When Everton’s major shareholders concluded years of searching for a mega-rich owner by selling just under 50% of the club to Farhad Moshiri for £87.5m last February, it was widely assumed Moshiri’s senior business partner, the Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, must be looming large behind him.
Usmanov, though, has a 30% stake in Arsenal, the club he harbours an appetite to buy, but where he has been held at bay and arm’s length by the US investor Stan Kroenke, who owns 67% and is buttressed by the alliances of the board. Premier League rules prohibiting “dual ownership,” aimed at maintaining proper competition, forbid a person who owns more than 10% of one club to buy shares in another.
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