Billionaire John Caudwell likes to play the robust man. Caudwell suffered a horrific-sounding harm to his proper arm whereas snowboarding moguls on the Colorado slopes not too long ago. Pressured to go below the knife, the founding father of cellular large Telephones 4u had a mirror positioned by his head to observe the surgeon reattach a ripped tendon. “Fascinating,” he smiles to the disbelief of his public relations handlers.
Ugly, extra like. The tendon had rolled as much as his shoulder, which means Caudwell watched on because the physician wriggled his fingers behind the pores and skin overlaying his biceps to drag the sinew again down.
He was provided a normal anaesthetic however accepted solely fundamental pain-killers. “It simply felt like a toothache or a extreme headache,” he grins, clearly having fun with the grimaces of his entourage. The strangest factor, he provides, was that when the physician drilled by bone in his forearm, there was no ache in any respect.
Gory arm harm apart, Caudwell is the image of well being and wealth as he kicks again in a sixth-floor suite on the Dorchester. Trim, match as a butcher’s canine, evenly tanned and searching decade youthful than his 57 years, Caudwell appears to have made good on his promise to take pleasure in life after promoting Telephones 4u in a £1.46bn deal 4 years in the past.
But Caudwell has been busy on 5 companies, together with an imminent, startling comeback to the cell phone trade. “I mentioned I used to be going to sail around the globe, however I barely managed to row throughout a lake,” he joshes, a touch of a Midlands accent betraying his Stoke-on-Trent roots.
Caudwell was one of many nation’s most well-known entrepreneurs, opening his first Telephones 4u store in 1991 and promoting out to non-public fairness giants Doughty Hanson and Windfall when he sensed an impending recession. At his leaving do, Caudwell dished out £3.5m in cheques to loyal workers.
Since then, he has been extra well-known for his lavish events. Leona Lewis, a former winner of The X Issue, sang at his daughter’s birthday; Diana Ross wowed the gang on the fortieth birthday of his associate, Claire Johnson, whereas Whitney Houston and Rod Stewart have sung on the annual ball supporting his kids’s charity.
Nonetheless, he scoffs at reviews of astronomical look charges, such because the £1.7m he supposedly splashed out on Houston’s efficiency. “Elton’s doing the ball freed from cost this yr,” says Caudwell, presumably referring to John fairly than Ben.
The eagerness with which he speaks about his forthcoming enterprise suggests he’ll quickly be well-known as a businessman once more fairly than an occasion organiser. “It is a lengthy shot. It is not totally confirmed,” he admits, earlier than virtually frothing on the mouth with enthusiasm. “Nevertheless it’s thrilling, revolutionary and has essentially the most potential of my companies [which include wealth management, boat engine and property empires], with actual world potential.”
Caudwell tries to cloud his plans in thriller, however discloses quite a bit. He has ploughed £1m right into a cell phone software that facilitates instantaneous monetary transactions with a easy code.
This has confirmed to “transcend that operate”, claims Caudwell, and the builders are at the moment mushy advertising the software program with some potential clients. If profitable, Caudwell is more likely to pour much more of his fortune into growing a product that he believes might finally be price billions.
What’s likeable about Caudwell is that he doesn’t overplay the rags-to-riches stereotype with which he has usually been tagged. Sure, he began with little, however he was not the down-at-heel second-hand automobile salesman, as is usually portrayed, when he noticed some brick-sized cell phones in an electronics store in 1987.
He was a millionaire, with about £1.5m to £2m within the financial institution, earlier than he was 35. The massive money began rolling in just a little later, which Caudwell thinks helped to maintain his toes on the bottom.
“I began to make severe wealth in my forties, that are in all probability your classic years. You then nonetheless have a whole lot of power, but in addition the expertise of constructing errors. If you happen to’re rich and well-known at a younger age it may be a little bit of a catastrophe.”
That have has helped Caudwell to maintain his cash intact. Hiring a roster of bankers, whom he meets on a quarterly foundation, Caudwell has not been too badly hit by the financial downturn.
A very clever transfer was pulling £400m out of American insurance coverage large AIG shortly earlier than its liquidity disaster in September 2008. Making solely 0.1 to 0.2 per cent extra out of his funding than he might within the wealth fund of a sometimes secure financial institution like Barclays or HSBC, Caudwell determined to grill AIG as as to whether his funding confronted a lot threat. Not surprisingly, he was instructed that each one was nicely, however then he requested what would occur within the wake of a geopolitical disaster that wiped greater than 20 per cent off world markets. AIG admitted that traders would begin taking their cash out and that was sufficient for Caudwell to maneuver his money elsewhere.
“It [the investment] went from being bulletproof to having means, means an excessive amount of threat in a couple of questions,” he says, clearly relieved by his resolution.
One other pitfall averted was a rescue bid for Birmingham van-maker LDV final yr. He tries to minimize the seriousness of his intentions, which have been extensively reported on the time, earlier than talking with sufficient authority to counsel that he had gone by the books fairly totally.
“It was massively overstated. I knew jobs can be misplaced and I could not assist however surprise if it was price taking a look at. Nevertheless it was pointless. If I needed LDV’s stability sheet to be price 100 in an effort to go for it, the determine got here out at about 5.” Caudwell clearly needed to save lots of an organization that was a part of the group the place he grew up, however relating to large enterprise he’s shrewd fairly than romantic. That is demonstrated by his reply as to whether he has any regrets about promoting Telephones 4u, which has since been compelled into some redundancies.
“It was a bit like promoting my youngster,” he concedes. “It took a very long time to come back to the conclusion and it was a traumatic sale interval, with a number of non-public fairness teams making an attempt to get their heads round what had turn out to be a posh enterprise. However having made my resolution, I by no means regretted it for one second.”
Caudwell smiles, leans again, his arm draped behind his chair within the assured method of a Simon Cowell. It’s the contented look of a person who can afford a £1m punt on a protracted shot.
John Caudwell is the visitor speaker on the Penfolds Classic Years occasion on the Hospital Membership in Covent Backyard on Thursday; www.penfolds.com
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