As Spurs owner avoids jail for insider trading: From Bow Bells to the Bahamas: the eventful life of tycoon Joe Lewis

Phone calls from billionaires to city editors are a fairly rare occurrence. But Joe Lewis, who just escaped from prison for passing insider trading tips to girlfriends, employees and pilots on his private plane, is no ordinary Mammon worshiper.

He’s always loved a deal. His fortune was largely amassed in the forex markets. He saw his run-in with ruthless federal prosecutors in Manhattan over insider trading charges as an opportunity for a bargain.

Rather than end his days in prison like fraudster Bernard Madoff, he cooperated fully with prosecutors and the court, telling Judge Jessica GL Clarke that he was “so ashamed” of his behavior.

Ultimately, he agreed to pay nearly $50 million in financial penalties, the largest insider trading settlement in a decade.

His contrition, penance and old age were intended to avoid a prison sentence of eighteen months to two years.

Born 87 years ago in a pub in Bow, London, the East End lad has never fully abandoned his humble origins, despite an itinerant lifestyle that has spanned Miami, the Bahamas and Buenos Aires.

When he called me from his superyacht on the Thames in 2009 to argue for seats on the board for his nominees at pub group Mitchells & Butlers, the casual, cockney cadence of his voice was unmistakable.

As someone with pub culture running through his veins, his personal involvement in a bitter battle for one of Britain’s biggest bars now makes a lot of sense.

His second call, from a new property in Argentina, where he coolly mentioned that he had set up a house with a girlfriend, was from the perspective of a British tax exile wanting to make a point about Britain’s crazy tax regime.

Lewis is anything but conventional. A friend, a city lawyer who worked with him on the purchase of a Spurs share from fellow East Ender Alan Sugar in 2001, was assigned to meet at a golf course in South Florida.

Best known as a currency trader who amassed a fortune in the 1980s and 1990s, he is said to have been one of the speculators who made money with George Soros on Black Wednesday. Like the New York hedge fund guru Soros, Lewis won big by betting big against sterling and the Bank of England when Britain was kicked out of the exchange rate mechanism, the forerunner of the euro, in September 1992.

He never completely severed the ties with the world he left behind in London. One of his first jobs was working in the catering industry at his father’s company, Tavistock Banqueting.

It is no coincidence that many decades later the holding company for his vast global interests is called Tavistock Group and carries the slogan ‘Composed to Excellence’. It is a sprawling empire that includes more than 200 companies in 15 different geographies, ranging from huge ranching companies in Australia, to an energy group in Patagonia, to the magnificent St Regis Hotel that dominates the skyline of Atlanta, Georgia. Tavistock also owns the elegant Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in Orlando, Florida.

The crown jewel of his empire has long been Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur. Unlike the other major clubs in the division, Spurs have had limited success on the playing field since the glory days of the 1960s. The big triumph is the ultra-modern stadium, considered the best in Europe, with its high-tech catering facilities.

It is an events factory in an old-fashioned part of London, home to the American National Football League (NFL) in Great Britain and Formula 1 electric karting, among others.

It has also become a favorite entertainment venue for star performers such as Beyonce.

Star performer: The Spurs stadium is a favorite venue for Beyoncé’s concerts

Under the command of Daniel Levy, Lewis’s right-hand man in Britain, Spurs have a huge ambition to build bigger and better, and have engaged Rothschild & Co to organize a capital raising to build a luxury hotel with 180 rooms and 50 apartments to be built next to the hotel. stadium. Spurs’ majority stake was transferred to the Lewis Family Trust in October 2022, which is managed by independent professionals. Lewis is not a beneficiary, meaning his legal troubles in the US are isolated from any potential breach of Premier League rules on stewardship.

One of the great mysteries is the long-standing business and personal relationship between Lewis and the Cambridge-educated Levy, who have worked together for more than thirty years. There has long been unproven speculation that they are somehow related.

Not much is known about who will ultimately inherit Tavistock and Lewis’ vast art collection, including Francis Bacon’s Triptych, when he finally gives up the reins of power. He has two descendants, Charles Lewis and Vivienne Lewis Silverton. Daughter Vivienne sits on the board of Tavistock and is seen by some as his most likely heir. But the secrets of Lewis’s closely guarded temple remain tightly locked.