{"id":1185413,"date":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1185413\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T04:53:29","slug":"west-ham-daniel-kretinsky-strikes-deal-to-become-hammers-largest-shareholder-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1185413\/","title":{"rendered":"West Ham: Daniel Kretinsky strikes deal to become Hammers’ largest shareholder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Royal Mail owner Daniel Kretinsky is to take a 46% stake in West Ham as part of a deal which will make him the club’s largest shareholder. <\/b><\/p>\n

The Czech businessman has struck a deal with the Hammers’ remaining shareholders, including former chairman David Sullivan, over the 25% of the club owned by the Gold family.<\/p>\n

The deal is likely to end former Newcastle director Amanda Staveley’s immediate hopes of investing in the Championship club. <\/p>\n

The move means Sullivan will increase his stake in the club, even though he resigned as chairman in June. He said he intended to fight allegations made against him in a joint BBC Panorama and Times investigation.<\/a><\/p>\n

Co-chair Vanessa Gold previously agreed to sell a portion of her shares to Kretinsky in the wake of the allegations against Sullivan being made public.<\/p>\n

However, earlier this summer, she announced an agreement to sell her entire stake to Staveley.<\/a><\/p>\n

That triggered a complicated pre-emption rights agreement at West Ham, which gave existing directors first refusal on any significant share sale.<\/p>\n

It is understood a deal was triggered before the deadline, resulting in Kretinsky agreeing to buy a significant portion of shares from Sullivan that will take his stake to 46% – with Sullivan’s eventually rising from his current 38.8% to 40%. <\/p>\n

A third major shareholder, Tripp Smith, will increase his ownership to 11%, with the remaining shareholders holding 3%.<\/p>\n

The deal effectively excludes Staveley from the process.<\/p>\n

Sullivan’s status at West Ham is already being looked at by the independent regulator, although it is understood this latest move will not trigger further examination.<\/p>\n

“The IFR’s enquiries into the suitability of David Sullivan under our ODSE [owners, directors and senior executives] regime are active and ongoing and we are in touch with relevant authorities as part of this process.”<\/p>\n

Neither Kretinsky, Gold, Sullivan nor West Ham have commented on the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Royal Mail owner Daniel Kretinsky is to take a 46% stake in West Ham as part of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1185341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-1185413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117210985717120479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1185341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}