A Biography of Alan Sugar

Born: March 24, 1947, Hackney, East London, Britain, European Union,
Occupation: Businessman, Founder of Amstrad
Net worth: £830 million (2007 Estimate, but these vary)

Sir Alan Michael Sugar (born 24 March 1947 in Hackney, East London) is an English businessman. After leaving school at 16 Sugar started selling car aerials & electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £100. He now has an estimated fortune of £830m. & was ranked 84th in the Sunday Times Rich List 2007. Despite being best known as a technology businessman, most of Sugar's wealth now derives from his property portfolio in Mayfair, rather than business ventures.

Sugar stars in the BBC TV series The Apprentice, which has so far had three series broadcast: in 2005, 2006 & 2007. The series is based upon the American television show of the same name, featuring entrepreneur Donald Trump, which had already proven popular in the USA.

Sugar was knighted in 2000 for services to business. He holds two honorary Doctorates of Science degrees, awarded in 1988 by City University & in 2005 by Brunel University. He is a donor to the British Labour Party & a philanthropist for charities such as Jewish Care & Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Amstrad
In 1968 Sugar founded the electronics company Amstrad (an acronym of his initials – Alan Michael Sugar Trading). By 1970, the first manufacturing venture was underway. 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 & tuners.

In 1980 Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange & during the 1980s, Amstrad doubled its profit & market value every year.

By 1984, recognising the opportunity of the home computer era, Amstrad launched an 8-bit machine Amstrad CPC 464. Although the CPC range were attractive machines, with CP/M-capability & a good BASIC operating system, it had to compete with its arch-rivals, the more graphically complex Commodore 64 & the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Despite this, three million units were sold worldwide with a long production life of eight years, even inspiring an East German version with Russian Z80 clone processors. In 1985, Sugar had another major breakthrough with the launch of the Amstrad PCW 8256 word processor which, although made of very cheap components, retailed at over £300. In 1986 Amstrad bought the rights to the Sinclair computer product line & produced two more ZX Spectrum models in a similar style to their own CPC machines. It also developed the PC1512, a PC compatible computer, which became quite popular in Europe & was the first in a line of Amstrad PCs.

At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.25 billion, but the 1990s proved a difficult time for the company. The launch of a range of business PCs was marred by unreliable hard disks (supplied by Seagate), which occasioned a high level of customer dissatisfaction & great damage to Amstrad's reputation in the personal computer market, from which it never recovered. Subsequently, Amstrad sued Seagate for $100 million for lost revenue. In the early-1990s Amstrad began to focus on portable computers rather than desktop computers. Also, in 1990, Amstrad entered 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 & Super Nintendo. In 1993, Amstrad released the PenPad, a PDA, which was also a commercial failure.

Amstrad was the only manufacturer producing receiver boxes & dishes at the launch of Sky & has continued to manufacture set top boxes, including Sky's Sky+ box.

In the 1990s, Amstrad bought into Betacom & Viglen, so as to focus more on telecommunications rather than computers. Amstrad released the first of its combined telephony & e-mail devices, called the e-m@iler, followed by the e-m@ilerplus in 2002, which has been a failure.

Tottenham Hotspur F.C.
Sugar was the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. from 1991 to 2001. In June 1991, he & Terry Venables collaborated to buy Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, in the process defeating a bid from Robert Maxwell for the club. In an interview with Channel 4's High Interest programme, Sugar observed:

"The only dialogue I had with Rupert Murdoch was when that clown Maxwell came on the scene & knowing that they were in the past arch enemies I think Rupert rang me up one day & said 'what's going on with this football club you're trying to buy & this clown Maxwell is trying to buy also', & 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 & placing limits on players' wages & other expenses – effectively saving the club from administration. However, Sugar's relationship with Venables turned acrimonious & court battles ensued. Sugar has stated that his time at Spurs was "a waste of my life".

Sugar sold most of his shares in Tottenham Hotspur in 2001, after receiving death threats towards him & his family. He sold the shares to ENIC Sports Ltd, represented by Daniel Levy – effectively the current chairman of the club. Sugar now holds a 13% share of the club, making him the second-largest shareholder.

Sugar once compared football players to thugs & suggested that if they weren't playing professional football, most of them would be imprisoned. During a television interview, he threw Jürgen Klinsmann's shirt away, when the German striker refused to take up an option to stay with the club for a second season.

The Apprentice

Sugar became the star of the BBC reality show The Apprentice which has had three series broadcast in 2005, 2006 & 2007, & in which he has the role of the boss (the same as Donald Trump in the US version).

This means that Sugar "fires" a candidate each week (although, technically, the candidates are not actually "fired", since at that point, they are not in the employment of the company). Every week, he eliminates a contestant with the utterance "You're fired!", which has become a popular catchphrase in both the US & the UK.

He also selects the tasks for the teams, using his contacts in the business world to get them assignments in such establishments as Harrods department store. In addition, he chooses rewards for the winning team, such as a trip to Monaco or on the Orient Express train.

He decided to continue his role in the second series of The Apprentice, broadcast on BBC2 in February/March 2006. Sugar again appears in the third series, broadcast in March–May 2007 on BBC One.

As a condition for appearing in the third series, Sugar placed a requirement that the show be more business-orientated than entertaining & that he be portrayed in a less harsh light, as a counter to his belligerent reputation. The Apprentice Alan Sugar connection survived. I was a few episodes of the next series, I wonder if the BBc deal, was that he must accept being shown in a more harsh lighht, ho ho , I am joking, what a joke.

He is also concerned that the calibre of the candidates is higher than those who had appeared in the second series (who had come across as manifestly lacklustre) & that the motives of the candidates for participating are scrutinised more carefully, given that certain of the candidates in previous series had used their successful experience in the show as a springboard to advance their own careers (as occurred with Michelle Dewberry, the winner of the second series).

A celebrity Apprentice special for BBC TV's charity fund raising event Comic Relief was broadcast in March 2007 featuring Alastair Campbell, Piers Morgan, Ross Kemp, Rupert Everett, Danny Baker, Cheryl Cole, Jo Brand, Maureen Lipman, Trinny Woodall & Karren Brady. They managed to raise over £1 million for the charity.

Sir Alan criticised the US version because "they’ve made the fatal error of trying to change things just for the sake of it & it backfired."

On 18 May 2007, the BBC announced that The Apprentice is to return for two more series.

Other TV
The increase in Sugar's profile has led to his appearances in several television shows, including a special celebrity edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. In 2005/6 he became the face of National Savings in British television advertisements, donating his fee for the adverts to Great Ormond Street children's hospital. He has appeared on Room 101 in 2005, in which he consigned to oblivion American English, men who wear wigs, call centres, schmoozers & advertisements that do not make clear what is actually being sold. He has also appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on two occasions to date, in April 2006 & May 2007.

Amsair
Amsair Executive Aviation was founded in 1993, & is run by Sugar's son Daniel. As with Amstrad, the name Amsair is an acronym taken from the initials of Sugar's name "Alan Michael Sugar Air." Amsair operates a large Cessna fleet & offers business & executive jet charters. Through its alliances, it has access to over five thousand aircraft of all sizes & shapes, used mostly in collaborations with Blue Star Jets

Apparently he was quiet as a kid some say, and did not excel at studies, but was good at selling stuff.

This article was written in May 2007

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