{"id":125813,"date":"2015-06-17T15:35:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T15:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=125813"},"modified":"2015-06-17T15:35:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T15:35:05","slug":"aliko-dangote-wants-to-buy-arsenal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=125813","title":{"rendered":"Aliko Dangote wants to buy Arsenal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\" class=\"introduction\">Africa&#8217;s richest businessman says he is planning a bid to buy Arsenal.<\/p>\n<p>Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote believes the building of an oil refinery in his homeland will give him the finance to secure a takeover.<\/p>\n<p>The 58-year-old, who has an estimated wealth of \u00a311.5bn, says he has supported the Gunners since the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we get this refinery on track, I will have enough time and enough resources to pay what they are asking for,&#8221; he told <span class=\"text\">BBC Hausa.<\/span><span class=\"external-link-icon\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>American Stan Kroenke is Arsenal&#8217;s majority shareholder, owning 66.64% of the club&#8217;s parent company Arsenal Holdings plc.<\/p>\n<p>Russian-Uzbek Alisher Usmanov owns 29.11% with the remainder of the 62,217 shares held by minority shareholders including former players and the Arsenal Supporters&#8217; Trust, who own three.<\/p>\n<p>Dangote is <span class=\"text\">ranked 67th on the Forbes rich list.<\/span><span class=\"external-link-icon\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He had previously been interested in purchasing the 15.9% stake sold to Kroenke for \u00a3123m by Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith in April 2011 only to pull out.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There were a couple of us who were rushing to buy, and we thought with the prices then, the people who were interested in selling were trying to go for a kill,&#8221; Dangote added.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We backtracked, because we were very busy doing other things, especially our industrialisation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dangote believes Arsenal require a different ownership in order to be more successful on the pitch.<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;They are doing well, but they need another strategic direction. They need more direction than the current situation, where they just develop players and sell them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa&#8217;s richest businessman says he is planning a bid to buy Arsenal. Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote believes the building of an oil refinery in his homeland will give him the finance to secure a takeover. The 58-year-old, who has an estimated wealth of \u00a311.5bn, says he has supported the Gunners since the 1980s. &#8220;When we [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":125814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-125813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}