SIMON JORDAN, 39, is the former mobile-phone tycoon turned chairman and owner
of Crystal Palace Football Club.
He made his fortune from the Pocket Phone Shop, which he set up with Andrew
Briggs in 1994. The business flourished by undercutting rivals and selling
phones for as little as 99p. It was sold to One-2-One, now known as
T-Mobile, for £73m in 2000.
At the age of 32, Jordan used the proceeds to buy Crystal Palace, which was in
danger of being taken into administration because of financial troubles. He
has supported the club since his childhood – not least because his father
played for the team in the 1950s.
Earlier this year he appeared in ITV’s Fortune: Million Pound Giveaway
alongside Jacqueline Gold, the managing director of Ann Summers, and the
former Conservative MP and novelist Jeffrey Archer.
Jordan is financing a British film about music producer Joe Meek entitled
“Telstar”, featuring Kevin Spacey and Ralph Little.
Jordan, whose girlfriend is the former model Suzi Walker, lives in Marbella,
although he regularly flies back to Britain.
How much money do you have in your wallet? I have £800 on me at the
moment, which is actually a little less than I would carry normally. Usually
I have a couple of thousand.
I carry the money because I’m a huge tipper. When I was younger, I struggled
and ended up waiting tables, and I remember what it was like to be on that
side of the business.
Whenever I go out, I tip generously. My average tip is always 35% to 40% of
the bill. That usually works out at about £100.
If I park my car I usually tip about £50, not because I’m being flash but
because I know that next time they’ll look after me. The largest tip I gave
was £1,000 at the Waterside Inn at Bray in Berkshire.
Do you have any credit cards? I have a gold Mastercard with a £250,000
limit which I’ve reached and gone over a few times. I also have a platinum
Visa, a gold Visa and a platinum Morgan Stanley card.
I use them for pretty much everything, from buying cars to grocery shopping. I
think the combined credit limit is something like £750,000.
The most I’ve spent on a single item is probably about £75,000. It was for a
watch or a car, I can’t remember exactly.
My normal credit-card spend is about £50,000 to £60,000 a month. I don’t
always pay off the bills so interest charges can be quite high, although not
so high that they are difficult to manage.
Are you a saver or a spender? A spender, or rather a consistent and
persistent investor. Everything I do in life is based upon investing in
something: opening restaurants; financing movies; buying a football club;
flying my dad around the world.
Every year I ask my father where he would like to go on holiday and then I pay
for him and an old army colleague of his to go there. My father is a very
fit man and a former footballer who is 59 but acts like he’s 10 years
younger.
This year he went to Peru. The year before that he went to Germany to watch
all the World Cup games from first to last.
How much did you earn last year? Not quite £10m, but getting there.
I’m funding a movie and I’ve also recently bought and invested in a chain of
bars called Club Bar & Dining in the West End of London. I also have a
property company in Spain where I’ve invested £10m. I built 25 villas with
that in Marbella.
The money I make from Crystal Palace goes straight back into the club.
Have you ever been really hard up? In my early twenties, before I set
up Pocket Phone Shop, I started a mobile-phone business which didn’t work
out. I fell out with my business partner at the time and ended up in a lot
of financial trouble so I moved to America to start again.
I survived by waiting on tables in New York, earning something like $500 a
week. At my worst point, I was living in a hotel on 116th Street in Spanish
Harlem. The hotel had one bathroom between 18 bedrooms. I lived there for
about six months but eventually sold my gold bracelet to get a flight back
to London.
What is the most lucrative work you have ever done? Did you use the fee
for something special? Selling my mobile-phone business for £73m. Andrew
Briggs and I started it by investing £15,000 each. We split the profits when
we sold it, so we got about £36m each.
I used £11m of the proceeds to buy Crystal Palace and I’ve spent another £24m
on the club since.
Do you own a property? Apart from the Spanish properties, which are
more of a business, I have a home in Marbella. The nine-bedroom villa cost
me about £6m in 2001. It has a six-car garage, a tennis court, a full sized
football pitch, an olympic-sized swimming pool and a cinema room. I recently
sold my three-bedroom penthouse in Chelsea overlooking Battersea Park for
£2.5m. I’m in the process of looking to buy somewhere else, either in Malibu
in California, where I might be doing some business, or somewhere else in
London.
When I’m in London I stay at the Grosvenor hotel where I’ve had a permanent
suite for the past seven years. It costs a couple of hundred thousand a year.
Do you invest in shares? I invest in people’s businesses as well as
the stock market. Last year I probably had about £1m in shares, mostly in
technology firms. Currently I have about £750,000 in the stock market. I use
stockbrokers such as Charles Stanley and am agreeing a deal with Hargreaves
Hale. I tend to allow them to make decisions about what shares to buy.
Do you have any Isas? Nope. I don’t feel I need them.
Do you have a pension or other retirement plan? I’m not a huge fan of
pensions. I think I’ll probably manage on the money that I have already.
What has been your worst investment? If you’re talking purely in terms
of finance, I would have to say the football club. Even though I’m making
money from it, I still haven’t recovered my £35m investment. From an
emotional standpoint, however, it’s been my best as well.
What aspect of our taxation system would you change? I think there
needs to be some reform of inheritance tax, which I see as a completely
soulless, immoral tax. It’s punishing people who have worked hard all their
lives.
What is your financial priority? I don’t feel I have one other than
wanting my investments to work. I especially want this movie that I’m
working on to be successful. I’m the first British producer to sole-fund a
movie in 35 years. I’m doing it simply because I enjoy and believe in it.
Do you have a money weakness? I invest in a lot of people but they’re
not always the right people to help. I once lent a friend £2m. He didn’t pay
me back. It’s a long story but, needless to say, he’s not my friend anymore.
It has made me slightly more cynical but not so much that I’m not willing to
take some risks.
What is the most extravagant thing you have ever bought? A football
club is quite an extravagant purchase. Apart from the costs in running it,
I’ve bought some extras such as a Boodles & Dunthorne diamond ring
for £100,000 to celebrate when we reached the Premiership last year.
I also have 15 cars. Nine are in Spain and six in London. My favourite is the
titanium silver Aston Martin Vanquish. I bought that a couple of years ago
for £200,000. I also have a McLaren SLR, a Mercedes SL65 AMG, a Jaguar XJ, a
Porsche Carrera, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Ferrari 612 and a Ferrari 660. I
also have a yacht moored in Marbella. I bought it nine months ago for £3m.
It costs £150,000 a year to berth it, £60,000 a year to clean it and about
£200,000 a year just to take it out – all good fun.
Do you play the lottery? What would you do if you won? I don’t agree
with it. I think money is something you have to earn through hard work. If I
won, I’d give it to charity – maybe something that helped disadvantaged
kids.
What is the most important lesson you have learnt about money? Money
is one of the least important things. Don’t do things for money; do things
for success.
