Rank #1003
John Caudwell
Net worth $4.3B
Mobile phones · United Kingdom
- Born
- Oct 01, 1952
- Age
- 73
- Source
- Mobile phones
- Residence
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Citizenship
- United Kingdom
- Marital status
- Divorced
- Children
- 7
- Education
Net worth over time
Biography
- John Caudwell founded mobile phone retailer Phones 4u before selling his stake in 2006 and 2011.
- Born into a working-class family, he and brother Brian first started selling mobile phones in 1987.
- Six years later the brothers founded Singlepoint, a mobile service provider that was acquired by Vodafone in 2003 for $650 million.
- Caudwell pumped his share of the money into Phones 4u, which grew into the U.K.'s largest independent mobile phone retailer.
- Three years later he sold a majority stake to Providence Equity Partners for $2.8 billion and, in 2011, unloaded the remaining 25% for $272 million.
- Caudwell is dating Lithuanian cycling champion and former Olympian Modesta Vzesniauskaite.
- In 2018 he was ordered to pay a former financial advisor nearly $645,000 for wrongful dismissal but claimed victory as she had sought $25.8 million.