Peter de Savary

Peter John de Savary (born 11 July 1944) is an English entrepreneur and a former Chairman of Millwall F.C. In the 1999 Sunday Times Rich List, he was placed in 971st place with an estimated fortune of £21 million, but was not listed in the top thousand places in subsequent editions.

Biography

De Savary built his first business in Nigeria through contacts he made back home in England. The bulk of his business career has been spent in the shipping and oil sectors; he once owned or managed 13 shipyards around the globe, still retaining one shipyard in the United Kingdom, and he still has a global oil-trading and refueling business.

Clubs and property

His first venture into the hospitality was the St. James' Clubs in the late 1970s, in Los Angeles, London, Paris and Antigua, which he sold in the late 1980s to finance the £4m purchase of Skibo Castle.

De Savary built up a large business empire in the 1980s, with property interests including Land's End and John o' Groats.

However, in the early 1990s economic downturn his empire collapsed with serious debts – he sold both Land's End and John o' Groats in 1991 for an undisclosed sum to businessman Graham Ferguson Lacey, and 14 of his companies were wound up between 1992 and 1994, with a combined shortfall to creditors of £715 million.

2000s

His recent business activities have concentrated on property development and hotels, with a number of major country house hotels...
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