Peter Hill-Wood : Arsenal F.C. Chairman
Peter Denis Hill-Wood (born 25 February 1936) is a British businessman and the current chairman of Arsenal Football Club.
Biography
Hill-Wood was born in Kensington, London. His father, three uncles and grandfather all played first-class cricket for Derbyshire CCC. He attended Eton College where he was a classmate of former Arsenal Director Sir Roger Gibbs. He then served in the Coldstream Guards. After leaving the Guards, Hill-Wood entered the banking industry, eventually rising to become a vice-chairman of Hambros Bank, having previously been in charge of its investment division.
Hill-Wood has since retired from his post at Hambros, and is currently a director of Cavenham Ltd and Hellenic and General Trust.
He married in 1971 and has three children Julian, Charles and Sarah, who is married to Timothy Dana, an American.
Arsenal chairmanship
He is the third generation of his family to serve as Chairman of Arsenal, following his father, Denis Hill-Wood (1962-1982), and his grandfather, Samuel Hill-Wood (1929-1936 & 1946-1949). Peter Hill-Wood succeeded his father after the latter’s death in 1982, although as chairman he is not in charge of any day-to-day business at the club; the club is generally run by acting managing director Ken Friar with manager Arsène Wenger responsible for football and first team affairs.
Hill-Wood was a colleague of Chips Keswick at Hambros and subsequently saw him recruited to the Arsenal Board to provide strong city contacts at a time when the club were financing their new stadium.
Hill-Wood disposed much of his family holdings in the club to former Vice Chairman David Dein in the 1980s and 1990s. As at 27 March 2007 he owned 500 shares in the club representing 0.80% (worth approximately £3.4m).
Source: Peter Hill-Wood, Arsenal F.C. Chairman, Arsenal Football Club at wikipedia.org
Daniel Levy – Tottenham Hotspur’s Chairman
Daniel Levy – Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. – English Premier League Football Club
Daniel Levy (born 8 February 1962 in Essex) has been chairman of Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur since 2001. Levy is married, with 4 children, with Josh (19) the eldest. He has a First Class Honours degree from Cambridge University in Land Economy.
| Daniel Levy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Daniel Levy 8 February 1962 (1962-02-08) (age 47) Essex, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | ENIC International Ltd, Tottenham Hotspur |
Tottenham Hotspur
His reign has seen a succession of managers (Graham, Hoddle, Pleat and Santini). With Martin Jol as manager, Spurs finishing fifth in the Premier League, (their highest position since its inception) and the club qualified for the UEFA Cup. A feat they repeated again the following season. However Levy’s decision to sack Martin Jol after a poor start to the 2007/2008 season, when many of the players appeared to be unfit, was widely regarded[who?] as a rash move.
Following this, many fans[who?] became very concerned at the possible political undercurrents within the club and Levy’s style of management. The appointment of a new management team, including the highly regarded Juande Ramos as head coach resulted in some short-lived optimism amongst the fans[who?]. On the 24th February 2008, Tottenham beat Chelsea 2-1 at Wembley in the 2008 Football League Cup Final to win their first trophy in nine years and gain automatic qualifaction for the UEFA cup. However following this victory Spurs’s league form took a disastrous turn which culminated in their worst ever start to a season in 2008/09.
In the late hours of October 25 2008, Daniel Levy took the decision to sack Damien Comolli, Sporting Director, Juande Ramos, Head Coach and First Team Coaches, Marcos Álvarez? and Gus Poyet and appoint Harry Redknapp as the new Head Coach of Tottenham Hotspur.
The move ultimately proved successful, as a dramatic upturn in Spurs’ form on the pitch saw them steadily climb out of relegation to eventually finish 8th.
New Stadium Plans
Daniel Levy has had plans for a new stadium for Tottenham Hotspur. He intends to build it near the current stadium, White Hart Lane and it will hold 60,000 spectators. The new stadium will also include leisure areas, public spaces, a museum, restaurants, shops and apartments. The builders will be the Northumberland Development Project who will start work on the new stadium soon.
Source: English Premier League Football Club, Tottenham Hotspur F.C. Chairman, Daniel Levy, Premier League Clubs’ Chairmen information at wikipedia.org
Mohamed Al-Fayed – Fulham F.C. Owner
Mohamed Al-Fayed – Chairman of Fulham F.C. – English Premier League Football Club
Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed (Arabic: ???? ??? ?????? ?????) (born January 27, 1929) is an Egyptian businessman estimated to be worth £650 Million. Amongst his business interests are ownership of Harrods department store in Knightsbridge and the English Premiership football team Fulham Football Club. He relaunched the humour publication Punch in 1996 but it folded again in 2002.
He has two brothers; Ali Fayed and Salah Fayed. Since 1985 he has been married to Finnish socialite and former model Heini Wathén. Together they have four children (Jasmine, Karim, Camilla and Omar) and two grandchildren (Delilah, from Jasmine, and Antonia, from Karim). A fifth child, Dodi, from Fayed’s first marriage, died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, along with Diana, Princess of Wales and Henri Paul, the driver of the car and employee of the Fayed-owned Hôtel Ritz Paris.
| Born | January 27, 1929 (1929-01-27) (age 80) Alexandria, Egypt |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Egyptian |
| Occupation | Businessman Owner of Harrods and Fulham football club |
| Religious beliefs | Islam |
| Spouse(s) | Samira Khashoggi (m. 1954–1956) «start: (1954)–end+1: (1957)»“Marriage: Samira Khashoggi to Mohamed Al-Fayed“ Location: (linkback:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Al-Fayed) Heini Wathén (1985-present) |
Biography
Born in Bakos (?????), a neighbourhood in eastern Alexandria, Egypt, as the eldest son of an Egyptian primary school teacher, Fayed tried a number of jobs, from selling soft drinks on the streets of his home city as a child to working as a sewing machine salesman (where he earned just £1 per month).
He was married for two years to Samira Kashoggi (1954 – 1956). Fayed founded his own shipping company in Egypt before becoming a financial adviser to one of the world’s richest men, the then Sultan of Brunei Omar Ali Saifuddien III, in 1966.
He arrived in Britain in 1974 by car and added the Al- to his name, earning the Private Eye nickname “the Phoney Pharaoh”. He briefly joined the board of the mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975 but left after a disagreement. In 1985, he married Wathén, his second wife.
In 1985, he and his brother Ali bought House of Fraser, a group that included the famous London store Harrods, for £615m. The Harrods deal was made under the nose of Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowland, the head of Lonrho. Rowland had been seeking to buy Harrods and took the Fayed brothers to a Department of Trade inquiry. The inquiry, involving one of the most bitter feuds in British business history, issued a 1990 report stating that the Fayed brothers had lied about their background and wealth. The bickering with Rowland continued when he accused them of stealing millions in jewels from his Harrods safe deposit box. Rowland died in 1998, and, without accepting responsibility, Fayed settled the dispute with a payment to his widow. (Al Fayed had been arrested during the dispute and sued the Metropolitan Police for false arrest in 2002. He lost the case.)
In 1994, House of Fraser went public, but Fayed retained private ownership of Harrods.
For years, Fayed unsuccessfully sought British citizenship. Both Labour and Conservative Home Secretaries repeatedly rejected his applications on the grounds that he was not of good character. He took the matter to court, but failed. It has been suggested that the feud with Rowland contributed to Fayed’s being refused British citizenship the first time.[1]
Mohamed Fayed was involved in the cash for questions scandal, having offered money for questions in the commons to the Conservative MPs Neil Hamilton and Tim Smith. Both left the government in disgrace.[1] Fayed also revealed that the cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken had stayed for free at the Ritz Hotel in Paris at the same time as a group of Saudi arms dealers leading to Aitken’s subsequent unsuccessful libel case and imprisonment for perjury.[2] During this period Fayed was represented publicly by public relations expert Michael Cole.
In 2003, Fayed moved from Surrey, UK to Switzerland, alleging a breach in an agreement with the Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue Commissioners. In 2005, he moved back to Britain, saying that he “regards Britain as home”.
Source: Mohamed Al-Fayed, Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed, Fulham F.C. Owner, Chairman of Fulham Football Club, English Premier League information at wikipedia.org
Paul Duffen – Hull City AFC Chairman
Paul Duffen – Chairman of Hull City Association Football Club – English Premier League
Paul Jeremy Duffen is the chairman of Hull City A.F.C. and was formerly Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst Media Group plc (formerly Newsplayer Group plc), where other board members included Sir David Frost and Steven Smith. He had previously worked in sales and marketing roles for Procter & Gamble and distribution company P J Holloway.[1]
Duffen, in a consortium with majority shareholder Russell Bartlett, purchased Hull City from Adam Pearson for £12 million in June 2007 and replaced him as chairman.[2][3] They had already made unsuccessful attempts to take over West Ham United and Cardiff City.[4] He pledged to invest in the team with the aim of achieving promotion to the top flight for the first time in the club’s history.[5] He said for the 2007–08 season he wanted the team in the top half of the Championship, and the season after that he wanted the team in the play-offs.[6] He delivered on his promise of investment with the million pound signing of striker Caleb Folan from Wigan, shattering City’s previous transfer record,[7] and bringing in other high earners such as former Nigeria captain and BBC African Footballer of the Year Jay-Jay Okocha and his former Bolton teammate Henrik Pedersen to almost double the club’s wage bill.[8]
Under Phil Brown’s management, Hull City exceeded Duffen’s ambitious targets by finishing third in the Championship in his first season at the helm, equaling their highest ever finish in 1909-10. They went on to make their first ever appearance at Wembley, defeating Bristol City 1–0 in the Championship play-off final to secure promotion to the top flight for the first time in the club’s 104-year history.[9] He once again pledged to invest in the team, stating (prior to the final) that “the vast majority of the money that would come in from being in the Premier League would go to Phil for team strengthening and increasing the wage bill”.[10] He also offered to fund a 7,000-seat extension to the KC Stadium.[11]
Before taking over at Hull City, Duffen was a fan of Tottenham Hotspur.[12]
Source: Paul Duffen, Hull City Association Football Club, English Premier League Football Club information at wikipedia.org
Barry Kilby – Burnley FC Chairman
Barry Kilby is the chairman of Burnley F.C.
A major part of Kilby’s business career was the founding and building of the Europoint Group, who are the largest supplier of media games in the world.[1]
Kilby joined the Burnley board of directors in October 1998. He became chairman following a vote at the company’s Annual General Meeting two months later.[1]
He invested £3 million into the club in a 2-1 rights issue in January 1999, which made him the club’s largest single shareholder.[1]
Barry is also Chairman of SpeedMark (Sport & Leisure) Ltd, a football themed fundraising company for schools, and Total Gaming Solutions Ltd, a lottery service company for professional football clubs.
Source: Burnley FC Chairman, Barry Kilby, English Premier League Football Club information at wikipedia.org