Former Tottenham Hotspur majority owner Joe Lewis has a net worth of over £5 billion but is not without some major controversies. Read on as we take a look at his net worth, income and assets.
Who Is Joe Lewis?
Joe Lewis is a British businessman, investor and philanthropist from London. He holds a number of assets, mostly through his investment portfolio Tavistock Group. Between 1991 and October 2022, Lewis was the majority of ENIC Group – the majority owner of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur.
Majority ownership of Spurs was passed to the Lewis Family Trust last year, which is now managed by two independent and professional trustees on behalf of its beneficiaries – Joe Lewis is not one.
He was born to a Jewish family in the English capital and left school at the young age of 15 to help his father run his West End catering business Tavistock Banqueting. He eventually took control of the business and expanded it by selling luxury goods to American tourists.
Lewis also owned a West End club called the Hanover Grand, where he gave English-American film producer, investor and television personality Robert Earl his first job. He sold the business for £30m in 1979 to make his initial wealth and kickstart his career.
He is said to have made his huge fortune by betting on ‘Black Wednesday’ in September 1992, when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism after the collapse of the pound.
He has a variety of investments including luxury club resorts, restaurants, hotels and an Australian agriculture firm.
Joe Lewis Net Worth
According to Forbes, Joe Lewis boasts a net worth of $6.1 billion – making him the 444th richest person in the world today.
He is the majority shareholder at Mitchells and Butlers which owns a range of pubs and restaurants including All Bar One, Toby Carvery and the Harvester chain.
Lewis has an extensive art collection which includes work from Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. He set a world record by selling a David Hockney painting for £70.3 million, a record for artwork by a living artist.
He created an ultra-exclusive Albany golf and leisure resort in the Bahamas with Tiger Woods, as well as Ernie Els and Justin Timberlake as co-owners.
Joe Lewis Controversies
In July 2023, Lewis was accused of 16 counts of securities fraud in the United States. He allegedly orchestrated an insider trading scheme to enrich his friends and close associates such as lovers and private jet pilots.
Lewis was one of the largest shareholders in Mirati, a US-listed oncology company which focuses on therapeutic treatments for cancer patients. When sitting on his yacht in California, he was visited by an employee of the company who told Lewis about confidential updates regarding a favourable outcome of one of Mirati’s clinical trials.
He discussed with the employee how the company’s share price could rise from $80 to over $100. A week later, Lewis called his 33-year-old girlfriend Carolyn Carter and told her to buy stock in Mirati including instructions on how to do so. The next morning, she emptied all of her money into the company and bought over 16,000 shares.
A month later, when further information about results of the clinical trial became known to his hedge fund, Lewis told his private jet pilots to buy as much Mirati stock as they could during a flight from San Diego to the Bahamas.
Both pilots bought the stock and Lewis later wired $500,000 to each of them so they could buy more. Lewis gave the tip to a number of other people including his executive assistant and friends. Everyone eventually sold their shares for a profit after rising nearly 17%.
Lewis did it again for different companies such as Solid Biosciences and BCTG Acquisition Corporation. The offence carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison but he denied the charges and his lawyers said they were the result of an ‘egregious’ error by the US government.
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