Joe Lewis

Joe Lewis has not caused this much of a stir since he teamed up with a pack of speculators, including George Soros, to bet on the pound crashing out of the European exchange rate mechanism - which it did 15 years ago this Sunday.

Black Wednesday, in 1992, cost the Treasury an estimated £3.4bn and generated fortunes for the Bahamas-based currency trader and the others. Some even maintain the rags-to-riches British tax exile scooped more than Soros.

Now Lewis, who is best known in the UK for having taken interests in Tottenham Hotspur and Rangers, has resurfaced at another pivotal moment. In the midst of a global credit crisis, he has snatched a major stake in Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street's "big five" investment banks. Its shares have lost more than a quarter of their value since May because of the bank's exposure to high-risk mortgage loans in the US, known as sub-prime mortgages.

The £425m stake has thrown an unwelcome spotlight on the wider business activities of 70-year-old Lewis. Will he look to seize control of Bear? Is he a white knight riding to the rescue, or a corporate raider looking to make a quick turn? Lewis, who conducts operations from his Bahamas mansion - with currency trading screens in almost every room - is giving nothing away.

"He doesn't like to talk to people," his daughter Vivienne once explained. "It aggravates him." Aware of the value he puts on his privacy, few within the currency trading world will talk openly about Lewis, known to many as the Boxer after his near-namesake, heavyweight champion Joe Louis.

In a rare interview nine years ago, he told the New York Times: "One of the rewards of your success is the quiet enjoyment of it. Being on the front page of newspapers doesn't allow that."

That quiet determination, however, has served him well. "You don't get to be a wise old guy in the FX [foreign exchange] market without being a real shrewdie," said one senior City figure who used to do business with him. "Not many can survive that long."

Lewis, who retains something of his Cockney accent, was born above the Roman Arms pub in Bow, in the heart of London's East End, and left school at 15 to help run Tavistock Banqueting, his father's West End catering business, starting out as a waiter.

For a time, it hosted a lot of masonic functions before expanding in the 70s to target American tourists, laying on a high-kitsch "medieval banqueting" experience. Also working for Tavistock was Robert Earl, who, with Lewis's backing, later went on to develop the themed restaurant idea into the Hard Rock Café and Planet Hollywood franchises.

Entrepreneurial zeal made Lewis a multimillionaire when he sold the family catering business in 1979, relocating to the Bahamas. But instead of resting on his laurels, he reinvented himself as a currency trader and made hugely successful bets not only against the pound in 1992, but also against the Mexican peso three years later. It was these jackpots that signalled to the world that Lewis was a lot more than a retired British leisure magnate lazing in the sun.

Quite how he developed such trading aptitude is not clear, but testimony to his powers can be found in the fortunes amassed by his many proteges. They include the Monaco-based Englishman Michael Tabor as well as Irishmen JP McManus, Dermot Desmond and John Magnier - best known as former Manchester United investors.

Outside the currency world, Lewis's fortune is put to work through Tavistock Group, a private equity business named after his father's catering firm and run out of his second home, a mansion in a Florida gated community which is itself another Lewis investment.

Lewis's total wealth is impossible to assess, particularly his fortune from currency trading. He was named the richest man in Britain in the mid-90s (despite his tax exile status), and estimates this year put his fortune at £2.8bn.

In the UK his chief lieutenant is Daniel Levy, best known as the controversial chairman at Tottenham Hotspur. Levy, the son of the Mr Byrite discount clothing chain founder, has used his sponsor's backing to build a name in the City, pursuing some well-timed investments. Other not-so-successful investments include aborted attempts to take over Christie's, the auction house, Victor Chandler, the offshore bookmaker, and Wembley stadium.

There has always been media interest around the football investments but Lewis has shown little interest in the sport. His preference is for tennis, sailing and golf, where he sponsors the Tavistock Cup. His golfing friends include Tiger Woods - whom he once partnered after paying £1.4m at a charity auction for the privilege - Ernie Els and fellow tax exile Sean Connery.

Lewis remains fit, playing off a handicap of 12 or 13. He is said, on occasion, to leave his younger executives breathless as he hops from fairway to tennis court.

The CV

Born February 5 1937, over his father's pub, the Roman Arms, in Bow, east London. His father, Charles, was in the restaurant and catering industry.

Family Lives in £15m house in Bahamas with second wife Jane, his former assistant. Has two children from first marriage to Esther Browne.

Home Divides time between Bahamas and estates in Florida and Argentina.

Career Left school at 15 to work in his father's business, which he quickly expanded to form the Hanover Grand restaurant and banqueting group. Relocated to the Bahamas as a tax exile in 1979, moving into foreign exchange dealing and stock market investing. His Florida-based Tavistock Group oversees a portfolio of investments in 170 companies in more than 15 countries.

Computer nerd who turned £8,000 into £417m

Three years ago, Briton Michael Birch and his American wife set up a social networking internet site with £8,000 and a great deal of optimism.

Michael and Xochi Birch, founders of Bebo.

Yesterday the creators of Bebo sold it for £417m.

The couple, along with Mr Birch's brother Paul, another co-founder, could net more than £300m between them from the deal as they still own a large part of the company.

The takeover by the U.S. computer giant AOL represents an extraordinary rags-to-riches story for the couple who met at a university bar at Imperial College in London.

Mr Birch, a self-confessed computer nerd with no hobbies, gave up his career at an insurance company in 1999 to pursue his dream of running his own firm.

Bebo launched in July 2005 and is now one of the world's largest social networking sites, with a global membership of more than 40m. This includes 11.4m in the UK, where only Facebook and MySpace exceed it in popularity.

It also has a strong following in New Zealand and Ireland and is number three in the U.S., with each user spending an average of 33 minutes a day on the free site.

It allows users their own web page on which they can display photos and a biography, and list their likes and dislikes.

They can also interlink their site with those of their friends and come up with creative designs for their sites. The takeover is the latest in a string of multi-million pound deals as firms look to tap into the boom in popularity of social networking sites.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought MySpace in 2005 for £285m, while the technology giant Microsoft snapped up a stake in Facebook for £118m late last year.

Mr Birch, who was born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, has two children with his wife Xochi. Despite living in San Francisco, he keeps a flat in West London and describes himself as a 'true as the Queen of England Englishman'. His brother still lives in London. Michael Birch and his wife, who are chief executive and community officer respectively, will continue to be involved in the company.

Bebo has about 100 employees in the UK, its headquarters in San Francisco and in Austin, Texas. Mr Birch sold just over 15% of the company to Balderton Capital for £7.5m in May 2006.

AOL is owned by the Time Warner group. President and chief operating officer Ron Grant said: 'Bebo's dynamic management team recognises that the internet is less about destination and more about connecting people, culture and lifestyles.'

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Milky bar kid who built £4bn empire

Lord Forte, the hotelier who built up a multi-million-pound empire after opening a milk bar in his twenties on borrowed money, died yesterday at his London home aged 98.

At its height in the 1970s and 1980s, the business included some of the world's finest hotels, including the Georges V in Paris and Grosvenor House in London.

But to his eternal chagrin, Lord Forte was better known as the man who opened Britain's first motorway service station. The Forte name became indelibly associated with fast-food mass catering outlets such as Happy Eater, a chain he also owned.

Though his critics all too often sneered at his Italian ancestry, there was the air of the English country gentleman about Charles Forte, who spent winter weekends on pheasant shoots and confessed he smoked too many cigars.

A dapper man, who stood just 5ft 4in tall, he dressed in Saville Row suits and double-cuffed white shirts from London's Jermyn Street, pinched at the wrist with cufflinks that bore the 800-year-old Forte family coat of arms: motto 'strong as the law'. His tie was discreet, his shoes always immaculately polished.

Yet he was a business dynamo and a brilliant strategist, the victor in endless takeover battles.

Born in Monforte, south of Rome, in 1908, he was brought to this country at four by his father Rocco who had settled in Scotland to run a cafe.

Forte was educated in Alloa and Dumfries and by 17 was involved in the family business running cafes around the country.

Then, in 1934, he read a newspaper article about an Australian who had opened a milk bar in Fleet Street, London.

He did not even know what a milk bar was - it was like a coffee house, but because there was little coffee imported before the war, it concentrated on milk drinks.

He tried to buy into the business but failed. So he borrowed money to start his own milk bar in Regent Street.

By 1938, he owned five and in the next six decades he created a company worth an estimated £4bn, which employed more than 100,000 people. Along with some of the grandest hotels in the world, he owned 15 motorway service areas, 200 Little Chefs, 25 catering outlets at airports, almost 200 hotels in Britain and Ireland, 494 Travelodge motels in America and had more than 2,000 clients for his catering business

The secret of his success? 'With dedication, determination and ambition, you can make a fortune,' he would say. 'Without them, even inspiration and capital are useless.'

He ran his business as if it was a family, imbued with paternalist, almost Victorian, ideals of duty, dignity and self-respect.

He was very hard-working, rising early for a cold bath though, he explained, 'not the sudden sort -the humane way is to begin with hot water and let the cold run in for an invigorating finish'.

Another great force in his life was his family. In 1943 he married Irene Chierico and they had six children - one son, Rocco, who followed him into the family business, and five daughters.

'All my life it has been family,' he said. 'Family, family, family. My motivation in business is a sense of protectiveness towards the family.'

Forte had immaculate manners. Perhaps one reason was that he knew some saw him only as this country's most famous rags-to-riches immigrant. He wanted to prove that he took enormous pride in his adopted country and loved its traditions.

What hurt Forte, who was made a life peer in 1982, was the disdain displayed towards him by some in the City. Nowhere was this more obvious than when he made a bid to take over the Savoy group of hotels in 1983.

He thought the chain, which included Claridges and the Connaught, could be improved.

But he reckoned without the implacable opposition of the absurdly stuffy Savoy board, led by the group's Oundle-educated chief executive Sir Hugh Wontner.

The board derided Forte as 'no more than a man who runs motorway cafes and ice-cream parlours'.

It was true that, to his dying day, he remembered how to make a Knickerbocker Glory - the last one he made was in 1951 when his caterers were rushed off their feet at the Festival of Britain and he mucked in.

But even though the slur was a gross calumny, such sneering stuck and to his sadness Forte was denied the opportunity to crown his career by running what were still regarded as some of Britain's greatest hotels.

It was then that the Forte bandwagon began to falter. Afterwards Forte retired from the front line of his business, later passing the baton to his son - only to see him lose the firm in a takeover battle to the Granada chain in 1996.

Yet, even though he was over 80, the last thing Forte wanted to do was 'retire'. He simply spent a little more time playing golf, shooting, skiing and living the life of an impeccably-mannered English gentleman.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Rags to riches: Former addict who blew £500,000 on drugs and alcohol now runs £1m cleaning business

A former addict and alcoholic told yesterday how she now runs a multi-million pound business from the same shopping precinct where she used to buy her drink and drugs.

Mum-of-two Laura Walsh, 46, blew £500,000 on drugs before turning her life around to become a successful entrepreneur with a £1million cleaning business - in just five years.

Ironically, it is based at the same location where she used to buy painkillers and alcohol when she was an addict.

Cleaned up: Laura Walsh now, in an image from her company's website

Laura spent £60 a day on a cocktail of 30 pills washed down with 20 cans of lager for nearly 20 years.

Her addiction wrecked her marriage and she finally hit rock bottom in 2005 when her addiction wiped her memory of Christmas.

Her local Job Centre printed some flyers and she went door-to-door offering domestic cleaning services.

The business took off and she now employs more than 60 people at her company Advanced Cleaning UK in The Parade shopping precinct in Patchway, Bristol - and is worth over £1million.

Laura said: 'I used to hang out here and I used to come here to get strong lager from the shop and painkillers from the doctors' surgery.

'People used to look down on me. My life was going nowhere. 'I knew I had to quit or I was going to die.

Spaced: Laura Walsh in the early 1990s, during the days of her prescription drug addiction

'The only thing that stopped me taking my own life were my wonderful children who are now amazed and extremely proud at how I have turned my life around.

'It had always been my dream to set up a business but whilst I was on drugs I didn't ever imagine it would be possible.'

Laura has now written a book about her life called 'Ashamed' and has given motivational talks entitled 'Woman inspired'.

It details the way the drugs and alcohol affected her looks, leading her to have cosmetic surgery which resulted in an agonising infection and emergency surgery.

The book also describes 20 years of substance misuse and the trauma of the cot death of her baby daughter Natasha in 1987.

Laura said: 'I wanted to be as open as possible. I thought there was no point in writing it unless I was totally honest.

'I wanted to inspire other people. If I can give hope to somebody then it will have been worthwhile.

'I went through a huge trauma in my life, but I came out of the other end. Not in a million years would anyone have predicted what I'd be doing now if they'd seen me back in 2005.'

Laura descended into addiction in 1987, aged 22, after she was prescribed the painkiller co-proxamol for crippling period pain.

Early days: Laura Walsh, 46, at her company offices in Patchway, Bristol

In the same year she suffered whiplash after a minor car accident and was given a course of dihydrocodeine for the pain.

Laura became addicted and was supplementing her eight pill a day prescription with up to 20 pills on the black market.

She used false names to buy emergency over-the-counter supplies at pharmacies and dentists.

Her two children, Ricky, now 22, and Karissa, 23, would see her binge on up to 20 cans of strong lager every day.

Laura became a recluse and would sit alone for days on end in a 'world of her own', with Karissa finding her lying in bed in her own vomit and urine.

Refit: Laura Walsh, 46, smartened herself up and started a business

She was unable to comb her hair and could barely dress herself when her brother Kevin and the kids took her to get help.

Her job at a care trust was under threat because she kept failing to turn up and she got into financial trouble.

The turning point came in 2005 when she was so wasted she had no recollection of the Christmas and New Year period.

Laura visited the local job centre, where she was given a new suit and some self-designed leaflets.

She started cleaning people's houses but soon picked up commercial contracts and started taking on her own staff.

Laura is now engaged to partner Nathan Parry and has a whole new approach to life, still visiting counselling sessions once a month which she describes as 'more like life coaching'.

She became 'addicted to her new business', which now makes over £500,000 profit every year and has 62 workers. Some are former addicts like herself, who she has given a second chance.

She has said: 'Currently, we have two very good employees who were once drug users and are now excellent members of our team. My advice to employers: don’t judge.

'I have employed ex-heroin users, ex-drug users. I see their self esteem go up, their sense of pride, their whole attitude to life. I see their self esteem go up, their sense of pride, their whole attitude to life.'

Of her business, Laura said: 'We are extremely good at what we do and our business is thriving.

'I think I have the sort of personality that does things to extremes, which means I'm my own worst enemy.

'If I was going to go low, then I'm the sort of person who would go as low as possible. And if I was going to set up a business I was always going to aim high - I'm very determined.'

Source: dailymail.co.uk

The sweet swell of :Michelle Mone

These gel-filled bras have secured ample profits

The fairy tale journey of entrepreneur Michelle Mone and her quest to create the perfect brassiere is a sublime episode in the history of business.

The inventor of the Ultimo bra grew up in a tenement in the east end of Glasgow, Scotland. Her brother died when she was 10 and her father was paralysed when she was 12.

Leaving school at 15 she embarked on her entrepreneurial odyssey and eventually became one of the most successful businesswomen in Britain.

Now, at the age of 34, she has been invited to appear at next week's 'Leaders in London' International Leadership summit where she will recount the story of her success, sharing a platform with such luminaries as Bill Clinton, Terence Conran, Mikhail Gorbachev and Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

I don't think I'm the best businesswoman on the planet Michelle Mone

Though it has been a "rollercoaster" ride to the top, it took Michelle a mere three years to make her uplifting mark on the fashion world.

"I'd never of thought that coming from where I did and leaving school at 15 with nothing I'd be asked to speak at Leaders in London. I laugh sometimes!, " says Ms Mone in a rare interview.

Great Scot

Michelle's canny brush with destiny came at a dinner dance in 1996 where she endured an uncomfortable evening wearing a cleavage enhancing bra. It was so uncomfortable, she took it off.

That night she resolved to revolutionise the world of the 'over the shoulder boulder holder'.

JOURNEY TO THE TOP 1996 - MJM International founded 1998 - Wins contract to market and distribute Elle's underwear range 1999 - Ultimo Bra is launched 2000 - Ultimo launched at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York 2001 - Prince Charles asks Michelle to join the board at the Princes Trust Scotland 2002 - Ultimo backless body is launched 2003 - Backless and frontless bra is launched 2004 - MJM signs deal with Asda to launch a collection for its George range called 'Michelle for George'.

One month later - using redundancy money from her previous job - Michelle launched MJM International with the aim of creating and marketing the ultimate in bras.

There was just one snag.

"I knew nothing about the way bras were made", Ms Mone confess.

So she scoured the High Street, grabbed every bra on the market and then unstitched them.

After three years of pulling and stretching and lifting and separating, and with MJM £100,000 in debt and creditors banging at the door, the Ultimo was born.

The revolutionary silicone gel-filled push up bra was to change her life.

By that time juggling a booming career with a husband and three children, the arch rival to Wonderbra was launched at Selfridges in London. Twenty-four hours later, six week's worth of stock had been sold.

The next year Ultimo launched in the exclusive Saks Fifth Avenue stores in New York where there was a six week waiting list for the magic bra.

Stars in bras

The glitterati embraced Ms Mone and soon doors opened everywhere for her. Parties with Richard Branson - her childhood hero - and invitations to the Palace became de rigueur.

Rod Stewart's ex-wife Rachel Hunter fronts the latest catalogue

"I think when I first started out I got a bit carried away with myself," Ms Mone says.

"It's like a footballer from a working class background; they're given all this money and fast cars and it goes to their heads a wee bit - and I think it went to my head a wee bit."

Hardly surprising.

Among the many gongs she has scooped up are Business Woman of the Year and Great Scot of the Year business award.

Management Today voted Michelle as one of the top 30 woman entrepreneurs in the UK alongside the likes of Martha Lane Fox and Stella McCartney.

Fashion icon Rachel Hunter is modelling the latest range for a business now estimated to be worth in excess of £20m and the 'best supporting garment' was worn by Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich.

"Now the company is going from strength to strength," Ms Mone says. "We've tripled our turnover in a year and we've earned record profits."

Keeping perspective

Stripped of facts and figures, Michelle is disarmingly modest and like a child in a sweetshop at the thought of speaking at Leaders in London.

I think it's right that people like myself give a little something back because I remember how hard it was when I started up Michelle Mone

"I'm certainly not going to stand up there and say I'm God's gift and the perfect businesswoman and I have the answer to everything," she says.

"I'm gonna stand up there and tell them my true story, tell them about the rollercoaster ride that I've experienced in the last nine-and-a-half years."

"I don't think I'm the best businesswoman on the planet. I think there are many other women who deserve to be at Leaders in London more than me."

Her resolve to keep her feet on the ground is backed by her determination to help the next generation of young entrepreneurs and she says she answers all letters requesting advice personally.

"I think it's right that people like myself give a little something back because I remember how hard it was when I started up.

"If we all give a wee bit of something it'll make a big difference."

'Batting away'

In 20 years, forecasters say, 60% of the nation's personal wealth will be controlled by women while a record number of women - including Ms Mone - have made the Sunday Times Rich List.

At 34, Michelle already has a successful brand behind her

When asked where she sees herself in 10 year's time she says: "I honestly don't think I've made it yet. I've got a long way to go.

"Because we live in such a competitive world I just want to have my company and have my brands and to be batting away at the big boys, taking their market share away from them."

And what about a future stock market flotation?

"Never say never."

Source: news.bbc.co.uk