Phone-obsessed, self-entitled – and risking our future
A blistering assault on millennials ... from Brexiteer tycoon who built a £400m personal fortune
FROM his saturnine scowl to his highly polished shoes, Howard Shore is every inch the City grandee. Only his collar-grazing mullet haircut, marginally too racy for a stockbroker, marks him out as a bit of a maverick.
His eponymous firm, Shore Capital, may not be up there with Goldmans or JP Morgan, but it punches above its weight.
Shore, 57, now one of the biggest movers and shakers in the City, set up the business with just £10,000 of start-up capital fresh out of Cambridge University, armed with an economics degree, aged just 25.
At that time, in the 1980s era of Big Bang, he was not only very young but also swimming against the tide. Most independent British broking firms were closing down or being bought up by the US and European giants flooding into London.
Over the decades that followed, Shore Capital has established itself as a fixture in the City firmament and he has amassed an estimated £ 400 million fortune, as well as huge clout in the worlds of finance and politics, where he is a major donor to the Conservatives.
His annual December party at Claridge’s ballroom in Mayfair is attended by FTSE 100 chief executives, peers and property barons.
More prosaically, Shore Capital’s analysts fire off commentary and research notes every morning, which pi ng i nt o t he inboxes of bankers, clients and journalists, percolating into the financial Zeitgeist. It acts as a broker for clients including supermarket Wm Morrison and babywear chain Mothercare, as well as on deals including the 2013 float of Poundland.
Having been an entrepreneurial prodigy himself, Shore is scathing about the e youth of today. He is fearful for the long-term prospects of Europe, including the UK, and he seems to blame self-entitled ‘millennials’ – the twenty-somethings who came of age this century.
Handwringing is fashionable over the plight of the young – usually described as drowning in student debt, struggling to get on the housing ladder and generally having been cheated by people of Shore’s age.
In his opinion, however, young people just waste too much time tapping away on their phones.
‘How much of the time are they looking at a text, or whatever it is that you guys do: is it from your girlfriend, is it from your mother or the plumber? Or is it workrelated? It’s really hard to know. Clearly it’s a massive distraction.’ Unproductive youngsters, he seems to think, are responsible for the UK’s dire productivity perform- ance. It’s the same on the Continent, he says. Youngsters expect life to be handed over on a plate when their peers in China and India are working flat out.
‘It’s inconceivable, isn’t it, that despite all the technological advancement that we’ve had over the last 10 to 15 years that productivity hasn’t gone up at all. You have to step back and say: Well, why do you think that is? The workforce hasn’t been trained properly? Are they not motivated? Or has something changed in society? I would say it’s probably all three.’
Shore, who does not have children himself, also believes young people feel entitled to luxuries they haven’t earned. ‘ There’s clearly some expectation that you can have a
certain lifestyle without working as hard as people in previous generations,’ he says. In fairness to Shore and his own work ethic, when he recently stepped aside as chief executive to become chairman, the firm appointed two people to replace him.
He now has slightly more time for dining with politicians, watching his beloved Tottenham Hotspur and relaxing in his new £ 29 million Bel Air mansion, with seven bedrooms and a 90ft infinity swimming pool. His neighbours are reported to include Jennifer Aniston and Clint Eastwood – not that he wants to discuss it. Shore wants to portray himself as a humble, Eurosceptic businessman with a finger on the pulse of politics. Despite splitting his time between London, LA and Germany, where he has investment interests through his other firm Puma Brandenburg, Shore continues to keep his ear to the ground of British politics. He has, after all, personally donated £46,000 to t he Tories and Shore Capital has pumped nearly £800,000 into party coffers. This sort of generosity does not go unrewarded. In 2014, he and his wife Andree shared the top table of a Tory Party fundraising dinner with David and Samantha Cameron. Shore Capital sponsored the event and Andree was chairman of the ball’s organising committee.
While Cameron’s Government implored the nation to vote Remain in 2016’s EU referendum, Shore emerged as one of the City’s most high-profile Brexiteers.
Big US banks such as Morgan Stanley and Citigroup pumped hundreds of thousands into the Remain c a mpaign, but Shore Capit a l donated £ 25,000 to t he Leave group’s coffers.
Why, when most financiers think Brexit could be disastrous for their industry, is he such an ardent Leaver?
He admits that the UK may suffer in the short-term. But he also believes our nation will ulti-
You have to ask why productivity has not gone up at all over 15 years
There’s clearly an expectation of a lifestyle without working as hard
mately benefit from shedding some of the ‘ mad bureaucracy that’s come from the EU’.
When will we start to see these benefits? Shore can’t answer – because, he says, of the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn entering No 10. He believes Theresa May’s performance has been so poor she is giving Corbyn a chance.
Normally, he says, business people moan: ‘Labour getting in would be the end of the world!’ They argue there would be a shift in social policy and rhetoric – ‘but the reality is it doesn’t change that much. With Corbyn, though, it could change very significantly. And I think that that would have a much greater impact on the structure of the UK economy than the effects of Brexit.’
The prospect of Corbyn is nearly enough to make Shore regret Brexit – nearly, but not quite, even though his share price has dropped from more than 300p before the EU referendum to 208p now.
‘It’s not about money. It’s about passion and belief,’ he says.
Though he does have the candour to add: ‘ Honestly, I’m fortunate enough t o have made enough money that, whether we’re in or out, it probably wouldn’t have changed my life.’