John Caudwell
John David Caudwell (born 7 October 1952) is an English billionaire businessman who founded the now defunct mobile phone retailer Phones 4u. He also invests in fashion, property and other industries, and chairs Caudwell Children, a children's charity,[1] and Caudwell LymeCo, promoting chronic Lyme disease beliefs in the UK.[2][3]
John Caudwell
According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2022, Caudwell is worth £1.58 billion.[4] On the Forbes 2022 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked #984 with a net worth of US$2.8 billion.[5]
Early life[edit]
Caudwell was born in Birmingham but moved with his family as a baby to Stoke-on-Trent and raised in Wellesley Street in Shelton, Staffordshire, and with his brother Brian attended Shelton Church of England School,[6] and then Berry Hill High School. His father had a stroke when Caudwell was 14 and died four years later.
Caudwell abandoned his A-levels to become an apprentice at Michelin,[7] and worked for several years there as an engineering foreman while gaining a HNC in mechanical engineering. Whilst working at Michelin he also ran a corner shop and started a mail order business selling clothing to motorcyclists.
Caudwell Group[edit]
In 1987 Caudwell registered Midland Mobile Phones as a mobile phone wholesaler, initially taking 26 Motorola mobiles at £1,350 each.[7] It took 8 months to sell these 26 phones to local plumbers, taxi drivers and television repairmen at a price of £2,500 each. The company made a loss every month for the first two years of operations.[6] The business became the Caudwell Group part of which was an independent mobile phone network service provider called Singlepoint and a high street mobile phone retail operation called Phones4U. The group also owned The Discovery Store from 2001, renamed it to Must Have It in 2004, and closed it in 2005. In 2003 he sold Singlepoint to Vodafone for £405m (then $648m).[8] Caudwell completed the sale of the wider business on 26 September 2006, when it was revealed that the Caudwell Group had been sold for a £1.46 billion to private equity firms Providence Equity Partners and Doughty Hanson.[9]
Personal life[edit]
Caudwell was married to Kate McFarlane for 25 years. The couple divorced in 2001, and they had three children.[7][30] He then had a brief relationship[31] with violinist Jane Burgess, with whom he had a daughter.[7][32] He was then in a long-term relationship with former model Claire Johnson for 15 years, with whom he has a son.[7][32][33] They separated in 2014.[30]
In 2015, Caudwell claimed that 11 family members including himself, his ex-wife Kate McFarlane, their two daughters and their son had been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, a noted pseudoscience belief.[30][34][32] In 2018, Caudwell pledged to donate more than one million pounds in order to help fund Lyme disease research, on the condition that the NHS would be able to match his investment.[35]
Caudwell's partner since 2015 is Lithuanian born former Olympic cyclist Modesta Vžesniauskaitė.[36] The pair have two children together, a son born March 2021 [37] and a daughter born March 2023.[38] (Vžesniauskaitė also has a son from a previous marriage).
Caudwell lives in multiple homes including Broughton Hall in Staffordshire, Monaco and London's Mayfair[39][40]