Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, had said he will consider buying a football club other than London-based Arsenal if controlling shareholder Stan Kroenke refuses to sell.
The richest man in Africa has long said he wants to buy the Premier League team, of which he’s a fan, but only after he’s completed one of the world’s biggest oil refineries in Lagos.
Dangote in an interview with Bloomberg TV at the New Economy Forum in Singapore said :“We’ll have an excess amount of cash to start playing around with.”
By the time we’ve finished the world’s biggest oil refinery in Lagos, we’ll be a $30bn company in terms of revenue.
‘We’ll have an excess amount of cash to start playing around with to buy Arsenal.
“I’m very attached to Arsenal but if Kroenke won’t sell, I might have to change. I’m very much a fan of football. I’ll like to have a club. I don’t have to own Arsenal,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV at the New Economy Forum in Singapore.
Kroenke owns almost all of Arsenal after buying Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s 30 per cent stake in August in a deal that valued the club at about £1.8bn. It was funded with a £557m , two-year loan from Deutsche Bank AG. The 71-year-old American is worth $8bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and also controls the National Football League’s Los Angeles Rams.
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