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Uncertain days for Arsenal
Recently there have been strange, even sensational, developments at Arsenal, where a leading shareholder and director, Nina Bracewell-Smith, has just been thrown off the board.
- By Brian Glanville, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:35 December 22, 2008
Recently there have been strange, even sensational, developments at Arsenal, where a leading shareholder and director, Nina Bracewell–Smith, has just been thrown off the board. This despite the fact that Lady Bracewell–Smith owns 15.9 per cent of the club's shares, and could, if she chooses, sell them for £75 million.
Given the circumstances, she might do just that. But would those shares then go to the Uzbek plutocrat, Alisher Usmanov, who at present owns 24 per cent of the shares, through his company, Red and White holdings£
At present, Usmanov, says he has no intention of buying more shares. It has been suggested that he cannot afford them. But were he to do so, it would increase his holding to the extent that he would be obliged to make a bid for control of the club.
To make sense of all this, we must go back in time and focus on David Dein, the man from whom Usmanov bought his shares at a colossal expense. Dein, initially an obscure wheeler–dealer from the North West London suburbs, became a commodities dealer who found himself tricked out of a fortune by his Indian partner.
He did, however, have a parcel of Arsenal shares - he had always been a fan - bought from the chairman of the club, Peter Hill–Wood for less than £300,000. Hill–Wood jokingly reflected that the shares were effectively dead money. As regulations then stood, they couldn't be sold or used.
But the law changed, and suddenly Dein became a leading shareholder in the club. Hill–Wood, whose family had been involved with the Gunners since the 1920s, and represented the very spirit of Arsenal, was marginalised.
Yes, he still has quite a lot to say, but to put it bluntly, it is ineffectual such as the time, not long ago, when he declared that the club wanted nothing to do with the likes of Stan Kroenke, an American plutocrat with sporting franchises.
In the end Hill–Wood had to eat a humble pie and fly to the States to treat with Kroenke, who ended up buying 12.4 per cent of the shares.
Dein unquestionably became the main force at Arsenal. It was he who brought Arsene Wenger to the club from Japan. Dein also brought in a millionaire diamond merchant called Danny Fiszman, making his first huge profit by selling him the bulk of his shares.
But soon after the Gunners had begun to move to their present Emirates stadium. Dein would have preferred to go to Kings Cross. Fiszman in turn was forced out, reportedly because he wanted to bring Kroenke on to the board. Which, ironically enough, has happened.
Lady Bracewell–Smith's husband was the grandson of the former long–serving chairman, Sir Bracewell–Smith, who reportedly did much to repair Arsenal's finances during his reign. Personally I found him intolerably pompous.
Jack Kelsey, Arsenal's outstanding Wales goalkeeper, once told me, "He comes down to the dressing room now, before a game, and gives us advice: silly little things, like, pass to a man!'"
As for Lady Bracewell–Smith, she may have paid the price for opposing the recent appointment Ivan Gazidis as chief executive.
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