Alan Sugar

Sir Alan Michael Sugar KBE
Born	Alan Michael Sugar (1947-03-24) 24 March 1947 Hackney, East London
Nationality	English
Education	Brooke House School
Occupation(s)	Businessman Broadcaster
Known for	The Apprentice
Title	Sir
Spouse(s)	Ann Simons, Lady Sugar (1968—)

Sir Alan Michael Sugar (born 24 March 1947 in Hackney, East London, England) is an English entrepreneur, businessman, and occasional television personality.

From humble origins in the East End of London, he has now accumulated an estimated fortune of £830m, and was ranked 92nd in the Sunday Times Rich List 2008. Despite being best known as a technology businessman, most of Sugar's wealth now derives from his property portfolio, rather than business ventures. He has recently sold Amstrad, one of his large business ventures.

He is also notable for starring in the BBC TV series The Apprentice, which has so far had four series broadcast: in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. The series is based upon the American television show of the same name, featuring entrepreneur Donald Trump, which was already popular in the United States.

Early life

Alan Sugar is the youngest of four children of Nathan Sugar who was a tailor in the East End garment industry. When he was a child the family lived in a council flat and he attended the Brooke House School in Upper Clapton, Hackney. After leaving school at 16 he worked briefly for the Civil Service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. He then started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £100.

Amstrad

Main article: Amstrad

Sugar founded the electronics company Amstrad in 1968, the name being an acronym of his initials - Alan Michael Sugar Trading.

By 1970, the first manufacturing venture was underway. He achieved lower production prices by using injection moulding plastics for hi-fi turntable covers, severely undercutting competitors who used vacuum forming processes. Manufacturing capacity was soon expanded to include the production of audio amplifiers and tuners.

Amstrad's CPC 464 Computer

In 1980 Amstrad was listed on the London Stock Exchange and during the 1980s, Amstrad doubled its profit and 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 and a good BASIC operating system, it had to compete with its arch-rivals, the more graphically complex Commodore 64 and the popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum, not to mention the highly sophisticated BBC Micro. 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 and 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 and was the first in a line of Amstrad PCs.

At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.2 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 and 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 Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. In 1993, Amstrad released the PenPad, a PDA, which was bought into Betacom and Viglen, so as to focus more on telecommunications rather than 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, neither of which are sold extensively.

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

On 31 July 2007 it was announced that broadcaster BSkyB had agreed to buy Amstrad for about £125m.. At the time of the takeover, Sugar commented that he wished to play a part in the business, saying: “I turn 60 this year and I have had 40 years of hustling in the business, but now I have to start thinking about my team of loyal staff, many of whom have been with me for many years.”

Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

Main article: Tottenham Hotspur F.C.

Sugar was Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur F.C. from 1991 to 2001. In June 1991, he and 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 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.

Sugar sold most of his shares in Tottenham Hotspur in 2001 to ENIC Sports Ltd, represented by Daniel Levy – effectively the current chairman of the club. In June 2007, Sugar sold the remainder of his shares in the club (a 12% holding), to ENIC Sports Ltd for £25 million.

The late Sir John Harvey-Jones said "I never liked Alan. I always thought he was a bully. His values are in my view totally irrelevant to the needs of business. I watch his programme with horror. If I had behaved that way for one day at ICI, I'd have been hot-stuffed and rightly."

Amsair

Amsair Executive Aviation was founded in 1993, and 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 and offers business and executive jet charters. Through its alliances, it has access to over five thousand aircraft of all sizes and shapes, used mostly in collaborations with Blue Star Jets.

Amsprop

Amsprop is an investment firm owned by Sir Alan Sugar and controlled by his son Daniel. In September 2006 it bought the IBM South Bank building from private investors for £115 million. The IBM Centre occupies a prime site between the river and Upper Ground east of the National Theatre and west of ITV's London Television Centre. IBM's lease runs for another eight years. The trade press speculates that the site is likely to present a major redevelopment opportunity. This was featured in the last episode of the 2007 series of the Apprentice UK on the 13th June that year, with the final two contestants planning to build a unique property that would be symbolic in the London skyline.

Simon Ambrose, winner of the 2007 series of The Apprentice, currently works for Amsprop Estates. Sugar is the owner (and Chairman of the board) of Viglen Ltd, an IT services provider catering primarily to the education and public sector. Following the sale of Amstrad PLC to Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB, Viglen is now Sir Alan Sugar's sole IT establishment.

TV Appearances

The Apprentice

Main article: The Apprentice (UK)

Sugar became the star of the BBC reality show The Apprentice which has had four series broadcast in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, in the same role as Donald Trump in the US version. Sugar "fires" a candidate each week until one candidate is left, who is then employed in Sugar's company.

As a condition for appearing in the third series, Sugar placed a requirement that the show be more business-orientated rather than just entertainment and that he should be portrayed in a less harsh light, to counter his somewhat belligerent reputation. He also expressed a desire that the calibre of the candidates should be higher than those who had appeared in the second series (who had come across as manifestly lacklustre) and 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, who left Amstrad's employment only 4 months after winning).

Sugar has criticised the US version of The Apprentice because "they’ve made the fatal error of trying to change things just for the sake of it and it backfired."

On 13 June 2007, Simon Ambrose was crowned as Sir Alan's new apprentice, over Kristina Grimes. For the final task both candidates were given the chance to choose from 8 of the previous fired candidates. After arranging their teams the two finalists were told to create a concept for an office/hotel for one of Sir Alan's multimillion pound properties. Simon's idea, inspired by a fountain, seemed to interest and please the crowd and Sir Alan far better than Christina's idea of the Phoenix hotel. Sir Alan recognised the risks in hiring the less experienced Simon; however, it was a risk he was willing to take. Previously in 2006, Sugar was voted as the seventh scariest celebrity on television in a Radio Times poll consisting of 3,000 people.

On 11 June 2008, Lee McQueen was crowned as Sir Alan's new apprentice, over Claire Young. For the final task, along with Alex Wotherspoon and Helene Speight, they had to produce a new men's fragrance in two groups of two. Lee and Claire won the task over the other two finalists and Lee went on to be chosen by Sir Alan for the title of The Apprentice.

Guest appearances

The increase in Sugar's public profile has led to his appearances in several television shows, including a special celebrity edition of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. In 2005 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 appeared on Room 101 in 2005, in which he consigned to oblivion American English, men who wear wigs, call centres, schmoozers and advertisements that do not make clear what is actually being sold. He has also appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross three times, first in April 2005, then May 2007 and again in May 2008.

Honours and philanthropy

Sugar was knighted in 2000 for services to business. He holds two honorary Doctorates of Science degrees, awarded in 1988 by City University and in 2005 by Brunel University. He is a philanthropist for charities such as Jewish Care and Great Ormond Street Hospital, and donated £200,000 to the British Labour Party in 2001.