The dastardly Mr Deedes
Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley is splashing out £40m on the must-have accessory for any tycoon – a new corporate jet. In his time at insurer Prudential, former head honcho Tidjane Thiam went to the board to ask for an aeroplane. The princely 54-year-old was quickly shown the door and told it might seem a tad extravagant. Dashing, Ivory Coast-born Tidjane is now boss of Credit Suisse, but despite the firm posting a £344m loss, there is no end to his exuberance. He is making do these days with a lavish £7m schloss on the banks of Lake Zurich.
Failed technology whizz Dan Wagner, 53, has taken to Twitter to dish out tips on entrepreneurial success. He was boss of tech firm Dialog, which was dubbed ‘Diala-dog’ after shares fell 95pc. ‘Swagner’ as he was known to former employers because of his penchant for swaggering about, was also boss of now-bust Powa Technologies. At one point the firm lost £39m on revenues of just £1m. Still, Dan never let anything as trifling as numbers get in the way of running a business. One employee claimed he lived by the motto: ‘Presentation is nine-tenths of a sale.’
Serpentine public relations boss Roland Rudd, 55, may be licking his wounds after his tireless fundraising for the Remain campaign ended in failure. But the latest PR Week study of the best-paid spin doctors shows that he trousered £5.4m in 2015 as the top director at Finsbury. The son of a stockbroker, Oxford-educated Rudd is also brother to Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Roland is not short of a penny anyway – he made £40m when Finsbury was sold to Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP.
Loud-mouthed former Marks & Spencer boss Lord Stuart Rose, 67, is getting the old gang back together. Sir Stewpot is a director of clothing and food group Woolworth in Australia. Now he’s recruited former right hand-men at M&S, John Dixon and Steve Sharp, to help build the business Down Under. It’ll be good for the old smoothy to get back in the game. He was sidelined from the Remain campaign – despite being its chairman – after a series of gaffes.