Joe Lewis (British businessman)

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Joe Lewis (born East London in 1936 or '37) is an English billionaire who lives in Lyford Cay, Bahamas. Lewis is the 369th richest person of Forbes The World's Richest People list 2007. Lewis was listed as the 16th richest British person in Sunday Times Rich List 2007.

Lewis made his initial wealth expanding the family's catering business, then selling luxury goods to tourists, and finally moving into currency trading in the 1970s - resulting in his move to the Bahamas. Lewis currently is the main investor in Tavistock Group, which owns more than 100 companies, such as Tottenham Hotspur F.C. and SK Slavia Praha. Lewis is a major investor in ENIC Sports PLC, run by Daniel Levy, the Chairman of Tottenham Hotspur. The Tavistock Group recently sold its currency trading firm HotSpot FX for $77 million.

Lewis, married with two children, has homes all over the world at which he is able to indulge his passion for golf. Lewis hosts the Tavistock Cup tournament every March in Florida, raising millions of dollars for charity, and owns the two clubs that compete: the "Lake Nona" club (resident Ernie Els) and the "Isleworth Club" (resident Tiger Woods). He is presently developing a new golf community in the Bahamas called "Albany" with his two golfing friends.

Lewis has also been a force in bringing bio-technology and new healthcare offerings to Central Florida. With his philanthropic support, Tavistock Group's 7,000-acre (28 km²) Lake Nona master plan development is an emerging biomedical research and educational hub highlighted by the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine and Healthcare Campus, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, a University of Florida Research Center, a Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Nemours Children's Hospital, all building significant facilities within this community.

On September 10, 2007, he was in the news for paying $860.4 million in an all-cash purchase of a 7 percent stake in Bear Stearns.^[1] By December of 2007 Lewis had raised his stake at the brokerage firm to 9.4%, a total of 11 million shares, for which he paid an average price of $107 apiece^[2]. Lewis lost about $1.16 billion ^[3]^[4] of his investment when on March 16, 2008 Bear Stearns was purchased in a straight stock swap with JPMorgan Chase in which JPMorgan paid the equivalent of $2.00 a share for Bear Stearns.^[5]

He is more recently known for spear-heading a £70 million investment in Bulgarian property development.^[6]

In the March of 2008, Lewis is said to be seeking "other strategic offers" to the JPMorgan Chase buyout of Bear Sterns after Bear was forced to turn to the Fed and JPMorgan for liquidity. The run on Bear was linked to the implosion of US mortgage markets and large losses at two of Bear's hedge funds totaling in the billions of US dollars.