Staffordshire billionaires Sir Anthony Bamford and John Caudwell are conclusive proof that Lord Sugar is wrong to assert that engineers don’t make good businessmen.
JCB chairman Bamford, with a family fortune of £1,650m, and Caudwell, with a £1,500m fortune based on the success of the mobile phone business Phones 4U, were both engineering apprentices. Sir Tom Farmer, founder of the Kwik Fit tyre fitting company, who is worth £136m, Sir David McMurtry, worth £425m, who set up the precision engineering business Renishaw, and Jim McColl, worth £570m, who runs Clyde Blowers, are also among the 10 wealthiest people in Britain who have served engineering apprenticeships.
Sugar took exception to engineers last month on The Apprentice, the popular BBC TV programme which he hosts. In the episode on June 15 he said: “I have never yet come across an engineer who can turn his hands to business,” as he fired contestant Glenn Ward, who is a design engineer.
Although his £770m personal fortune is half those of billionaires Bamford and Cauldwell, Sugar, 64, has been in The Sunday Times Rich List since it began. With the profits of his home computer and electronics business Amstrad riding high, Alan Sugar, worth £432m, was the 15th wealthiest person in Britain when the first Rich List was published in 1989.
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However, this initial success was short-lived as the Amstrad operation ran into difficulties that were very nearly fatal. Problems with computer reliability, high interest rates and a retail slowdown hit Amstrad’s share price and at one stage Sugar’s fortune was bleeding away at around £1m a week. By 1993 his personal wealth had fallen to £65m, pushing his Rich List ranking down to a low of 143=. Sugar saved the day by slashing borrowings and inventories, which impressed the City and pushed up the value of shares in Amstrad – set up in 1968 as Alan Michael Sugar Trading.
While gradually diversifying his business interests into property, Sugar, the son of a Hackney tailor, spent a turbulent 10 years as chairman and owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club until he sold a 27% share of the club to leisure group ENIC in 2001. He described his decade at Spurs as “a waste of my time”.
Labour supporter Sugar was knighted for his services to business in 2000, the year he saw his fortune rise to £585m, boosted partly by the involvement of his computer company Viglen in e-commerce. He resigned as chairman of Viglen in 2009 when he was appointed a government enterprise tsar by prime minister Gordon Brown and given a peerage.
Sugar has been among the country’s 100 richest people for 12 years, with his wealth reaching £830m in 2007, the same year Amstrad was sold to BSkyB. The main focus of Sugar’s business activity is now property, which accounts for two-thirds of his wealth.
Click here for our definitive guide to wealth in our Rich List 2011
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