Cash forced out of hedge fund bible after bitter legal tussle
His private life has been tumultuous. But, throughout it all, thrice-married publisher William Cash has enjoyed impressive commercial success, most notably with spear’s luxury magazine for hedge funders and City slickers, whose readers reputedly have more than £5 million each to their names.
Now, though, i can disclose that Cash has been obliged to resign as a director of spear’s.
His departure follows a bruising legal tussle with the man to whom he sold a majority share in the business a decade ago — multi-millionaire Mike Danson.
spear’s alleged that Cash, whose first wife was jewellery heiress ilaria Bulgari, had exploited knowledge about the magazine’s advertisers, readers and even its sponsors in order to establish a new publication, Mace, specialising in Westminster politics.
The 54-year- old Cash — eldest son of Tory MP sir Bill Cash — was wounded by what he described as an ‘unfounded rush’ to litigation. He subsequently suspended publication of Mace until the smoke of legal battle had cleared. it has now done so, revealing that Cash has departed from his grand Whitehall office, a stone’s throw f r om Downing street. ‘ Having founded spear’s in 2005, i decided to leave the business to explore new opportunities,’ he says.
He is preparing for fresh challenges and resuming publication of his new political glossy, albeit in slightly altered circumstances. ‘His new office is above a Lebanese restaurant close to Victoria station,’ a friend tells me.
Cash is used to overcoming adversity. His marriage to Bulgari ended four years after their 2003 wedding, following his admission that he had engaged in a ‘Boris Becker moment’.
His second marriage — to Mick Jagger’s old flame, Venezuelan-born Vanessa Neumann, ‘the Cracker from Caracas’ — ended after 17 months.
Cash is now married to Lady Laura Cathcart, the 36-year- old society milliner and daughter of the 7th Earl Cathcart, by whom he has a young son and a daughter.
Cash’s colourful memoirs, published last year, chronicled a bizarre love triangle between himself, art dealer Helen Macintyre and Boris Johnson. Boris apparently agreed to let Cash raise his love-child, who was conceived when Boris was still Mayor of London — and before Cash’s relationship with Macintyre ended. Let’s hope Mace proves to be half as exciting.