Joe Lewis, the privacy-loving billionaire who, along with Daniel Levy, controls Tottenham Hotspur football club, has just taken one of his biggest gambles.
He has invested $860m for a 7 per cent stake in Bear Stearns, the investment bank that has been the worst casualty of this summer's credit market crisis, it was revealed yesterday.
Even for a fabled currency speculator who won hundreds of millions of pounds on sterling's ignominious exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, this is a ballsy bet. But Mr Lewis has made money from so many industries -- from restaurants, from property, from foreign exchange and from sport -- who is to say he won't extend his magic touch to investment banking?
The 70-year-old Briton has been secretly building his stake in Bear Stearns over the past month, using a string of holding companies registered in the Bahamas, where he has been a tax exile since 1979. From nowhere, he is now the bank's largest shareholder, controlling a bigger stake than the company's beleaguered chief executive, Jimmy Cayne, who has been feeling the heat since June, when two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed and triggered a financial panic.
According to Forbes magazine, which is the recognised arbiter of these things, Mr Lewis is the world's 369th richest person, with a fortune weighing in at $2.5bn. As a chunk of his net worth, the bet on Bear Stearns is huge -- but no more so than the awe-inspiring $1bn-plus positions he has taken on currencies such as the British pound in 1992 and the Mexican peso three years later. He netted hundreds of millions of dollars in profits when the peso collapsed and the Mexican economy had to be bailed out with loans from the US government.
Alongside George Soros, he is one of the most successful currency speculators of his generation, known to many in the foreign exchange world as the Boxer, in reflection of his heavyweight status and after his namesake, the US champion Joe Louis.
Now, we turn our attention to another subject: Eliot Spitzer.
We never liked the guy, frankly. He is a sanctimonious, vulgar, opportunistic bully, in our opinion.
Still, his latest travails make us feel a little sorry for him. What a pitiful fellow. Using his wife as a prop, he appeared before the cameras and apologized. Why couldn't he have a little class?
It reminded us of the story attributed to Huey Long; it is the story of a southern politician who appears on the capital steps, holding up a copy of the local newspaper.
"Look at this," he says, wearing a white suit and pointing to the headline. "It says here that I was seen coming out of the Bide-Away Motel at 5AM after sleeping with a known prostitute.
"Well, I'm here to tell you this morning that every word of this allegation is false…
"First, it wasn't the Bide-Away Motel; it was the Lincoln Hotel in the middle of town. And she wasn't a 'known prostitute.' I never met her before in my life.
"And it wasn't 6AM…I never get up that early. It was 7AM."
Then, with a sly grin…
"And we didn't sleep a wink…"
Investors said the acquisition of Bear Stearns only highlighted the depths of the problems plaguing U.S. financial markets. The fall of one of the largest investment banks added to concern credit market turmoil was yet to run its full course and ongoing turbulence could drag the U.S. economy into a recession.
"The credit crunch has still some way to go and I think there will be a few more months of strife ahead," said Stephen Roberts, Chief Economist at Lehman Brothers in Sydney.
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