Alan Sugar
Sir Alan Michael Sugar (born 24 March 1947 in Hackney, London) is a Jewish English businessman. He has an estimated fortune of over £800 million and was ranked 55th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2005. He left Brooke House School at the age of sixteen and was briefly a civil service statistician. It wasn't long before Sugar went into business selling products such as cigarette lighters, intercoms and TV aerials.
He is a donor to the British Labour Party. In 2005 he stepped into the American entrepreneur Donald Trump's shoes in the BBC version of the hit American TV series The Apprentice, with The Apprentice UK.
He was knighted in 2000 for his contributions to business. In 2006 he became the face of Premium Bonds on British television advertisements.
Amstrad
In 1968 he went on to found the electronics and computer company Amstrad (the name being taken from his initials – Alan Michael Sugar Trading).
By 1970 the first manufacturing venture was away. He achieved lower production prices by using the injection moulding plastics for hi-fi turntable covers, severely undercutting competitors who used the vacuum forming process. Manufacturing capacity was soon expanded to include the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.
In 1980 Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange. Amstrad as a company doubled in both profit and market value every year throughout the 1980s. By 1984, realising the oncoming opportunity of the computing era, Amstrad launched an 8-bit machine Amstrad CPC 464. Although the CPC range were colourful machines, with CP/M-capability and a good BASIC operating system, it could never really compete to its archrival, the more graphically complex Commodore 64 or the cheaply mass produced Sinclair ZX spectrum, as a games machine. In 1985 Sugar had another major breakthrough with the launch of the PCW8256 word processor which, although made of very cheap components, retailed at over £300.
At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.2 billion, but the 1990s proved a troubling time, with more competition appearing in the computer market. In the early-1990s Amstrad began to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers. In 1990 Amstrad tried to enter the gaming market with the Amstrad GX4000, but it was a commercial failure, because it used 8-bit technology unlike the 16-bit Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo. In 1993 Amstrad released the PenPad, a PDA,also a commercial failure. Amstrad was the only manufacturer producing receiver boxes and dishes at the launch of Sky, and has continued to manufacture set top boxes, including Sky's Sky+ box.
In 1997 Amstrad bought into Betacom and Viglen, as the company decided to focus more on communications as opposed to computers. Amstrad released the first of its combined telephony and e-mail devices, called the e-m@iler, followed by the e-m@ilerplus in 2002.
Tottenham Hotspur FC
Sugar was once the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur F.C.. He and Terry Venables got together to buy Tottenham Hotspur Football Club on 21 June 1991. The pair beat off a late bid from Robert Maxwell for Spurs. In an interview with Channel 4's High Interest programme, Alan Sugar said:
"The only dialogue I had with Rupert Murdoch was when that clown Maxwell came on the scene and knowing that they were in the past arch enemies I think Rupert rang me up one day and said 'what's going on with this football club you're trying to buy and this clown Maxwell is trying to buy also', and I think I might have said to him at the time 'he's got the power of his newspaper to hype up the thing, I haven't got a newspaper so perhaps one of your journalists could put in a good word for me on The Sun, but that was about it"
A Sun headline once read: "20 things you never knew about Tel's Sugar Daddy", which played on Sugar's financial contributions to Spurs – paying off their £20 million debt and placing limits on players' wages and other expenses – effectively saving the club from administration. However, Sugar's relationship with Venables turned acrimonious and court battles ensued. Sugar has stated that his time at Spurs was "a waste of my life".
Sugar sold most of his share in 2001, after several death threats towards him and his family. He sold the shares to ENIC Sports Ltd, represented by Daniel Levy – effectively the current chairman of the club. Sugar currently has a 13% share of Spurs, making him the second-largest shareholder.
Despite owning a football club, he once compared football players to thugs and suggested that if they weren't playing professional football, most of them would be imprisoned.
The Apprentice UK
In 2005, Sir Alan became the star of The Apprentice, in which he had the job of the boss, as Donald Trump had previously done in the US reality show of the same name. This meant that he dealt with every "firing" of a certain candidate each week. Every week, just the same as Donald Trump, he would eliminate one contestant by telling them "You're fired", which became a popular catchphrase in both the US and the UK. He also chose the tasks for the teams, using his leads in the business world to get them tasks in places such as Harrods and Sir Alan's company Amstrad. He also chose the rewards the winning team received each week, which included dinner with Sir Alan, a trip to Monaco and a trip on the Orient Express
The Apprentice greatly increased Sir Alan's popularity among the public. Prior to the show, he was not very well known among the public (with the possible exception of Tottenham Hotspur fans), but has now appeared on several television shows including a special celebrity edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. Experts say this has helped substantially increase his wealth, and make his company Amstrad more famous within the public eye.
However, it seems Sir Alan isn't always able to practise himself what he preaches to others. On the day the second series of The Apprentice started, his company reported that profits had fallen by 12% in the previous 6 months. [Source: The Guardian]
Further reading
- David Thomas, "Alan Sugar - the Amstrad Story" (1991), paperback ISBN 0330319000.
- Alan Sugar, "The Apprentice: How to get hired not fired"