How potential new owner Staveley built her empire
Reporter SHE has been described by one of her advisers as a “proper feet-onthe-ground Yorkshire lass”.
But the woman who has set tongues wagging on Tyneside with potential NUFC takeover bid has far from a normal background.
Born and bred in Yorkshire, Amanda Staveley is the daughter of landowner Robert Staveley, whose North Stainley estate, near Ripon, was a gift to his ancestors from Cardinal Wolsey in 1516.
Father Robert also founded Lightwater Valley – a major tourist attraction in Yorkshire.
The attraction as it is known today perhaps became most widely recognised as a theme park after the creation of the Rat in 1987, which was the world’s first subterranean roller-coaster.
Amanda and her brother James were given control of the park in 1996, selling for £5.6m a year later.
The 44-year-old’s impressive business background runs in the family, with maternal grandfather Ralph Raper running a successful chain of betting shops and, later, Doncaster dog racing track.
The village of North Stainley has been vastly occupied by the Staveley family for centuries.
The signs at the entrance and exit of the village have the family crest of a stag’s head on them and even the village pub is called The Staveley Arms.
Amanda attended Queen Margaret’s School in York and was keen on sport, particularly athletics and equestrian, though a torn Achilles ended her sporting career.
After leaving school at 16 she took her A-levels in a single year before being accepted into Cambridge’s St Catharine’s College to read modern languages.
But she never completed her degree as she quit following the death of her grandfather.
Rather than go back to Yorkshire, Amanda began her course towards becoming a multi-millionaire.
She persuaded a bank to loan her £180,000 loan to open the restaurant Stocks between Cambridge and Newmarket.
With no formal training, she “lived and breathed business and banking” both, studying for her future roles in the city and working as a waitress. She also worked as a part-time model for extra cash.
Amanda is said to have built her extensive business network in the Middle East from her restaurant – rubbing shoulders with the region’s wealthy horse owners.
One of these was said to be a major investor in her next venture, the Q.ton conference centre on Cambridge Science Park, and she was named Businesswoman of the Year in 2000.
But after selling a 49% stake to EuroTelecom, a company which flopped in the collapse of the Dotcom boom, and subsequently buying her stake back, Q.ton failed.
She moved to the Middle East, and once said “there is something about the growth of this young economy that I saw in myself.”
She now spearheads PCP Capital Partners, an investment firm with extensive Middle East connections, and in 2008 was involved in Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed’s takeover of Manchester City.
Amanda now splits her time between Dubai and London, with husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi and their son Alexander.
Before meeting Ghodoussi, she had been romantically linked to Prince Andrew, and was rumoured to have turned down a marriage proposal from him.
In 2014 she told the Evening Standard she had been diagnosed as carrying the gene for degenerative condition Huntington’s disease.
She said she is almost certain to develop the disease within 20 years.