Joseph Lewis, reclusive rags-to-riches billionaire
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The rags-to-riches tale of British financier Joseph Lewis reads like a best-selling novel, but the billionaire keeps a low-profile.
Lewis, who made headlines by grabbing one of the biggest single stakes in the No. 5 U.S. brokerage Bear Stearns Cos Inc BSC.N, generally prefers to leave the limelight to his resort properties and a flock of celebrity friends.
An avid golfer, he counts professional golfers Ernie Els and Tiger Woods as business partners, and the actor Sir Sean Connery as a friend and neighbour.
Lewis made most of his $2.5 billion fortune in currency trading.
Recluse or not, Lewis's 7 percent stake in Bear Stearns, which cost him about $860 million, amounts to a high profile bet on the potential for a recovery at Bear Stearns, whose shares have plunged this year as subprime woes put two of its hedge funds out of business in recent months.
Lewis owns 8.1 million Bear Stearns shares, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, more than any other shareholder, including Bear Chief Executive Jimmy Cayne, as of the end of June.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
Lewis, who ranks in a Top 20 list of the richest Britons and as the 369th wealthiest person worldwide, according to Forbes 2007 list, left school at 15 to work in his father's catering business.
Lewis was born in 1937 in a pub his father owned in the rough-and-tumble east end of London.
In the late 1970s, Lewis sold the family business, and turned his hand to currency trading. He also moved to the Bahamas, reportedly for its looser tax regime.
Today he divides his time between his Bahamas home, and a luxury estate in the Orlando, Florida area, as well as owning property in Argentina, where there was a reported plot on his life in 1999.
Lewis' U.S. investment firm, the Tavistock Group, is based in Florida, overseeing a portfolio of investments in 170 companies in 15 countries, according to its Web site, including luxury real estate developments, several U.S. restaurant chains -- including the Napa Grille and Alcatraz Brewing Co -- and biotechnology investments.
Its investments include Lewis' luxury beach-side Nassau, Bahamas resort, which was featured in the 2006 James Bond blockbuster "Casino Royale," and which is being further developed with golfing pals Els and Woods as shareholders and consultants to the golf course development.
Reports say pal and fellow golfer Sean Connery helped encourage his expansion into the English Premier League, where Lewis bought the Tottenham Spurs Football Club in 2001.
Lewis has also bought up stakes in Glasgow's Rangers Football Club and in several European football clubs.
Owning a leading English football team threw Lewis into the British spotlight, but he is still relatively unknown in the United States, which is just fine with the reclusive billionaire.
"I really feel that, if no one is successful, one of the rewards of your success is the quiet enjoyment of it," Lewis told the New York Times in a rare media interview about a decade ago.
Despite preferring to shun the limelight, Lewis does have a talent for attention-grabbing moves.
In 1994, he hit the front pages when he snapped up a nearly 30 percent stake in auction house Christie's. The avid collector of Picassos, as well as works by Matisse and Miro, sold the holding to French businessman Francois Pinault four years later.
Neither the Tavistock Group nor Lewis returned telephone calls seeking comment for this article.
(Additional reporting by John Marquis)
