Sir Alan Sugar (15 page)

The
Daily Express
slammed a series of
The Apprentice
as ‘
Big Brother
on wheels’ under the headline ‘Sugar’s Bitter taste of failure’. Sugar was unmoved.

‘His coverage of the current series is pathetic,’ he said.

These clashes aside, Amsair continued to soar. With the much-publicised credit crunch of 2008, one might think that luxuries such as private jets would have been the first cutback as people and businesses very much tightened their belts. As banks massively reduced their lending to each other because they were uncertain about how much money they had, the result was more
expensive loans and mortgages for ordinary people. A more noticeable result, though, was a general air of financial uncertainty from the man and woman on the street to the millionaire in the boardroom. Daniel Sugar acknowledged that Amsair was aware of this, and was ready to cope it. ‘We are mindful of the fact that the economy isn’t marvellous at the moment and, as it’s a competitive industry, we can’t be too expensive. We are not going after huge turnover. We have long-standing clients – about 60 to 70 of them – but they come back to us because we don’t let them down. We run a lean machine and are clear in what we offer.’ That lean machine continues to offer a great service, and looks set to climb to even greater heights in the future.

Just as Sir Alan enjoys the benefits of private air travel as both a businessman and customer, he also likes to travel in style on the road. It is the dream of many aspiring millionaires to own that most prestigious of cars and traditional symbol of wealth, the Rolls-Royce. As a man who has worked hard and cleverly, in order to amass a huge fortune, Sir Alan has treated himself to a taste of the Rolls-Royce experience. His most famous ‘Roller’ down the years was the Rolls-Royce Phantom. The car almost became a celebrity in its own right, thanks to the memorable footage of it when it first appeared as his mobile office in the second series of
The
Apprentice
, replacing the 1998 Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph of the first series of the hit reality show. As motoring
magazine
Autotrader
puts it, ‘They don’t come more luxurious than his old Rolls-Royce Phantom, a Goodwood-built four-door saloon powered by a 6.7-litre V12 engine producing 453bhp and a titanic 531lb/ft of pulling power. This engine accelerates the 2.5-ton prestige car from 0–62mph (100kph) in just 5.9 seconds and on to a limited top speed of 149mph.’

As well as these impressive technical specifications, the experience of actually being driven in such a car is a joy. Rear-seat passengers – and many owners will be chauffeur-driven rear-seat passengers – enjoy a near-silent travelling environment and the electronically controlled air suspension remains wonderfully composed. Little wonder, then, that, in 2006, the car beat off challenges from Daimler, Bentley and Mercedes for the
Autocar
title of best car.
Autocar
’s Rob Aherne said it won on merit, stating, ‘This is a hard-earned and significant award for Rolls-Royce and British workmanship. It’s been a good 50 years since a Rolls-Royce could honestly be described as best in the world.’

The car has become so associated with Sir Alan that news of the
Autocar
gong was immediately connected to him in the eyes of the press. The
Sun
’s headline was typical: ‘Sugar’s car is sweetest motor’.

Thanks to this association, interest in the car has rocketed in recent years, and not just in the motorcar trade press and tabloid newspapers.
The Times
sent motoring expert and all-round celebrity Jeremy Clarkson
to test-drive the latest model. Having been initially sceptical, Clarkson was soon won over. ‘The new Phantom is supposed to be the last word in engineering excellence, a road-going private jet, a luxury yacht with a point, a car that separates and distances you from both the tedium and the discomfort of travel.

‘Ever wondered what it would be like to drive around in Salisbury Cathedral?’ he asked his readers, with typically Clarkson-esque flourish. ‘Well, you need wonder no more.’ After painting such a gentle picture of the Phantom, he then turned to its more robust side, deploying more ebullient imagery that Sir Alan no doubt will have enjoyed. ‘This one looks like it might kick your head in, for fun,’ roared an admiring Clarkson.

The controversial pundit was absolutely blown away by the Phantom. His closing remarks give yet more insight into how the experience of the car would feel from the rear-seat perspective of Sir Alan Sugar. ‘I am in no doubt that this is the best-engineered car ever made. It does not blind you with gadgets or boggle your mind with speed. It is supremely comfortable, but you can still sense what the front tyres are doing, even from the passenger seat. It is utterly and fabulously exquisite and I have no hesitation in giving it five stars.’

But, having given it five stars himself down the years, Sir Alan parted company with the Phantom in June 2008 when he put it up for sale with an asking price of
£
179,000, although without his famous ‘AMS1’
number plate, which he kept for his new car. Richard Johnson, sales manager at Sytner Rolls-Royce dealership in Knutsford, Cheshire, where the car was being sold, said that interest was huge and fast. ‘We’ve already had a massive amount of interest,’ he said within days of the car going up for sale. ‘I don’t think it will hang around long.’

Sugar was replacing his original Phantom model with the new long-wheelbase Rolls-Royce Phantom, which was to set him back hundreds of thousands of pounds. What a far cry from the days when he bought his first ever car, a minivan, for
£
50 back in 1967! Who could have dreamed back then that he could go on to make such riches, and to be able to buy such prestigious luxurious cars as these?

Sir Alan’s riches have come through the sort of hard work and dedication to excellence that has been the hallmark of the Rolls-Royce company throughout its equally prestigious history. True, his career has not always run as smoothly as the Rolls-Royce experience promises. But he has kept moving forward, and has done so with the sort of quietly roaring determination that is the hallmark of the finest motorcars of the world offer. And, although he is now in his sixties, his ambition and enthusiasm know no bounds.

One of Alan Sugar’s lesser-known side projects is Amsprop, his real-estate vehicle. Formed in 1985, it had
as its first significant purchase a high-street parade in Barkingside, Essex. It grew and grew alongside Sir Alan’s love of the property market and the company now owns an estimated half a billion pounds’ worth of property. Sugar got a real thrill from the property world because there are few things in business he enjoys more than closing deals, and property allowed him plenty of chances to do just that. He was impulsive about it, and colleagues would often be told to close a deal within an hour to buy buildings worth millions of pounds that Sugar had not even personally visited. ‘Everybody has a good laugh at me, because they cannot believe the way I go about doing property deals. I buy and sell properties without even going to look at them,’ he said back then. His approach was also governed by a basic rule that he would not bother with any property worth less than
£
2 million. It’s all right for some!

Amsprop was a family affair from the start. Sugar first employed his brother Derek, and then his son Daniel. After focusing mainly on regional property, the company eventually began to invest in larger West End real estate. ‘Amstrad was booming away and I said this is my gambling business,’ said Sugar. ‘Why not break it off and start investing?’

He turned to his friend Ivor Spiro and Essex estate agent Douglas Allen Spiro, who suggested Sugar should purchase property at auction. The first deal he did that way was to buy a property in Basildon. ‘It was one of the
earliest and best deals I have done. I said to my son the other day, ‘I could do with another 500 of those,’ said Sugar. Amsprop was on the up.

In 1995, he bought Gloucester House – which includes London’s Hard Rock Café – in Park Lane for
£
13 million. (Seven years later he sold just one of the penthouses within it for a cool
£
7 million.) However, even this shrewd purchase was outdone in terms of iconic stature by his big deal of the following year. In September 1996, he bought the IBM building on London’s South Bank. The building, which sits next to the National Theatre, was sold by UK European Investments, controlled by the Lewis Trust Group, better known as the owner of the River Island fashion chain. By the turn of the century, there could be no doubt that Amsprop really began to mean business. Reportedly, Sugar was hit with a massive capital-gains tax bill from the sale of his stake in Tottenham Hotspur and opted to invest in West End property in the hope that the rise in capital values would help pay the taxman. He began to splash out on corner buildings in London, where retail rents on the ground floor are higher. These included Albemarle House on the corner of Grafton Street just off New Bond Street, Sackville House at 40 Piccadilly on the corner of Sackville Street, and Bennet House at 54 St James’s Street by the Ritz hotel. Amsprop soon established a core estate in and around Mayfair and St James’s, spending tens of millions of pounds there. As Daniel Sugar, an Amsprop director,
said, ‘Mayfair is still the prime location for retailers and office occupiers and we continue to strengthen our portfolio with the right opportunities.’

Looking back over the rise and rise of Amsprop, Sugar made it all sound rather easy. ‘Gambling with electronics generated spare cash, which I flung into real estate,’ he said. ‘We’ve been in this position for ten years, with loadsa money in loadsa property. We entered this market to be safe with flagship buildings and reliable covenants. That’s what we did, but now we’re happy to gamble. We’ve got cash and our buildings and we’ll let the grass grow under our feet if we don’t do something with it. Our main focus now will be to become a traditional property company. We’ll be buying investments and working them hard, possibly breaking them up and trading them on. It’s time to get more involved.’

He was soon adding to the team and the portfolio. ‘Daniel has been managing the existing portfolio for the past six or seven years. I’m not undermining that. He has picked up a lot of the tricks of the trade and knows the Mayfair market and Mayfair traders and agents or villains – or whatever you call them – very well, but we are ready to broaden our horizons into dealing and development. We’re open for business. There’s no deal that would be too big for us to handle.’

In 2008, Amsprop paid Scottish Widows
£
31.25 million for a prime corner freehold at 291 Oxford Street and Harewood Place, London W1. Daniel said, ‘We have
been monitoring this particular investment very closely since it first came to the market. We feel that we have acquired an ultra-prime and prominent piece of Central London freehold at a sensible price. We believe that with some active management this property will fit in very well with the rest of our portfolio.’

Looking back over his successes to date, Sugar said that, despite his having purchased many glamorous and iconic properties, his favourites were often more down-
to-earth
affairs. ‘One of the greatest buildings I ever bought was a warehouse on the intersection of the M25 and A12 fifteen years ago,’ he said, with a smile. ‘I paid
£
800,000 for it. My advisers told me I was stupid, and my Jewish advisers called me a
schmuck
. But for ten years it has been paying me more than
£
500,000 a year in rent.’

Unsurprisingly, he is far from being a fan of agents. ‘I pay far too much in agency fees, as I keep telling my son. I have been buying for twenty years and have never sold anything, so one day I will test these people.’ He tells a story of an agent who, during a deal to buy property in Park Lane, told him, in an Eton accent, that nobody would pay the prices Sir Alan was hoping for the properties. ‘I said to him, in my Hackney accent with a few expletives added, that when the right person comes along and falls in love with the place then they’ll pay anything for it. That’s exactly what happened.’

No doubt the posh agent scuttled off with his tail firmly between his legs.

‘Amsprop is set up more as a family pension fund than a traditional property company,’ said Daniel. ‘While we are not averse to trading opportunities, our main aim is to hold good-quality freehold property for the long term.’

Nowadays, most of Sir Alan’s fortune comes from his property empire. But, there have also been some less successful ventures along the way, such as the Amstrad [email protected] A device that lets you send emails via a
fixed-line
phone, the [email protected] seemed a brilliant idea when it was launched in 1999. At the launch, Sugar revealed that he had made them in China, and jokingly defended this decision, saying, ‘My [email protected] are made down the road from Dyson’s new factory.’ This referred to the vacuum-cleaner tycoon’s decision to make his machines in Malaysia.

He employed his son Simon to work on the project. ‘Business is business, and family is family, and the two things are kept completely separate with us,’ said Simon, who joined at the age of 26. ‘He treats me like any other employee, and that’s how it should be.’

Launching the product in 1999, Sir Alan said, ‘I see the [email protected] becoming the “all-in-one communications centre” in the home. It will also be regarded as an “electronic billboard”, providing advertisers with a highly
cost-effective
way of targeting consumers. In true Amstrad tradition, the [email protected] brings email to the mass market for the first time in an easy-to-use format at a very affordable price.’ Sir Alan said the [email protected] would cost
£
79.99.

However, the initial response was subdued, and more than 17 per cent was wiped off the value of Amstrad shares on the day of the launch. One analyst said, ‘The group’s new [email protected] product may well be a winner, but it would have to be something spectacular to have justified all the hype which has been surrounding this company for several months now.’

Sir Alan dismissed all the negativity, insisting that the ‘City scribblers’ had got it wrong. ‘I am not ready to be put out to grass yet,’ he said. ‘We have launched enough products over 25 years to know which ones are going to fly off the shelves. You can tell from customers’ reaction very early on whether a new product is going to be a winner.’ The first batch of 500 [email protected] phones were sold out within two days, he said.