£4bn Duty Free king who rubbed shoulders with royalty
He loved X Factor stars, chilled vintage red — and spreading his good fortune
When he was young, legend has it that Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha was involved in a spectacular highspeed car crash on the famously dangerous roads of his native Thailand.
To the amazement of onlookers, he walked free from a sickening tangle of wreckage with little more than cuts and bruises. he attributed his survival to a ‘lucky’ golden Buddhist amulet which he’d purchased with a £400 loan from his father, and was wearing around his neck.
Later - after fate, combined with a ruthless and sometimes controversial instinct for business and patronage - had turned him into one of Asia’s wealthiest men with a fortune estimated at almost £4billion, Srivaddhanaprabha became a serious collector of such charms.
Around £10m-worth are now displayed in a special museum at the Bangkok headquarters of King Power, the Duty Free business he founded three decades ago and expanded to become a global household name, with more than 10,000 employees.
The museum is one of many unconventional status symbols acquired by the bespectacled 61-year-old, who may have resembled a provincial accountant, but who for years enjoyed the turbo-charged lifestyle of a serious plutocrat.
Though somewhat uncomfortable in the public eye, and almost never interviewed, the man Thais know by the honorific title ‘Khun’ Vichai was, in recent times, accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the Royal Family, and jetting between homes in Thailand, London’s Chelsea Wharf, and rural Berkshire, where his family owns a vast mansion and where his elite polo team, with 60 staff and 80 ponies, are headquartered on a 100-acre plot, one of his two personal polo estates.
In addition to the £2m Augusta Westland helicopter that tragically crashed on Saturday, he owned a 116-foot Sunseeker yacht with five cabins, a top speed of 26 knots, and an £11m price tag – as well as a Gulfstream G-650 private jet, purchased for £43m from Bernie ecclestone’s wife, Fabiana, in 2013.
Some attribute that eye-watering wealth as a major factor in one of sport’s most improbable fairy-tales. After buying Leicester City in 2010, it took just six years to transform the ‘Foxes’ from a debt-ridden club languishing in the middle reaches of english football’s second tier to the most unlikely Champions in the history of the Premier League.
Others argue that he owed the famous title – won at odds of 5,000/1 – to the sort of outrageous good luck that was following him on the day of the aforementioned car crash.
Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha was certainly superstitious, and would regularly fly a plane-load of monks to the Midlands from Thailand’s Golden Buddha temple in order to bless both Leicester’s pitch and players in advance of a match.
he even built them a designated shrine at the King Power stadium, which is decorated with Buddhist statues and hangings. BEFORE kick- off, the monks would bless the goal-posts and corner flags, before adjourning to the changing room to splash holy water on the players’ legs and feet.
‘It’s like you’re literally having a shower, there’s that much water going everywhere,’ said the team’s star striker, Jamie Vardy, after one game. ‘That’s the Thai culture and we are happy for them to do it.’
In the directors’ suite, things were similarly unconventional: Srivaddhanaprabha would greet his guests, who often included a smattering of minor celebrities (he apparently had a thing for X Factor stars, and was a huge fan of US saxophonist Kenny G) to expensive claret, served ice cold.
‘his drink of choice was a £200 bottle of St emilion red wine that he would stick in the fridge,’ recalled a former assistant, Alex hylton. ‘I don’t think that was a Thai thing – I think it was a Vichai thing. I’m no connoisseur but it still broke my heart to put a Grand Cru in the fridge.’
Whenever Leicester won, his generosity was boundless. Along with his four children, who were all in one way or another involved in his business affairs (King Power is very much a family firm, his wife of more than 30 years, Aimon, is vice-chair) he celebrated promotion to the Premier League in 2014 by inviting the squad for a meal of caviar and fine wine in a plush west London restaurant.
having paid the bill, he then gave each player and member of the club a £1,000 chip to gamble at a private members club nearby.
To mark the team’s illustrious title, in 2016, players were each given a BMW i8 sports car, worth more than £100,000, and invited to another big night out at a Leicester casino, where Srivaddhanaprabha reportedly hit one of his familiar lucky streaks, winning more than £2 million on the card tables in a few hours.
It was at least some payback for the £150m he’s reputed to have put into the club, for which he paid £39m, spending freely on players, buying the Walkers stadium – to be renamed King Power – and wiping out its £103m debt in order to secure Leicester’s future.
‘We don’t run the team in the hopes of making a big fortune from it. We just want to gain recognition of our brand,’ said his son Aiyawatt, who looks after much of its day-to-day running.
‘If you spend a hundred million dollars to buy a hotel, perhaps only 100 people recognise your brand. But buy a football team in england and suddenly the whole world becomes aware of King Power.’
Today, Leicester City is thought to be worth around £350m, almost ten times what he paid for it. In May 2017, Srivaddhanaprabha brought a second club, Belgian side Oh Leuven.
Fans would also benefit from his