Peter de Savary
Peter John de Savary (born 11 July 1944) is an English entrepreneur and a former Chairman of Millwall F.C. In the 1999 Sunday Times Rich List, he was placed in 971st place with an estimated fortune of £21 million, but was not listed in the top thousand places in subsequent editions.
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[edit] Biography
De Savary built his first business in Nigeria through contacts he made back home in England. The bulk of his business career has been spent in the shipping and oil sectors; he once owned or managed 13 shipyards around the globe, still retaining one shipyard in the United Kingdom, and he still has a global oil-trading and refueling business.
[edit] Clubs and property
His first venture into the hospitality was the St. James' Clubs in the late 1970s, in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Antigua, which he sold in the late 1980s to finance the £4m purchase of Skibo Castle.
De Savary built up a large business empire in the 1980s, with property interests including Land's End and John o' Groats.[1]
However, in the early 1990s economic downturn his empire collapsed with serious debts – he sold both Land's End and John o' Groats in 1991 for an undisclosed sum to businessman Graham Ferguson Lacey, and 14 of his companies were wound up between 1992 and 1994, with a combined shortfall to creditors of £715 million.[2]
[edit] 2000s
His recent business activities have concentrated on property development and hotels, with a number of major country house hotels incorporating golf courses. De Savary saw a niche for the affluent; leisure properties that were small enough to make guests feel as though they were on their own private estate, but equipped with all the facilities of the world's great hotels. His first such development was The Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle in Scotland, the venue for Madonna and Guy Ritchie's wedding. Other similar developments have included: the Cherokee Plantation in South Carolina; Stapleford Park and Bovey Castle, both in England; and Carnegie Abbey in Rhode Island. Each is a private club with golf courses and other amenities—clay pigeon shooting, falconry, horseback riding, tennis—depending on what fits with the club's local environment.[citation needed] He founded the Abaco Club at Winding Bay in Abaco, Bahamas, building a spectacular golf course on the beautiful Winding Bay beach and bluff. He has recently bought four properties in Grenada in the Caribbean, where he is developing a marina and resort village.[citation needed]
Vanderbilt Hall
In late 2009 Peter de Savary purchased Vanderbilt Hall, a mansion hotel located in Newport, Rhode Island. He has since added a small collection of American Illustration artworks to the property from the American Illustrators Gallery, NYC, including a piece by Howard Chandler Christy, titled "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair". The painting depicts Stephen Foster composing the song of the same name. Other artists currently on display are: Bradshaw Crandell, William Soare, Phil Berry, R. C. Kauffmann, Julian De Miskey, Constantin Alajalov, Helen Dryden, John Lagatta, George Hughes, Thomas Webb, Rico Tomaso, Gilbert Bundy, Hans Flato, Carl Burger, Rolf Armstrong, Earl Bergey.
[edit] Yachting
He led the British sailing team in its challenge for the America's Cup in 1983 but his contender Victory 83 was beaten by Australia II in the final heat. He used the motoryacht Kalizma (formerly home to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during filming in London, named for their children) as a support vessel for the America's Cup races, but has since sold the ship. He also once owned the luxury yacht MY Land's End. He founded Pendennis Shipyard in Falmouth, Cornwall, which builds and restores luxury yachts. He now is also sponsor of the Grenada Sailing Festival.[citation needed] He has raced for many years in the Bucket Regatta in Newport, RI, and St Barts in the Caribbean. He was awarded the trophy "Spirit of the Bucket" in 2010.
[edit] Football
In November 2005 he succeeded Theo Paphitis as Chairman of Millwall Holdings plc and as Chairman of Millwall F.C. Stewart Till succeeded him on 3 May 2006 as the football club Chairman, and de Savary remained as Chairman of Millwall Holdings plc until October 2006.
In March 2011 de Savary was linked with a deal to purchase financially stricken League One club Plymouth Argyle F.C. However loans secured against the ground by former directors and associated companies proved a huge stumbling block and it seemed uncertain whether de Savary would be pursuing his interest further. As of 23 March 2011, the club remained in administration with the administrators still desperately trying to find a buyer. Peter de Savary denied any interest in buying the club.
[edit] Personal life
De Savary is married with five daughters. Two are from his first marriage – Lisa, who has provided him with two grandsons and a granddaughter; Nicola, who is a doctor and mother to three more grandsons. His second wife is Lana, from Charleston, South Carolina, and the couple have three daughters – Tara; Amber, who dressage rider who represented her country more than 20 times at dressage; and Savannah who is studying at Oxford University. Tara and Amber work with their father in the family business, [3] In December 1987, after departing from St. Barthélemy in the Caribbean with his pilot, a nanny, his pregnant wife and his three daughters, their plane went into a stall, plunged into the Caribbean and landed upside down. The pilot died, and one of de Savary's daughters had to be revived on the beach. De Savary says: "At that point, my philosophy on life changed a little. When you genuinely look death in the eye, you know that nothing's going with you, and life is but a thread. It's a pretty tenuous thing we're hanging on to. So, what is the point of making money? I concluded it certainly isn't for accumulating it. That's the most stupid thing I ever heard of. So, there can be only one point, and that's to spend it. Now, I'm not ridiculously wasteful, but I may be slightly extravagant. As Andrew Carnegie said, to die rich is to die disgraced."[4]
