Sir Terence Hedley Matthews OBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
,
FIEEThe Institution of Engineering and Technology is a British professional body for those working in engineering and technology in the United Kingdom and worldwide. It was formed in 2006 from two separate institutions: the Institution of Electrical Engineers , dating back to 1871, and the...
,
FREng-Overview: is the UK’s national academy of engineering. The Academy brings together the most successful and talented engineers from across the engineering sectors for a shared purpose: to advance and promote excellence in engineering....
(born 6 June 1943) is a
WelshThe Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
business magnateA business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...
, serial
high techHigh tech is technology that is at the cutting edge: the most advanced technology currently available. It is often used in reference to micro-electronics, rather than other technologies. The adjective form is hyphenated: high-tech or high-technology...
entrepreneur, and
WalesWales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
's first
billionaireA billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the...
.
He has founded or funded over 80 companies in the high tech communications field, most notably
MitelMitel Networks, is a high-tech company providing unified communications solutions for business. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications but after a change in ownership in 2001 now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP products.Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa,...
and
Newbridge NetworksNewbridge Networks was an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada company founded by Welsh-Canadian entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews. It was founded in 1986 to create data and voice networking products after Matthews was forced out of his original company Mitel...
.
He is the Chairman of
MitelMitel Networks, is a high-tech company providing unified communications solutions for business. The company previously produced TDM PBX systems and applications but after a change in ownership in 2001 now focuses almost entirely on Voice-over-IP products.Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa,...
, March Networks, and Wesley Clover.
He owns the
Celtic Manor ResortThe Celtic Manor Resort is a golf-centric hotel and leisure resort in Newport, south Wales. It consists of two adjoining hotels, a country inn, two golf and country clubs, and a multi-purpose conference centre...
.
Early life
Terry Matthews was born in
NewportNewport is a city and unitary authority area in Wales. Standing on the banks of the River Usk, it is located about east of Cardiff and is the largest urban area within the historic county boundaries of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent...
,
South WalesSouth Wales is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. The most densely populated region in the south-west of the United Kingdom, it is home to around 2.1 million people and includes the capital city of...
, at what was then the Lydia Beynon Maternity Hospital. Matthews would later return in his adult life to encompass the manor house that housed the hospital within the Celtic Manor Resort.
Matthews grew up in the town of Newbridge, Caerphilly. He studied at
Swansea UniversitySwansea University is a university located in Swansea, Wales, United Kingdom. Swansea University was chartered as University College of Swansea in 1920, as the fourth college of the University of Wales. In 1996, it changed its name to the University of Wales Swansea following structural changes...
and received an honours degree in electronics in 1969.
Career
After an apprenticeship at British Telecom's
research labAdastral Park is a science campus based at Martlesham Heath near Ipswich in the English county of Suffolk.When the site opened it was known as the Post Office Research Station, but it was subsequently renamed BT Research Laboratories or BT Labs and later Adastral Park to reflect an expansion in the...
at
Martlesham HeathMartlesham Heath village is situated 6 miles east of Ipswich, in Suffolk, England. This was an ancient area of heathland and latterly the site of Martlesham Heath Airfield...
, Matthews left Britain and joined
MicroSystems InternationalMicrosystems International Limited was a telecommunications microelectronics company based in Ottawa, founded in 1969. MIL was an early attempt to create a merchant semiconductor house by Nortel Networks...
, a chipmaking operation affiliated with Northern Telecom (which became Nortel Networks) in
OttawaOttawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Canada.
Mitel
Matthews' first enterprise was started in collaboration with fellow Briton and Microsystems employee
Michael CowplandMichael Cowpland is a British-born entrepreneur, businessman, and the founder and one-time president, chairman and CEO of Corel, a Canadian software company.-Early life:...
in 1972. To raise seed money for future enterprises they had planned, the pair intended to import and sell electric lawnmowers built in the UK. Conventionally the name Mitel is thought to be a contraction of "
Mike and
Terry's Electric
Lawnmowers". However Cowpland is quoted as saying that it stands for "
Mike and
Terry
ELectronics". This first endeavour was a fiasco; the shipping company carrying the first batch lost the container. When the lawnmowers finally arrived, the ground was covered with snow in the Canadian winter and no one would buy them. Matthews later said "That taught me a key lesson — the importance of timing. The shipping company lost the lawnmowers! By the time they showed up no-one wanted them, as you can't cut grass when it's covered with snow."
Mitel became a technology consultancy company run from home to the various companies around Ottawa's emerging high-tech district. Mitel's clients included the
National Research CouncilThe National Research Council is an agency of the Government of Canada which conducts scientific research and development.- History :...
, the
Communications Research CentreThe Communications Research Centre Canada is a Canadian government scientific laboratory for research and development in the field of advanced telecommunications. For over 40 years, it has made significant contributions to the information and communications technology sector in Canada and abroad...
, and a handful of pioneering start-ups including SHL Systemhouse which later became EDS and now is part of HP and Quasar Systems (now
CognosCognos was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence and performance management software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in over 135 countries.Originally Quasar Systems Limited, it adopted the Cognos...
).
Obtaining funding from their own savings and a group of angel investors (notably Kent Plumley) the two developed a
telephonyIn telecommunications, telephony encompasses the general use of equipment to provide communication over distances, specifically by connecting telephones to each other....
DTMF tone receiverDual-tone multi-frequency signaling is used for telecommunication signaling over analog telephone lines in the voice-frequency band between telephone handsets and other communications devices and the switching center. The version of DTMF that is used in push-button telephones for tone dialing is...
based on Cowpland's Ph.D. thesis. This was a major advance in the technology since they were able to sell receivers at a fraction of the cost of competing versions, while gaining returns of 1000%. Additionally, Mitel later became a chip manufacturer with the acquisition of the Silek foundry in Bromont, Quebec.
Later the pair realized that the then new technology of microprocessors and other semiconductor devices would make a similar change in the market for small PBXs. The SX200 PBX launched to immense success, being cheaper to purchase, quicker to install and far more functional. Mitel became one of the more successful manufacturers of small PBX systems and telecom semiconductors in the world, floating on the
New York Stock ExchangeThe New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
in 1981.
Newbridge Networks
In 1985, British Telecom bought a controlling interest in Mitel. Cowpland would later form the company that became
CorelCorel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems...
and Matthews later founded Newbridge Networks.
In 1986, Matthews drove Newbridge to become a leader in the worldwide data networking industry, manufacturing data communications products, especially
ATMAsynchronous Transfer Mode is a standard switching technique designed to unify telecommunication and computer networks. It uses asynchronous time-division multiplexing, and it encodes data into small, fixed-sized cells. This differs from approaches such as the Internet Protocol or Ethernet that...
devices and routers. In 2000 the company employed more than 6,500 employees with recorded FY 1999 revenue of $1.8 billion. Later in 2000, Newbridge was acquired by
AlcatelAlcatel Mobile Phones is a brand of mobile handsets. It was established in 2004 as a joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent of France and TCL Communication of China....
for $7.1 billion. Matthews' personal stake in Newbridge was valued at over a billion dollars, and as a result of the transaction he became the largest single shareholder in Alcatel.
Return to Mitel
In an ironic turn, he reacquired the Mitel PBX business and company name in 2000, taking it private. He has invested heavily ($600 million by 2006) in Mitel to turn it into a
broadbandThe term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
communications company. The company has made significant investments in enterprise
Voice over IPVoice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
telephony technology. Mitel's manufacturing business was spun off as
BreconRidgeBreconRidge was a contract manufacturer of electronic and especially telecommunications systems headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. BreconRidge acquired Ridgeway Research Corporation, the manufacturing division of Mitel Networks and 4test....
. Mitel acquired Intertel. Mitel went public again in 2010.
Other businesses
- Wesley Clover – Matthews is the founder and Chairman of the investment group. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Wesley Clover has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, India, China and Russia. Investments in Information and communication technologies, digital media, and real estate.
- Kanata Research Park
Kanata Research Park is a business park and Canadian real estate corporation in Kanata, Ontario, Canada which leases and develops commercial real estate. It is home to many companies, mostly IT-related, such as Mitel, March Networks, Bridgewater Systems, DragonWave, Solace Systems, CounterPath...
- Matthews company which manages some of the land and buildings in the Kanata North Business Park
- Brookstreet Hotel
The Brookstreet Hotel is a modern luxury hotel in suburban Ottawa, Ontario, located north of the Queensway, near the intersection of March Road and Carling Avenue, in the Kanata Research Park...
- Hotel in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
- March Networks - Provider of IP video solutions. Went IPO on 27 April 2005. This venture was the first successful high tech IPO in the Ottawa area since 1999.
- Bridgewater Systems
Bridgewater Systems is a Canadian software company providing pre-integrated solutions for mobile and converged operators. The Company’s portfolio provides a real-time, unified view of the subscriber including service entitlements, devices and networks being used, billing profiles, and preferences...
– a software company enabling mobile service providers to personalize, manage, and deliver applications. Acquired by AmdocsAmdocs Limited is a provider of software and services for billing, customer relationship management , operations support systems...
in June 2011 for $215 Million
- Ubiquity Software – Developer of SIP
The Session Initiation Protocol is an IETF-defined signaling protocol widely used for controlling communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol . The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party or multiparty sessions...
/IMS Application ServerAn application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
Software platform, which was acquired by AvayaAvaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
in Feb 2007 for about U.S. $150M and is the basis of Avaya's next generation solutions.
- Convedia – a maker of VoIP/IMS
The IP Multimedia Subsystem or IP Multimedia Core Network Subsystem is an architectural framework for delivering Internet Protocol multimedia services. It was originally designed by the wireless standards body 3rd Generation Partnership Project , as a part of the vision for evolving mobile...
Media Servers, which was acquired by RadiSysRadiSys Corporation is publicly traded company that makes embedded systems and related technology, located in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1987 in Oregon by former employees of Intel, the company went public in 1995...
in 2006 for $US 105 Million
- Celtic House – Matthews and Roger Maggs co-founded Celtic House International Corporation (CHIC) in 1994. The objective was to invest in emerging high technology companies, primarily in the UK and Canada. In 2002, CHIC was re-structured to form Celtic House Venture Partners, a limited partnership owned and managed independent of Matthews.
Additionally, Matthews serves on the Board of Directors for a number of high technology companies and is Chairman or serves on the Board of Directors of DragonWave,
Solace SystemsSolace Systems is a content networking company based in Kanata, Ontario, Canada that manufactures and sells middleware appliances. Middleware appliances are rack-mountable network devices that implement message-oriented middleware and content-based routing in purpose-built hardware...
, and
CounterPath CorporationCounterPath Corporation is a provider of desktop and mobile VoIP software products and solutions. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, CounterPath has 71 employees and annual revenue of USD $11 Million as of 2011...
.
Wales
Although Matthews emigrated to Canada as a young man, he takes a considerable interest in his homeland and spends much time there. One of his ventures is the
Celtic Manor ResortThe Celtic Manor Resort is a golf-centric hotel and leisure resort in Newport, south Wales. It consists of two adjoining hotels, a country inn, two golf and country clubs, and a multi-purpose conference centre...
, a leisure complex in
NewportNewport is a city and unitary authority area in Wales. Standing on the banks of the River Usk, it is located about east of Cardiff and is the largest urban area within the historic county boundaries of Monmouthshire and the preserved county of Gwent...
, near the south Wales coast, chosen to host the
2010 Ryder CupThe 38th Ryder Cup matches were held 2010 at the Celtic Manor Resort in the city of Newport, Wales. It was the first time the competition was staged in Wales. With the USA as the defending Cup holder the event was played on the newly-constructed Twenty 10 course, specifically designed for the...
golf tournament. The Celtic Manor hosts the
Saab Wales OpenThe Saab Wales Open, previously the Celtic Manor Wales Open, is a European Tour golf tournament which was founded in 2000 and is played each June. The event is hosted at the Celtic Manor Resort in the city of Newport, South Wales, also the venue for the 2010 Ryder Cup...
annually. The original Celtic Manor Hotel was formerly a maternity hospital and is Matthews' birthplace.
Matthews bought Celtic Manor in 1980, ploughing £100m into the project. Firstly the 19th century Manor House was renovated, while in 1991 plans were unveiled to develop two new golf courses and a convention centre between the manor and the
River UskThe River Usk rises on the northern slopes of the Black Mountain of mid-Wales, in the easternmost part of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Initially it flows north into Usk Reservoir, then east by Sennybridge to Brecon before turning southeast to flow by Talybont-on-Usk, Crickhowell and...
. Matthews had become friends with golf course architect, the late
Robert Trent Jones SnrRobert Trent Jones, Sr. was a golf course architect who designed about 500 golf courses in at least 40 US states and 35 other countries all around the world...
, whose family roots were in
AberystwythAberystwyth is a historic market town, administrative centre and holiday resort within Ceredigion, Wales. Often colloquially known as Aber, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol....
, Wales. Work began on the 'Roman Road' course in 1992, named after the main route connecting the former Roman fortress of
CaerleonCaerleon is a suburban village and community, situated on the River Usk in the northern outskirts of the city of Newport, South Wales. Caerleon is a site of archaeological importance, being the site of a notable Roman legionary fortress, Isca Augusta, and an Iron Age hill fort...
with the town of
CaerwentCaerwent is a village and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located about five miles west of Chepstow and eleven miles east of Newport, and was founded by the Romans as the market town of Venta Silurum, an important settlement of the Brythonic Silures tribe. The modern village is built...
, which crosses the land. In 1994 the 4,000-yard 'Coldra Woods' golf course was started, as well as the £10m golf clubhouse hotel. Interior design was completed by Patrick Goff of Goff Associates, the son of Roy Goff, who managed the site when it was the nursing home in which Matthews was born. The Celtic Manor was Hotel of the Year in 2002, and won two European Design Awards in 2001 - one for Goff Associates, and one for its
spaThe term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts typically offer various health treatments. The belief in the curative powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but are...
from the International Spa Association. Matthews commented that:
"I think the resort can act as a magnet to draw new investment into Wales from across the UK and overseas. I did my best to put up a building that you can see from the West End of London and I didn't come far short of it!".
Honours
Matthews has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Wales, Glamorgan, and Swansea, and
Carleton UniversityCarleton University is a comprehensive university located in the capital of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. The enabling legislation is The Carleton University Act, 1952, S.O. 1952. Founded as a small college in 1942, Carleton now offers over 65 programs in a diverse range of disciplines. Carleton has...
.
In 1994, he was awarded an
OBEThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
In June 2001, he was conferred the honour of
Knight bachelorThe rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...
in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. He was knighted by HM The Queen at an investiture in
Buckingham PalaceBuckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
.
In 2006 he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Engineering) from the
University of BathThe University of Bath is a campus university located in Bath, United Kingdom. It received its Royal Charter in 1966....
.
In 2011, he was appointed Patron of the Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute at Cardiff University.
Personal life
He is married to Ann, and they have four children, three boys and a daughter. His eldest son runs the
Celtic Manor ResortThe Celtic Manor Resort is a golf-centric hotel and leisure resort in Newport, south Wales. It consists of two adjoining hotels, a country inn, two golf and country clubs, and a multi-purpose conference centre...
. His youngest son,
Trevor MatthewsTrevor Matthews is a Canadian film producer and actor. He is the youngest son of telecommunications billionaire Sir Terence Matthews and Ann Matthews.-Early life:...
, is Founder and CEO of
Brookstreet PicturesBrookstreet Pictures is a film production company with offices in Beverly Hills, California and Kanata, Ontario. Founded by Trevor Matthews in 2004, the company produces and finances films.-Filmography:* Street Soldier * Old West...
.
See also
External links