Dangote banks on refinery to buy Arsenal

 

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, who has expressed an interest in buying Arsenal, has told the BBC that he would be in a better position to buy the team as soon as the refinery he is building in Ondo State is completed and begins production.

    The businessman also said that the Gunners needs new ownership and direction if they are to progress in the Premier League.

  Dangote, 58, is Africa’s richest man according to Forbes, and is worth a reported $15.7bn which puts him 67th on the list of the world’s richest people.
  The businessman was linked with an approach to buy a stake in the club in 2010, before he pulled out, but now believes that the building of an oil refinery in Nigeria will give him the funds to return with a new offer.
    Dangote is worth more than the two majority owners Stan Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov.
     “When we get this refinery on track, I will have enough time and enough resources to pay what they are asking for,” he told BBC Hausa. “There were a couple of us who were rushing to buy (in 2011), and we thought with the prices then, the people who were interested in selling were trying to go for a kill,” Dangote added.
 
   .Kroenke is the Gunners’ majority shareholder with 66.64 percent of the club’s parent company Arsenal Holdings plc, while Russian — Uzbek Usmanov owns 29.11 percent. The remainder of the 62,217 shares are held by minority shareholders.