidis.
Current chairman Peter Hill Wood said on his website today, “Lady Nina is no longer representing the club and therefore is released from the lockdown. I don’t know for certain what she wants to do with her shares. We hope that she would remain a shareholder but she has not spoken to me about it lately.”
