BTW cheers MM99
wait page 7? DAMMIT
Board Sells - Kroenke Takes Control Of Club!!
-
Bergkamp-Genius
- Posts: 1774
- Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:19 pm
I wasn't expecting him to be doing a 40 hour week down at the stadium...MM99 wrote:I doubt Usmanov would be that involved in the day to day running of things. A more likely scenario would be that he would put in place a Chief Executive and have him and the board as his link to the club. So if the CEO and the board report back to him that the club is making profits each year and in a good financial standing whilst also operating near the top of the league then i can't see Usmanov making drastic measures.Bergkamp-Genius wrote:I'm sure he respects what Wenger has done in the past and would hope given more investment in playing staff he could do it again...1989 wrote:Yeah but Wenger wouldn't stand for anyone interfering with his business and would probably throw his toys out and leave should that happen. Usmanov wouldn't want that, he's in awe of Wenger and wouldn't want to upset him.Bergkamp-Genius wrote:I wasn't suggesting he would sack Wenger...but what he would do is expect more from him...I see no way he would tolerate him going with youth and bargain buys if he was winning f all..
I think there would be some serious investment in the team whether Wenger wanted it or not..
We might have more money to throw around with Usmanov, but Wenger won't spend it anyway.
But there is no way he would put up with Wengers i know best attitude if he was winning nothing...
Usmanov wants to win things of that there is no doubt, i doubt very much he would let Wenger get in the way of that no matter how much in awe of him he says he is now...
But then again this is all guesswork on my behalf due to experience, so who knows what he would do if he ever actually did take over Arsenal.
But i would be very surprised if his only interest in the club was that they were operating near the top of the league and making a profit, that's what we do now and by all accounts he thinks we can do better..
I would be far more inclined to believe that he would have the same kind of interest in the club as Abramovich has in Chelski, to make the club successful. I doubt his idea of success means 2nd 3rd or 4th place in the league and i doubt his interest in the club is about turning a yearly profit ahead of a better chance of winning some silverware...
According to some reports he's actually quite pleased with the way things are under Wenger so whether he'll be as drastic in his actions as Abramovich is debatable.Bergkamp-Genius wrote:
I wasn't expecting him to be doing a 40 hour week down at the stadium...
But i would be very surprised if his only interest in the club was that they were operating near the top of the league and making a profit, that's what we do now and by all accounts he thinks we can do better..
I would be far more inclined to believe that he would have the same kind of interest in the club as Abramovich has in Chelski, to make the club successful. I doubt his idea of success means 2nd 3rd or 4th place in the league and i doubt his interest in the club is about turning a yearly profit ahead of a better chance of winning some silverware...
Also, bear in mind that Usmanov lost $11.7bn in the economic downturn so the idea of him coming in and pumping hundreds of millions sounds less likely than it might have done a few years ago.
But do need him to be that drastic? I would say no. We just need someone to encourage spending what we need to when we need to. I would say we aren't that far off but no to spend that much more because we have let too many positions go stale from not doing so sooner.MM99 wrote:According to some reports he's actually quite pleased with the way things are under Wenger so whether he'll be as drastic in his actions as Abramovich is debatable.Bergkamp-Genius wrote:
I wasn't expecting him to be doing a 40 hour week down at the stadium...
But i would be very surprised if his only interest in the club was that they were operating near the top of the league and making a profit, that's what we do now and by all accounts he thinks we can do better..
I would be far more inclined to believe that he would have the same kind of interest in the club as Abramovich has in Chelski, to make the club successful. I doubt his idea of success means 2nd 3rd or 4th place in the league and i doubt his interest in the club is about turning a yearly profit ahead of a better chance of winning some silverware...
Also, bear in mind that Usmanov lost $11.7bn in the economic downturn so the idea of him coming in and pumping hundreds of millions sounds less likely than it might have done a few years ago.
-
Bergkamp-Genius
- Posts: 1774
- Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 8:19 pm
Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov (born 9 September 1953, Namangan Province, Uzbek SSR, USSR) is a Russian based businessman of Uzbek origin. According to the 2011 edition of Forbes magazine, the oligarch is one of Russia's richest men, with a fortune estimated at US$17.7 billion, and the world's 35th richest person.MM99 wrote:According to some reports he's actually quite pleased with the way things are under Wenger so whether he'll be as drastic in his actions as Abramovich is debatable.Bergkamp-Genius wrote:
I wasn't expecting him to be doing a 40 hour week down at the stadium...
But i would be very surprised if his only interest in the club was that they were operating near the top of the league and making a profit, that's what we do now and by all accounts he thinks we can do better..
I would be far more inclined to believe that he would have the same kind of interest in the club as Abramovich has in Chelski, to make the club successful. I doubt his idea of success means 2nd 3rd or 4th place in the league and i doubt his interest in the club is about turning a yearly profit ahead of a better chance of winning some silverware...
Also, bear in mind that Usmanov lost $11.7bn in the economic downturn so the idea of him coming in and pumping hundreds of millions sounds less likely than it might have done a few years ago.
He doesn't need to be as drastic as Abramovich was...just the redirection of profits in to players might even be enough...
But the point is there would be little point of him taking over the club to just let the club do what it is currently doing.
He obviously thinks he can do better and as he has suggested, more money needs to be spent on the team. So from that i think we can assume that if he did take over those would be his aims..investing more in the team and being more successful..
-
mcdowell42
- Posts: 18405
- Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2008 6:19 pm
- Location: ireland
Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal.
He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke "Gorbachev", a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue. Usmanov's pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan.
Karimov ordered the "Pardon" because of his alliance with Usmanov's mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev's side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.
Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World's most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the "privatisation" process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed. Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country's natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this.
This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand. Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin's long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprom Investholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov's role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom's bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.
Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out — with the owners having no choice — the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom.
The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window. All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist's death, is set out in great detail here. Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable.
Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment. I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan.
I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski's name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.
Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters — as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any — can be heard saying they don't care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea. I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.
Taken from Atalantic Free Press
Pick the bones out of that US
He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke "Gorbachev", a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue. Usmanov's pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan.
Karimov ordered the "Pardon" because of his alliance with Usmanov's mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev's side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.
Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World's most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the "privatisation" process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed. Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country's natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this.
This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand. Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin's long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprom Investholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov's role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom's bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.
Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out — with the owners having no choice — the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom.
The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window. All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist's death, is set out in great detail here. Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable.
Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment. I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan.
I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski's name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.
Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters — as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any — can be heard saying they don't care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea. I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.
Taken from Atalantic Free Press
Pick the bones out of that US
Last edited by mcdowell42 on Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
mcdowell42
- Posts: 18405
- Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2008 6:19 pm
- Location: ireland
-
Henry Norris 1913
- Posts: 8374
- Joined: Thu Jun 04, 2009 5:25 pm
I don't know how accurate that information you cite is given how political the justice system in Russia is, but I will say this even if all that is true it speaks to the obvious failure of the Board to be honest with supporters about its policies or the motives behind them or to do what actually needs to be done to improve the team the needed level.
-
mcdowell42
- Posts: 18405
- Joined: Tue Nov 04, 2008 6:19 pm
- Location: ireland
Profile: Alisher Usmanov, Arsenal's new oligarch
Russian billionaire who today bought a substantial part of the North London club from David Dein, its ex-vice chairmanTony Halpin, of The Times, Moscow Alisher Usmanov has a reputation as a hard man of business even among Russia’s oligarchs and once acknowledged that shares were his favourite possession.
Rated Russia’s 18th richest man and worth an estimated $5.5 billion, the metals and mining mogul has shown no previous interest in football. His only prominent involvement in sport until now has been as president of the Russian and European fencing associations.
But Mr Usmanov has been building up a media empire in Russia, with Kremlin approval, and may see a stake in Arsenal as a way to boost audiences by screening matches to football-crazy fans.
Like other billionaire businessman in Moscow, nervous of a sudden turn against them by the Kremlin, he may also have concluded from Roman Abramovich’s ownership of Chelsea that a stake in a high-profile foreign club helps to protect other assets at home from official prying.
Mr Usmanov, 53, can certainly afford it because he is flush with cash and has been on something of a spending spree in recent months. He was linked in June by Russian media with a plan to take control of a third of one of Russia’s largest mobile telephone companies in a deal said to be worth $4.5 billion.
He paid $300 million for a 75 per cent stake in Muz Tv, a Russian version of MTV, to add to the 50 per cent stake he bought last November in 7TV, a sports channel. At the time, analysts suggested that he planned to convert 7TV into a business news channel, but the involvement with Arsenal suggests otherwise.
Kommersant newspaper, which he also bought last year, reported that Russia’s second-largest bank VTB advanced Mr Usmanov $2 billion loan in June, a quarter of the proceeds raised by the bank in an initial share offering.
The money was expected to go into expansion of his Gazmetall steel and mining empire. Mr Usmanov also owns half of Metalloinvest, which set out ambitious plans in June to double its value to $27 billion within four years.
He showed a sentimental streak earlier this year when he bid $3 million to buy back the international rights to Cheburashka, a cuddly children’s character from popular Soviet-era cartoons, from an American company. In a display of patriotic loyalty to the Kremlin, he planned to give the collection to a new children’s channel proposed by President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Usmanov, who is married and has two children, was born in Uzbekistan but is a Russian citizen. He is linked to the Kremlin as general director of Gazprominvestholding, the subsidiary that manages the debts of the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom.
He has enjoyed a privileged position during Mr Putin’s presidency to the extent that he was forced to deny speculation that he had bought Kommersant, one of Russia’s most influential papers, at the Kremlin’s request.
With Mr Putin due to stand down as President in March, Mr Usmanov’s involvement with Arsenal may be an insurance policy against any unexpected downturn in relations with his successor as president.
God bless Google
Russian billionaire who today bought a substantial part of the North London club from David Dein, its ex-vice chairmanTony Halpin, of The Times, Moscow Alisher Usmanov has a reputation as a hard man of business even among Russia’s oligarchs and once acknowledged that shares were his favourite possession.
Rated Russia’s 18th richest man and worth an estimated $5.5 billion, the metals and mining mogul has shown no previous interest in football. His only prominent involvement in sport until now has been as president of the Russian and European fencing associations.
But Mr Usmanov has been building up a media empire in Russia, with Kremlin approval, and may see a stake in Arsenal as a way to boost audiences by screening matches to football-crazy fans.
Like other billionaire businessman in Moscow, nervous of a sudden turn against them by the Kremlin, he may also have concluded from Roman Abramovich’s ownership of Chelsea that a stake in a high-profile foreign club helps to protect other assets at home from official prying.
Mr Usmanov, 53, can certainly afford it because he is flush with cash and has been on something of a spending spree in recent months. He was linked in June by Russian media with a plan to take control of a third of one of Russia’s largest mobile telephone companies in a deal said to be worth $4.5 billion.
He paid $300 million for a 75 per cent stake in Muz Tv, a Russian version of MTV, to add to the 50 per cent stake he bought last November in 7TV, a sports channel. At the time, analysts suggested that he planned to convert 7TV into a business news channel, but the involvement with Arsenal suggests otherwise.
Kommersant newspaper, which he also bought last year, reported that Russia’s second-largest bank VTB advanced Mr Usmanov $2 billion loan in June, a quarter of the proceeds raised by the bank in an initial share offering.
The money was expected to go into expansion of his Gazmetall steel and mining empire. Mr Usmanov also owns half of Metalloinvest, which set out ambitious plans in June to double its value to $27 billion within four years.
He showed a sentimental streak earlier this year when he bid $3 million to buy back the international rights to Cheburashka, a cuddly children’s character from popular Soviet-era cartoons, from an American company. In a display of patriotic loyalty to the Kremlin, he planned to give the collection to a new children’s channel proposed by President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Usmanov, who is married and has two children, was born in Uzbekistan but is a Russian citizen. He is linked to the Kremlin as general director of Gazprominvestholding, the subsidiary that manages the debts of the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom.
He has enjoyed a privileged position during Mr Putin’s presidency to the extent that he was forced to deny speculation that he had bought Kommersant, one of Russia’s most influential papers, at the Kremlin’s request.
With Mr Putin due to stand down as President in March, Mr Usmanov’s involvement with Arsenal may be an insurance policy against any unexpected downturn in relations with his successor as president.
God bless Google
-
marcengels
- Posts: 7208
- Joined: Sat May 02, 2009 11:12 pm
- Location: North Bank
USMartin wrote:I don't know how accurate that information you cite is given how political the justice system in Russia is, but I will say this even if all that is true it speaks to the obvious failure of the Board to be honest with supporters about its policies or the motives behind them or to do what actually needs to be done to improve the team the needed level.
