Princess’s son lands another cushy job thanks to family
THE QUEEN’S eldest grandson Peter Phillips was paid £750,000 for organising her 90th birthday celebrations in The Mall last year.
Now he is benefiting from another family handout.
This week he landed a new job as boss of the Festival of British Eventing at Gatcombe Park, the country residence of Princess Anne.
Phillips, 39, will succeed Tim Henson, who is stepping down from his role as event director after more than 20 years.
The announcement was made by Captain Mark Phillips, Peter’s father and Princess Anne’s first husband who is the festival chairman. ‘Peter has been involved with the championships in many different guises since a very young age and
knows the event as well as anyone,’ he said.
Peter, pictured left with his mother, who will run the event with his team at Sports & entertainment Limited (SeL) UK, concedes Henson’s are ‘big shoes to fill’.
After graduating with a degree in sports science from exeter University, Phillips worked for seven years as a manager at the royal Bank of Scotland.
One of his mentors was its ambassador Sir Jackie Stewart, a close friend of Princess Anne.
After leaving rBS in 2012, he hoped to make his fortune with his own sports management company, SeL UK.
However it struggled to make money in its first year, turning a profit of just £ 3,834. Besides numbering Phillips as one of its three directors, SeL UK boasts his Candian-born wife, Autumn, as company secretary.
Phillips came up with the idea of a lunch for 10,000 people on The Mall at £ 150- a- head and was also a founding trustee of the charity set up to collect any profits, The Patron’s Fund.
Because SeL UK Ltd won the contract for organising the event he resigned as a trustee to avoid a conflict of interest.
The final figures disclosed that Her Majesty’s favoured charities received a total of marginally over £762,000 — or about £12,000 more than Phillips’s company.
The Festival of British eventing will take place at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire next August.