A look at the background of Everton's next chief executive Angus Kinnear
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Angus Kinnear will become Everton's chief executive this summer as the club move to their new stadium
Angus Kinnear will become Everton's chief executive this summer as the club move to their new stadium
By the time Angus Kinnear takes up his duties at Everton, two years will have elapsed since his predecessor Denise Barrett-Baxendale stepped down as the club’s last chief executive But while her departure was part of a larger boardroom exodus of Goodison Park’s old guard, this appointment is part of a raft of structural changes from The Friedkin Group for a new-look Blues.
Kinnear, who will replace Colin Chong who has been carrying out CEO responsibilities on an interim basis since June 2023, in addition to being Everton’s chief stadium development officer, a role he has held since August 2018, is set to remain in his current position at Leeds United until the end of the current campaign.
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Kinnear, who was educated at St Albans School, where fees currently stand at £9,382 per term, is said by the Hertfordshire institution to have enjoyed twin passions for history and football while with them – captaining their first XI – before going on to study Economic History at the London School of Economics.
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The 47-year-old. spent his early career in marketing for Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, working on sports sponsorship of the 2000 Olympic Games in Athens, England’s Rugby Union World Cup victory in Australia in 2003 and the European Football Championships.
This paved the way for two decades of working within football clubs, initially as commercial director at Arsenal where Kinnear led their move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium. He then became managing director at West Ham United, re-opening the Olympic Stadium as their new home, two roles where the parallels with Everton leaving Goodison Park for their new stadium are obvious, before joining Leeds United as CEO and taking them back to the Premier League for the first time in 16 years, although they would be relegated after three seasons.
Missing out on promotion at the first time of asking last season when they lost to Southampton in the play-off final at Wembley, the Elland Road outfit currently enjoy a three-point lead over their Yorkshire rivals Sheffield United at the top of the Championship.
Kinnear is widely regarded as having something of a mixed legacy from his time across the Pennines with Leeds United fan Adonis Storr telling BBC Sport this week: “Other leaders within the club have been assigned the responsibility for many of the major decisions during his tenure.
“Some CEOs become synonymous with their brands. Kinnear’s strategy of shirking the spotlight seems deliberate, perhaps to avoid the kind of scrutiny that Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy is currently experiencing.
“Perhaps only in Angus’ absence will Leeds fans get an appreciation of the impact he had. Clearly Everton see the value of him.”
As Storr also pointed out, perhaps the clearest indication of the input of Kinnear, who has also served as a director of Commonwealth Games England and chairman of British Weight Lifting, a post he took up in June 2019, were his annual interview with the Square Ball podcast and programme notes, the latter of which have now been abandoned.
But in December 2021 saw him brand calls for an independent football regulator and a transfer levy as “Maoist.” They were two of 47 recommendations made by a fan-led review of football governance at the time but Kinnear remarked: “Enforcing upon football a philosophy akin to Maoist collective agriculturalism – which students of 'The Great Leap Forward' will know culminated in the greatest famine in history – will not make the English game fairer, it will kill the competition which is its very lifeblood.”
He added: “Redistribution of wealth will simply favour the lowest common denominator. Clubs who excel in recruitment, player development or commercial enterprise will be punished, while less capable ownership will be rewarded for incompetence.”