David Ross (businessman)
Encyclopedia
David Peter John Ross is an English businessman, co-founder with school friend Charles Dunstone
of The Carphone Warehouse
. At peak valuation of his business interests, Ross was one of the 100 richest people in the United Kingdom. A profile in The Daily Telegraph
put his current net worth at around £873 million (approx. $1.4 billion) at the start of 2008.
, who created one of the UK's largest commercial fishing firms from the family business, and two listed companies: Ross Frozen Foods
which he created; and purchase of the Great Grimsby Coal, Salt and Tanning Company (known as Cosalt
), which was founded in 1873 as a cooperative that sold all the supplies needed to run a fishing fleet, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1971.
Born in Grimsby
but raised in Leicestershire
, Ross was educated at Uppingham School
, where he met and befriended Charles Dunstone
; and then studied law
at Nottingham University.
His grandfather taught him never to do business with somebody you wouldn't be willing to entertain in your own own home. At the age of 16, his father sent him to work on a building site in Algeria
, which he later described as a defining moment "because it was so bad I knew I had to get away from it and be able to control my destiny."
On graduation from Nottingham University, Ross joined Arthur Andersen
and became a Chartered Accountant
, staying there from 1988 to 1991.
, London, which four years later had grown to 20 stores. Now also trading as The Phone House, Carphone Warehouse is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer.
While Dunstone became the public face of Carphone, Ross (described by Dunstone as his "secret weapon"), developed and drove the high street retail footprint of the company by buying Tandy
in the UK, and developing The Phone House across Europe and the United States. When Ross lead the IPO of Carphone Warehouse in 2000, it had been so successful that the partners had not needed to borrow or involve outsiders: Dunstone owned half, Ross a third, and business partner Guy Johnson
most of the rest.
Ross had been joint-Chief Operating Officer
with Dunstone from 1990 and 2003, whereas Dunstone stayed with the business that he still runs today, Ross started to give up his executive position from 2003. Ross became deputy chairman in July 2005, and by 2008 was a non-executive director. He resigned from Carphone Warehouse, National Express
and a number of other public companies
in December of that year after using a large proportion of his shares in the businesses as collateral
for personal loans without informing the companies, a breach of stock market
rules.
. He also had directorships of several other companies, including family founded ship supply group Cosalt
(formerly chairman, a job he took over from his father), publishing and newspaper group Trinity Mirror
, Big Yellow Storage, ITIS and Intrinsic Value. Ross was formerly a director of Frontiers Capital.
In 2006, Ross set-up a commercial property
joint venture
with investment bank Morgan Stanley
, into which he injected his private property portfolio, Kandahar Real Estate Ltd, worth £243 million.
Ross, who has a strong personal interest in sport
, was also on the board of the reconstruction of Wembley Stadium
; and was part of the consortium which rescued Leicester City Football Club from receivership
, before it was later sold to Milan Mandarić
.
After Boris Johnson
was elected Mayor of London
, in May 2008 Ross was Johnson's nominee to the board of the London Organising Committee
of the 2012 Olympic Games. He resigned from this position in the wake of the same 2008 event that led to his departure from the board of Carphone Warehouse.
, Northamptonshire
. After the murder of his stepsister Fiona Marshall and her boyfriend Richard Flippance at the property in 2006 by her ex-husband Alex, Ross placed the property on the market for £7.75 million in 2008. Ross's main residence is the 700-year-old Nevill Holt
estate in Leicestershire, which he bought in 2000; also the site of his prep school. He has a further home in Kensington
, London.
in Grimsby which was set up in 2007 with help from his charitable foundation. More recently Northamptonshire County Council agreed for him to sponsor Unity College in Northampton to become an Academy. Ross was appointed to the board of the National Portrait Gallery by Tony Blair
in 2006; and in the summer hosts the Grange Park Opera
at Nevill Holt
.
's Review of Legal Aid
Procurement.
Charles Dunstone
Charles Dunstone is the CEO and co-founder, in 1989, of mobile phone retailer The Carphone Warehouse.-Education:...
of The Carphone Warehouse
The Carphone Warehouse
Carphone Warehouse Group PLC , known as The Carphone Warehouse, is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer, with over 1,700 stores across Europe. It is based in the United Kingdom and is a 50% subsidiary of Best Buy...
. At peak valuation of his business interests, Ross was one of the 100 richest people in the United Kingdom. A profile in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
put his current net worth at around £873 million (approx. $1.4 billion) at the start of 2008.
Prior to Carphone Warehouse
Ross is the grandson of (John) Carl RossCarl Ross
Carl Ross was a fishery entrepreneur and architect of the forerunner company to Young's Bluecrest, the UK's largest frozen fish producer.-Biography:...
, who created one of the UK's largest commercial fishing firms from the family business, and two listed companies: Ross Frozen Foods
Ross Group
The Ross Group was a British food company founded in Grimsby, England in 1920.The Ross brand remains common in the retail frozen fish market...
which he created; and purchase of the Great Grimsby Coal, Salt and Tanning Company (known as Cosalt
Cosalt
Cosalt plc was a diversified marine safety and leisure company, based in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. It was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index....
), which was founded in 1873 as a cooperative that sold all the supplies needed to run a fishing fleet, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1971.
Born in Grimsby
Grimsby
Grimsby is a seaport on the Humber Estuary in Lincolnshire, England. It has been the administrative centre of the unitary authority area of North East Lincolnshire since 1996...
but raised in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
, Ross was educated at Uppingham School
Uppingham School
Uppingham School is a co-educational independent school of the English public school tradition, situated in the small town of Uppingham in Rutland, England...
, where he met and befriended Charles Dunstone
Charles Dunstone
Charles Dunstone is the CEO and co-founder, in 1989, of mobile phone retailer The Carphone Warehouse.-Education:...
; and then studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
at Nottingham University.
His grandfather taught him never to do business with somebody you wouldn't be willing to entertain in your own own home. At the age of 16, his father sent him to work on a building site in Algeria
Algeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
, which he later described as a defining moment "because it was so bad I knew I had to get away from it and be able to control my destiny."
On graduation from Nottingham University, Ross joined Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen
Arthur Andersen LLP, based in Chicago, was once one of the "Big Five" accounting firms among PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Ernst & Young and KPMG, providing auditing, tax, and consulting services to large corporations...
and became a Chartered Accountant
Chartered Accountant
Chartered Accountants were the first accountants to form a professional body, initially established in Britain in 1854. The Edinburgh Society of Accountants , the Glasgow Institute of Accountants and Actuaries and the Aberdeen Society of Accountants were each granted a royal charter almost from...
, staying there from 1988 to 1991.
Carphone Warehouse
In 1989, Ross agreed to join Dunstone, who was ploughing £6,000 of his savings into a business selling mobile phones. They formed Carphone Warehouse, in a flat on the Marylebone RoadMarylebone Road
Marylebone Road is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east-west from the Euston Road at Regent's Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington...
, London, which four years later had grown to 20 stores. Now also trading as The Phone House, Carphone Warehouse is Europe's largest independent mobile phone retailer.
While Dunstone became the public face of Carphone, Ross (described by Dunstone as his "secret weapon"), developed and drove the high street retail footprint of the company by buying Tandy
Tandy
Tandy is the title of a short story by Sherwood Anderson.Tandy is also a name which can refer to:-Tandy Corporation:* Tandy Corporation - a leather supply company which subsequently became the RadioShack Corporation...
in the UK, and developing The Phone House across Europe and the United States. When Ross lead the IPO of Carphone Warehouse in 2000, it had been so successful that the partners had not needed to borrow or involve outsiders: Dunstone owned half, Ross a third, and business partner Guy Johnson
Guy Johnson (businessman)
Guy Johnson is an English businessman, the former third business partner in Carphone Warehouse. Described by one City analyst as "the Ringo Starr of Carphone Warehouse" for being in the right place at the right time, His is estimated to have a fortune of £156million, ranking him 546 in the Sunday...
most of the rest.
Ross had been joint-Chief Operating Officer
Chief operating officer
A Chief Operating Officer or Director of Operations can be one of the highest-ranking executives in an organization and comprises part of the "C-Suite"...
with Dunstone from 1990 and 2003, whereas Dunstone stayed with the business that he still runs today, Ross started to give up his executive position from 2003. Ross became deputy chairman in July 2005, and by 2008 was a non-executive director. He resigned from Carphone Warehouse, National Express
National Express
National Express Coaches, more commonly known as National Express, is a brand and company, owned by the National Express Group, under which the majority of long distance bus and coach services in Great Britain are operated,...
and a number of other public companies
Public company
This is not the same as a Government-owned corporation.A public company or publicly traded company is a limited liability company that offers its securities for sale to the general public, typically through a stock exchange, or through market makers operating in over the counter markets...
in December of that year after using a large proportion of his shares in the businesses as collateral
Collateral (finance)
In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan.The collateral serves as protection for a lender against a borrower's default - that is, any borrower failing to pay the principal and interest under the terms of a loan obligation...
for personal loans without informing the companies, a breach of stock market
Stock market
A stock market or equity market is a public entity for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; these are securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately.The size of the world stock market was estimated at about $36.6 trillion...
rules.
Other business activities
From 2001 until the events of late 2008, Ross was the chairman of National ExpressNational Express
National Express Coaches, more commonly known as National Express, is a brand and company, owned by the National Express Group, under which the majority of long distance bus and coach services in Great Britain are operated,...
. He also had directorships of several other companies, including family founded ship supply group Cosalt
Cosalt
Cosalt plc was a diversified marine safety and leisure company, based in Grimsby, Lincolnshire. It was a constituent of the FTSE Fledgling Index....
(formerly chairman, a job he took over from his father), publishing and newspaper group Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror plc is a large British newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Its headquarters are at Canary Wharf in...
, Big Yellow Storage, ITIS and Intrinsic Value. Ross was formerly a director of Frontiers Capital.
In 2006, Ross set-up a commercial property
Commercial property
The term commercial property refers to buildings or land intended to generate a profit, either from capital gain or rental income.-Definition:...
joint venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
with investment bank Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley
Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000....
, into which he injected his private property portfolio, Kandahar Real Estate Ltd, worth £243 million.
Ross, who has a strong personal interest in sport
Sport
A Sport is all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants. Sport may be competitive, where a winner or winners can be identified by objective means, and may require a degree...
, was also on the board of the reconstruction of Wembley Stadium
Wembley Stadium
The original Wembley Stadium, officially known as the Empire Stadium, was a football stadium in Wembley, a suburb of north-west London, standing on the site now occupied by the new Wembley Stadium that opened in 2007...
; and was part of the consortium which rescued Leicester City Football Club from receivership
Receivership
In law, receivership is the situation in which an institution or enterprise is being held by a receiver, a person "placed in the custodial responsibility for the property of others, including tangible and intangible assets and rights." The receivership remedy is an equitable remedy that emerged in...
, before it was later sold to Milan Mandarić
Milan Mandaric
Milan Mandarić is a Serbian-American business tycoon who has owned a string of successful businesses and football clubs including Portsmouth, Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday. He currently is the chairman of Sheffield Wednesday...
.
Politics
Ross was a member of the Home Office Audit Committee and Lord Carter's Review of Legal Aid Procurement. He was recently appointed to London United, the body supporting the capital's bid to be a host city for the 2018 World Cup bid, having previously been the Mayor's representative for the planning of the 2012 London Olympics.After Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
was elected Mayor of London
Mayor of London
The Mayor of London is an elected politician who, along with the London Assembly of 25 members, is accountable for the strategic government of Greater London. Conservative Boris Johnson has held the position since 4 May 2008...
, in May 2008 Ross was Johnson's nominee to the board of the London Organising Committee
London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games is a limited company, owned by the Government of the United Kingdom, that will oversee the planning and development of the 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. After the successful London 2012 Olympic bid, LOCOG was...
of the 2012 Olympic Games. He resigned from this position in the wake of the same 2008 event that led to his departure from the board of Carphone Warehouse.
Personal life
Ross is unmarried, but has a son, Carl, with ballerina and former pole dancer Michelle "Shelley" Ross. Media reports are unclear and have variously described their common last names as due to chance or coincidence, long term relationship or marriage. Ross owns the 1500 acres (6.1 km²) Manor Farm estate at Brampton AshBrampton Ash
Brampton Ash is a civil parish and village in Northamptonshire, England. It lies in the extreme north-west of Northamptonshire and the nearest urban settlements are the nearby towns of Corby, Kettering, Desborough and Market Harborough. Running past the north of the village is the A427 road.Within...
, Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...
. After the murder of his stepsister Fiona Marshall and her boyfriend Richard Flippance at the property in 2006 by her ex-husband Alex, Ross placed the property on the market for £7.75 million in 2008. Ross's main residence is the 700-year-old Nevill Holt
Nevill Holt
Nevill Holt is a hamlet and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. It is situated at about northeast of Market Harborough and northwest of Corby and lies close to the borders with Northamptonshire and Rutland. It lies on the north side of the Welland valley...
estate in Leicestershire, which he bought in 2000; also the site of his prep school. He has a further home in Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, London.
Charitable, Educational and Arts
Ross is a trustee of Uppingham School, and also sponsor of the Havelock AcademyHavelock Academy
Havelock Academy is a secondary school and sixth form, with Academy status, based in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, England.-Admissions:It is situated north of the A46, near the junction with the A1031, on the opposite of the road from the former Matthew Humberstone School .-The Havelock...
in Grimsby which was set up in 2007 with help from his charitable foundation. More recently Northamptonshire County Council agreed for him to sponsor Unity College in Northampton to become an Academy. Ross was appointed to the board of the National Portrait Gallery by Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
in 2006; and in the summer hosts the Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera
Grange Park Opera is a professional opera company whose base is The Grange in Hampshire, England. The company was founded in 1998 by Wasfi Kani OBE and Michael Moody...
at Nevill Holt
Nevill Holt
Nevill Holt is a hamlet and civil parish in the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England. It is situated at about northeast of Market Harborough and northwest of Corby and lies close to the borders with Northamptonshire and Rutland. It lies on the north side of the Welland valley...
.
Other and awards
In 2005 - 2006, Ross was a panel member for Lord CarterPatrick Carter, Baron Carter of Coles
Patrick Robert Carter, Baron Carter of Coles is chairman of the review panel examining the future of NHS pathology. He recently reviewed the procurement of legal aid in England and Wales, and was chair of Sport England until September 2006...
's Review of Legal Aid
Legal aid
Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people otherwise unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial.A number of...
Procurement.
External links
- Carphone Warehouse - Board of Directors
- Debrett's summary profile (see Debrett'sDebrett'sDebrett’s is a specialist publisher, founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The name "Debrett's" honours John Debrett...
)