One thing I've noticed is that the "wealthy conglomerate about to make bid" rumours that occasionally float around United have steadily risen in value from 1bn, to 1.5bn, and up.

If there's even a grain of truth to those rumours the capital gains far outweigh the increases in the debt they're carrying. Sadly.

Pepe LeFrits wrote:

I'm no financial expert, but that doesn't look too clever. I thought their restructuring or PIKs or whatever was to get them over the hump?

Basically it was just a way of pushing the problems a few years into the future, like the bonds they issued. They're still waiting for a magic bullet in the shape of either an individual television deal or a rich oligarch.

Just heard that Usmanov has upped his percentage to over 27%.
Hopefully, he can become a bigger voice in the running of this club and get us to be more ambitious

Yep, I welcome Baron Greenback's ambition too.

Or as Stiletto would've said ... "Si Barone"

Actually I'd prefer Usmanov stayed away.

Usmanov has been remarkably successful in business in the past 2 years. I'd like to think some of his acumen would be useful around our team.

He probably just happened not to be sitting on the wrong energy stocks, or whatever. No one saw the GFC coming.

No disagreement here. It'd be repellent having that creature running the place. Same goes for the Abramovich type - might be better looking, might be reforming Chukotka's education system, but scratch the surface and you'll find an anti-democratic, sleazy megalomaniac.

Would be nice to have a younger, more forward-looking board. Not reckless people, but guys who desperately want to win and are wiling to explore interesting new ways of making money without gouging fans.

Behind every great fortune is a great crime.
To some degree most people who are insanely wealthy have come by their wealth in less than honourable ways but Usmanov is the embodiment of the most rapacious of the plunderers who have amassed massive private fortunes.

It would be difficult to stomach having him as the person who controls the club given that he is part of the gang of self made billionaires who came about their fortunes via the transfer of property through gangster tactics, assassinations, theft, seizure of state resources and illicit stock manipulation..
Plus he looks like Jabba the Hutt.

I don't have great time for the current board either, they sacrifice real ambition to safeguard their investments and for the moment seem content to limit our achievements to the annual Top 4 finish but I'd sooner have them in control than Usmanov.

It's like having to choose between plague and cholera but ultimately we have no choice at all.

Significant?

He directly has around a 0.6% stake.

Either way, Facebook and The Arsenal are incomparable.

A company that he owns a 30% stake in own a 1.9% stake in facebook, not him personally.

And the point is that, at .6% or even 1.9% he is not a significant shareholder whatever the cash value of his shares may be.

Didn't know Usmanov was in Facebook. I'm canceling my subscription :-)
If he owned the place, I would not mind as long as he ran it with dignity. Don't be doing things like

• having strange hangers-on interfering with the coach (Chelsea)
• generally acting like an ass in public (Newcastle)
• making outrageous claims about buying players who will never come (Blackburn)
• fighting the coach, starving him of transfer funds, and fighting any other owners (Liverpool)
• allowing the coach to be wining and dining other team's players, especially at our stadium; or jacking up ticket prices, and loading up the team with unsustainable debt (United); etc
• sit and watch for several years in a row while the manager repeats the same senseless mistakes (Arsenal)

As long as he stays away from doing things like that, I'll be happy with him as an owner.

I'd like to not use Facebook, but it's just another example of when questionable proprietary interests control essential services. Oh wait.

y va marquer wrote:

Behind every great fortune is a great crime.
To some degree most people who are insanely wealthy have come by their wealth in less than honourable ways but Usmanov is the embodiment of the most rapacious of the plunderers who have amassed massive private fortunes.

It would be difficult to stomach having him as the person who controls the club given that he is part of the gang of self made billionaires who came about their fortunes via the transfer of property through gangster tactics, assassinations, theft, seizure of state resources and illicit stock manipulation..
Plus he looks like Jabba the Hutt.

Well you know Y va not one of us is perfect, we've all made mistakes in the past- thats why pencils have erasers.
People ought to look past his fearsome Jabba the Hutt like exterior and see his inner beauty, like Abramovich he's probably just a little boy that wants to be loved.
So instead of harping on about the past we should look forward to the future-
A silver spangled future, with trophies, lots of them some with big ears to hold and caress.......

Pepe LeFrits wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/9450671.stm

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot new there (though the figures are different to the ones I've seen recently) but it's still good to see the issue being mentioned. The more pressure put on Chelsea and City to explain their claims of breaking even, the better.

Publicity is really important for the FFP to be enforced. Basically UEFA have to feel like it will be more humiliating for them to fail to implement the rules than for them to succeed.

I'm starting to think a lot of that has to do with which clubs and how many come under the spotlight. For example, if it were just City and Chelsea Europe-wide who were excluded, fine. I think the vast majority of the footballing public could get behind that.

But what if Real or Barca were banned? Mass riots, breakaway leagues, etc. I'm not sure if UEFA have the stomach for that so they might leave themselves wiggle room.

The other issue is that of clubs struggling along without European incomes for the most part (e.g. Spuds or now Liverpool) who have to spend over their revenue to get to the threshold for qualification. Won't the FFP present an additional barrier to them?