Why Kroenke doesn’t need to saddle Arsenal with Debt
on April 12, 2011 at 8:38 amStan Kroenke is a business man who currently holds full ownership of the Denver Nuggets, St Louis Rams, Colorado Rapids, Colorado Avalanche, Colorado Crush and Colorado Mammoth. He also runs his own Sports television network called Altitude Sports and Entertainment.
Bolt that to his many Wal-Mart stores of which he is landlord, The Pepsi center, the Malibu Colony Centre and many others and his fortune is easy to ogle at.
He currently owns just over 62% of Arsenal.
The reason Silent Stan will not need to burden Arsenal with the cost of his purchase is this; The American monopolies commission has ordered him to sell his majority stake in the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado avalanche by 2014. (His stake’s in both are currently managed by his son).
Looking at Forbes.com – the Denver Nuggets are valued at $321 million and the Colorado Avalanche are valued at $231 Million.
Now, bear in mind Stan has issued “promise to pay” agreements to Fiszman and Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith rather than given them cash direct would suggest that (to me at least) that he intends to fund his purchase with the cash raised from the sale of the above assets. He has to sell, but he’s got until 2014 to do it so I’m sure there will be plenty of folks wanting to take such assets from him at a reasonable price. Assuming he gets the value rated by Forbes, then he is looking at $552 million generated from those enforced sales alone, though I would suspect he would still keep an interest in both and not sell completely as he has never had a precedent for selling his shares in an interest before.
Much of this is speculation, as his corporate accounts for his businesses are held in the Bermuda Triangle of Finance called Delaware, USA where you do not have to declare your accounts.
I’m no accountant, but I would suspect he has more than enough assets to generate the cash required for his Arsenal purchase, certainly he could easily sell his Wal-Mart properties to his Mrs without harm.
It’s worth remembering, as far as I have been able to ascertain, Kroenke has never leveraged his debt onto one of his sports enterprises.
A great infographic has been provided by the intelligent chaps over at Arsenalnews.co.uk and can be seen here
WG.
Discussion (4) ¬
Well done WG, thats a good point about his having to sell American interests. What we know already is that he has ‘bought’ shares from DF previously and not paid for them – maybe this whole deal is only on paper!!!!!
Nice blog, why don’t you write something for us then you’ll get a much larger readership
Hi Peaches,
You mean write for Arsenal Arsenal? How would I start doing that?
I’ve been doing this a year now and of course I get a kick out of people reading my content and commenting so I don’t mind submitting work to you guys as well.
Let me know what you think and pop me an email.
WG
Be interesting to see if usmanov flogs his remaining shares inTheArsenal to kroenke, be even more interesting if he buys them glazier style