Joe Lewis - Biography

Joe Lewis (born February 5, 1937 in East London) is an English businessman who currently lives in Lyford Cay, Bahamas.

Lewis' total wealth is estimated at $3.2 billion, and he is listed as the 347th richest person of Forbes’ List of billionaires (2011). The Sunday Times’ Rich List 2011 reports Lewis is the 22nd wealthiest person in Britain, worth £2.8 billion..

Early life

Born above a public house in Roman Road, Bow, London, Lewis left school at 15 to help run his father's West End of London catering business Tavistock Banqueting, starting out as a waiter. When he took the reins he quickly expanded it by selling luxury goods to American tourists, and also owned West End nightclub the Hanover Grand, where he gave Robert Earl his first job. He later sold the business in 1979 to make his initial wealth.

Currency trading

After selling the family business in the late 70s, Lewis moved into currency trading in the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in his move to the Bahamas where he is now a tax exile. In September 1992, Lewis teamed up with George Soros to bet on the pound crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The event, which was dubbed Black Wednesday, made Lewis very wealthy, and some say he made more than Soros.

Tavistock Group

Lewis is the main investor in Tavistock Group, which owns more than 175 companies in 15 countries. Tavistock Group's portfolio includes:

• Life sciences
• Sports teams: Tottenham Hotspur via ENIC Group. Formerly owned stakes in Glasgow Rangers F.C. and Slavia Prague.
• Sporting events: Tavistock Cup, Isleworth Collegiate Invitational
• Manufacturing and distribution: KangaROOS, Gottex
• Oil, gas and energy: BayCorp, Pampa Energia
• Financial services: Bear Stearns; 10% stake in Icelandic MP Bank
• Restaurants: Freebirds World Burrito, Mitchells & Butlers plc, Zed451
• Commercial property: Tamar Capital, Bulgarian Property Development
• Private luxury residential property: Isleworth Golf & Country Club, Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, Old Fort Bay
• Resort property: Albany, Harmony Cove, The St. Regis Atlanta

Property

Lewis hosts the Tavistock Cup tournament every March in Florida, raising millions of dollars for charity, and owns three of the four clubs that compete: Albany, Lake Nona Golf & Country Club and Isleworth Golf & Country Club. Lewis recently finished building a new golf community in the Bahamas called Albany, which opened October 2010. Woods and Els are also major shareholders in the luxury resort community located in New Providence. A 71-slip mega-yacht marina, an Els-designed championship golf course, a luxury boutique hotel, water park, kids' clubhouse, adult pool, spa and fitness center, and a variety of restaurants and bars are among the amenities Albany offers. In February 2011, Lewis purchased the St. Regis Atlanta, a 26-floor development with 151 guest rooms and suites and 53 residences located in Atlanta's Buckhead community.

Lewis made a £70 million investment in Bulgarian property development.

Lake Nona

Lewis has been bringing biotechnology and new healthcare offerings to Central Florida. With his philanthropic support, Tavistock Group’s Lake Nona master plan development is an emerging biomedical research and educational hub highlighted by the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona. Construction is underway on Nemours Children’s Hospital, one of the nation's largest children's health systems, as well as the Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center, which will serve Central Florida’s 400,000 veterans. Both Lake Nona facilities are scheduled to open in 2012. In addition, the University of Florida announced its plans to build a Lake Nona academic and research center, which will house a Comprehensive Drug Development Center, the UF College of Pharmacy doctoral program and biomedical research laboratories.

Escondido Lake

Since Lewis purchased a property in Río Negro Province, Argentina, public access to Escondido lake has been under discussion. The Argentine law asserts that every water course is public and of free access. Lewis' property encircles the lake, thus in practice making it its possession. Lewis established a senda de montaña (the mountain trail), a 36-kilometer western pass hiking trail that provides full access to the 700-hectare lake. As showed by an an argentinian TV show , this access is effectively impossible, and the security guards of Lewis' property forbid the access to the lake. The situation in the TV show goes as far as the journalist reaching the lake by air, and the security staff locking the journalist from leaving the lake . The journalist could leave the place in the night after calling the local police to pick them up. While some have called for another public mountain trail to be built to access the lake, El Consejo de Ecología y Medio Ambiente de Río Negro (the Council of Ecology and Environment of Black River) does not support building another pass, which would cause harm to the environmentally protected area.

Bear Stearns

On 10 September 2007, Lewis paid US$860.4 million in an all-cash purchase of a 7% stake in Bear Stearns. By December 2007 Lewis had raised his stake at the brokerage firm to 9.4%, a total of 11 million shares, for which he paid an average price of $107 apiece. After the purchase of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan for $10 a share, it was estimated that Lewis lost $1.16 billion dollars on his investment.

Mitchells & Butlers

Lewis is the largest shareholder of British public house group Mitchells & Butlers, now controlling 23% of the issued share capital through his investment vehicle Piedmont, which he built up since 2008. It was reported on 27 August 2011 that Lewis had made a zero premium proposal for the pub group of 224p a share. He later revealed on 12 September 2011 that he was considering raising his earlier offer to 230p a share, a 4.5% premium. However, independent M&B board members rejected the offer as "significantly undervaluing" the business. Lewis was reported to have told friends, after the July 2011 trading update which saw like-for-like sales growth slowing, that his stake would be better protected if the company was controlled by him.

Personal life

Lewis has been married twice, and has two children from his first marriage. He owns the superyacht Aviva, which he uses as his personal mobile office. It contains his art collection, estimated to be worth $200M.

External links

• Official site of Tavistock Group
• Florida Trend, Medical City Is Changing Florida's DNA
• Florida Trend, Meet Joe Lewis, the Handshake Billionaire
• short bios. at Sunday Times
• The World's Billionaires 2010