Danny Fiszman

Danny Fiszman, who died of throat cancer on Wednesday April 13 aged 66, was a multimillionaire diamond dealer and director of Arsenal who established a reputation as the club’s leading power-broker.

Danny Fiszman and Ian Wright withe the Coca Cola Cup in 1993 Photo: COLORSPORT

 

A life-long Arsenal fan, Fiszman bought his first tranche of shares in the club from its then vice-chairman David Dein in 1991, to acquire a seat on the board. By 1999 he owned as much as 33 per cent of the club. In his first years he took a back seat and tended to be seen only in the directors’ box at games. His most notable contribution to the club’s day-to-day life was when he would fly fellow directors to the away legs of Arsenal’s Champions League fixtures in his personal jet.

But in the late 1990s he emerged to head up Arsenal’s search for a new stadium to replace Highbury, the club’s home for 86 years. Though it was Dein who brought Fiszman on to the board, the two men clashed repeatedly over the stadium project. Dein favoured a move to King’s Cross or to the restored Wembley. But in 1999 Fiszman identified a suitable plot on an Islington council rubbish dump at Ashburton Grove, about half a mile from Highbury, and it was his view that prevailed. The new Emirates stadium opened in 2006.

A small, bearded figure with receding hair and a dapper dress sense, Fiszman subsequently became involved in the battle for control of the club between the Uzbek metal billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, and the American sports tycoon, Stan Kroenke. In April 2007 Fiszman was instrumental in ousting his former friend Dein from the board after differences arose over funding for the new stadium. Dein argued that external investment would be needed to control debt and remain competitive, and proposed to bring in Stan Kroenke. When he encouraged the American to buy ITV’s 9.9 per cent stake in Arsenal for £65 million, Dein was summarily drummed out as a director. The club’s chairman, Peter Hill-Wood, proclaimed that he and the other major shareholders had “no intention of selling to some stranger” and that he would be “horrified to see the club go across the Atlantic”. Fiszman, according to reports at the time, was the board member who took away Dein’s mobile phone and marched him off the premises.

When he was cast aside, Dein decided he was free to sell to the highest bidder and in August he sold his remaining 14.5 per cent stake for £75 million to Red & White Holdings, an investment vehicle of Usmanov and his business partner Farhad Moshiri. In order to stop Usmanov increasing his stake, Fiszman oversaw the introduction of a “lockdown” agreement to prevent board members selling their shares to outsiders. Subsequently he was said to have engineered the removal from the main board of Lady Bracewell-Smith, Keith Edelman and Richard Carr, allegedly because they had disagreed with him on club issues.

Ironically, however, during the campaign to prevent Usmanov gaining control, the board warmed to Kroenke, and in September 2008 it was officially announced that he had joined the board.

Meanwhile, though Fiszman continued to maintain that he had no intention of selling any shares, in March 2009 he sold 5,000 ordinary shares at a total cost of £42.5 million to an “anonymous buyer”, later revealed as Kroenke, in a deal which increased the American’s stake in Arsenal to 20.5 per cent. Despite subsequent assurances that he had no intention of selling any more shares in the club, three days before his death, Fiszman sold his remaining shares to the tycoon, helping Kroenke to take control of the club with a 62.89 per cent holding.
The son of Belgian Jewish parents who fled the Nazis during the Second World War, Daniel David Fiszman was born in Willesden, north London, on January 9 1945. He became an avid Arsenal fan as a child, when he would stand at the Clock End at Highbury.
Fiszman went on to make his fortune in the Hatton Garden diamond business, building up the Star Diamonds Group which trades in rough diamonds. He also invested in property and new technology. His interests included a £50 million holding in the hand-held organiser company Psion (of which he was an non-executive director) and directorships of the London Roundhouse recording studios and the curiously named Gungho Trading. Described as “extremely quiet and extremely pleasant”, he maintained a determinedly low public profile and requests for interviews were always politely declined.
Later he sold the Star Diamonds Group for £150 million, and in 2007 he left his £20 million home in Hampstead and went to live at St Prex, on the banks of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, as a tax exile. Though he was often known to travel to the Emirates stadium for home matches, he was less active on the board.
Fiszman’s wife, Sally, survives him.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8451701/Danny-Fiszman.html