Kroenke ups Arsenal stake as Usmanov fight continues

The fight for control of Arsenal FC has intensified as Stanley Kroenke, an American who married into the Wal-mart dynasty, upped his stake in the club to 20 per cent after buying  5,000 shares for £42.5m from director Danny Fiszman.

Fiszman's sale is part of a calculated move by the Arsenal board to ensure that Alisher Usmanov, the controversial Uzbek oligarch, isn't able to gain a controlling stake in the north London club.  

Kroenke (pronounced Kron-key), who was named Enos Stanley after two of the St Louis Cardinals' biggest baseball heroes, grew up in Missouri. He met Ann Walton, the Wal-mart heiress on a skiing holiday, and was taken in by her family.  

An intensely private man known as 'Silent Stanley', he is now a retail magnate who owns franchises in numerous US sports, including American football, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and -  his favourite - basketball. At 61, he also lists cattle ranches and the Pepsi Centre in Denver, where the Democrats appointed Barack Obama as their presidential candidate last August, in his portfolio.  

Initially, Kroenke was shunned by the Arsenal hierarchy. When the American started accruing shares in 2007, club chairman Peter Hill-Wood commented that they did not want "his sort" at the club.

But Kroenke was appointed as a non-executive director last year and he is seen now as the only man who can stop Usmanov, the Kremlin-backed metals, gas and media mogul, from getting his hands on 30 per cent of the shares – the threshold needed for a takeover bid. Usmanov, who spent six years in prison for complicity in bribery and extortion in the 1980s, currently holds a 25 per cent stake.  

With this in mind, Hill-Wood has managed to curb his disapproval of the American. "Stan Kroenke has proved to be a valuable member of the board and I am pleased that he has demonstrated further commitment to the club by adding to his shareholding," he said.  

Quite what French manager Arsene Wenger and his legion of Gallic players make of one of Kroenke's less conservative business decisions, one can only imagine: in 2006, with  business partner Charles Banks, Kroenke bought up the Californian winery Screaming Eagle, the sort of Napa Valley label that can give a French wine snob the vapours.

Meanwhile, everything rests on what Lady Nina Bracewell-Smith, the Indian-born businesswoman who was ousted from the Arsenal board in November, decides to do with her 15.9 per cent. ·