2023-08-03 02:00:00
“None of this was necessary, Joe Lewis is rich”US Attorney Damian Williams said by accusing the British tycoon of insider trading. And he was right: the businessman, known in Argentina for owning a large expanse of land in Patagonia, is an immense millionaire, and his business extends like tentacles. However, the 86-year-old is almost a mystery to many.
Lewis, who according to the rich list of Forbes, has an estimated fortune of US$6 billion (the 444th richest person in the world), which allows him to make full use of his wealth and invest everywhere. According to the prosecutor who accused him, “your romantic partners, your personal assistants, your private pilots and your friendsThey made million-dollar deals with “insider information” and “earned millions of dollars in the stock market, because thanks to Lewis those bets were a sure thing.”
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Joe Lewis has little involvement in the day-to-day despite owning the Tottenham football club and the spotlight is on chairman Daniel Levy. The millionaire is rarely seen at Spurs gamesand prefers to enjoy a life of luxury and anonymity floating around the Caribbean on his luxury superyacht.
Born in the UK, hailing from the East End of London, left school at the age of 15 when he began working at and later took over his father’s Tavistock Banqueting business. He then expanded the business with tourist-focused restaurants, including the Beefeater chain of pubs and London’s Hanover Grand nightclub.
a young lewis sold family business for $38 million in 1979, the same year he went into tax exile in the Bahamas and refocused his interests on currency trading following establishing the Tavistock Group, the success of which earned him the nickname “The Boxer.” As a result, one of Lewis’s companies was named ‘Boxer Capital’.
The few who managed to investigate his life assure that Lewis He made his enormous fortune betting on “Black Wednesday”when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) following the pound’s collapse on September 16, 1992. He teamed up with hedge fund manager George Soros to bet that the pound would would plummet and rack up millions from a national economic crisis.
“None of this was necessary, Joe Lewis is rich,” said the prosecutor investigating him
His worst moment would come in 2008, when he lost a third of his fortune due to the collapse of the US bank Bear Stearns. However, his wealth has grown considerably over the past decade, rising from an estimated value of US$4 million in 2013 to US$3.9 billion today. Additionally, Tavistock Group owns more than 200 assets in 13 countries, including luxury resorts, restaurants, hotels and an Australian agricultural company.
But the tentacles of the Lewis empire go further. The businessman is the majority shareholder of Mitchells & Butlers, a major global chain of pubs and restaurants, including All Bar One, Toby Carvery and the Harvester chain, and partnered with golfer Tiger Woods to create the ultra-exclusive Albany golf and leisure resort in the Bahamas, with Ernie Els and Justin Timberlake among its co-owners.
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His ENIC holding company bought a majority stake in Tottenham Hotspur Football Club in 2001, of the Premier League, to then-owner Alan Sugar, another prominent British tycoon, for $22 million. Lewis officially relinquished control of the club last year, according to British financial records, with his stake formally passing into a family trust.
Little is known regarding Joe Lewis’ private life.Apart from the fact that the billionaire owns an extensive art collection that includes works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, most of them hang on the walls of his yacht. In 2022, the Briton set a world record by selling a David Hockney painting for $89 million, a record for a work of art by a living artist.
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Most of the time Lewis spends in the superyacht “Aviva”. Built in 2007 by Abeking and Rasmussen and designed by Reymond Langton, is 323 feet in size and Lewis considers it his private office. The yacht can accommodate up to 16 people and 35 crew, and on sea trials she achieved an impressive 20 knots (23 mph).
Aviva’s standout feature is the state-of-the-art tennis court, located on the lower deck: it is 20 meters long and the yacht was effectively designed around it. The owner’s suite on the upper deck features an office, a private lounge and a large bathroom, while the rest of the guest cabins, made up of two VIP suites and five more double cabins, are also complete with private bathrooms.
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Lewis superyacht, valued at regarding US$248 millionIt also has a gym, a swimming pool and a spa, with an elevator that facilitates access to each of the decks, and a hidden “secret” cinema, as well as a piano and a large lounge with large windows and balconies from which, In May 2013, Spurs players enjoyed themselves during a trip to the Bahamas.
“I had never met him before so it was nice to go there and it was a great experience,” said then-team captain Michael Dawson. “What a nice guy. And that yacht is unreal! But he is a normal guy. You might chat with him regarding anything. He tunes in to all the games, he loves it. ‘We sat there chatting. He made us feel very welcome there. He was relaxed ”.
Little is known of Lewis’s family life other than that his current wife is named Jane and that he has two children from his first marriage to Esther Browne. His daughter Vivienne, divorced from a major British businessman, is considered the heir to the tycoon’s millions and is a member of the Tavistock board of directors. It is believed that Lewis’s son, Charles, lives on the huge 12,000-hectare property that the family owns regarding 50 km from El Bolsón, in Río Negro.
In 1996, Lewis bought 8,000 hectares surrounding Lake Escondido, a glacial water reservoir, under dubious conditions, making it water for public use and the main point of conflict with the national government. The tycoon acquired the land through an Argentine firm that, following the purchase, ceded the property to Lewis. From that moment on, the right to public access guaranteed by law to this national patrimony is prevented by the private security of the businessman.
What is Joe Lewis accused of in the United States?
On July 26, Lewis pleaded not guilty to the 19 charges – including several for “stock fraud”, for which he can be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison for the most serious charge – in his first appearance before a judge in the Court for the Southern District of Manhattan (New York). His defense attorney, David Zornow, said that the US government made a “egregious error of judgement” for their “ill-conceived accusations” contra Lewis.
According to the prosecution, between 2013 and 2021, Lewis created “a shameless scheme” of insider trading and “abused his access to company boardrooms.” and repeatedly provided inside information to his romantic partners, his personal assistants, his private pilots and his friends.” “These people then did business with that inside information and made millions of dollars in the stock market, because thanks to Lewis those bets were a sure thing.” said prosecutor Williams.
According to the prosecutor, Lewis would have provided this information as a means to pay his employees or to offer gifts to friends or conquests, qualifying the scheme as “classic corporate corruption” y “trap“. Among the beneficiaries would be two of the people closest to the businessman: Patrick O’Connor and Bryan Waugh, two pilots employed by the businessman for his private jets.
According to the indictment, the two made millions in the stock markets thanks to insider information provided to them by Lewis, particularly in biochemical companies. The billionaire would have lent them half a million dollars each in 2019 to invest in shares of Mirati Therapeutics before the results of a clinical trial were made public. Supposedly, O’Connor would have sent a text message to a friend to also buy shares of said company, assuring him that the “Boss had inside information.”
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