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Billionaire Joe Lewis Places a 34-Year-Old Atop Besieged Empire
- Co-CEO Josh Levy is taking on extra duties at Tavistock Group
- Lewis is awaiting sentencing on insider-trading charges in US
Daniel Levy, right, and his son Josh Levy.
Photographer: James Williamson/AMA/Getty Images
By
Benjamin Stupples
7 March 2024 at 15:00 GMT+8
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When Joe Lewis bought a major stake in Tottenham Hotspur Football Club in 2000, he did so alongside Daniel Levy, the scion of a UK clothing business and father to a 10-year-old boy named Josh.
More than two decades later, Josh Levy, now 34, finds himself sitting atop Lewis’ empire, trying to navigate the fallout from the billionaire’s guilty plea to insider-trading charges in the US.
Levy recently was named co-chief executive officer of Lewis’ Tavistock Group, which has assets including five-star hotels, US restaurants and enclaves for the world’s rich. Along with fellow co-CEO Nick Beucher and Chairman Shehan Dissanayake, he’s among the leaders in the succession race for who calls the shots at the investment firm that helped Lewis build one of the UK’s biggest fortunes.
It’s a stark example of how the world’s ultra-rich keep a tight-knit circle of confidants around their fortune. Lewis’ children, Vivienne, 62, and Charles, 61, are both managing directors at Tavistock, with Charles previously working alongside Daniel Levy, 62, at another company from 1998 to 2008. One of Lewis’ granddaughters, Alexandra, a physician, has also served as a medical director for Tavistock’s real estate development arm.
Behind the scenes, Tavistock’s day-to-day operations haven’t changed since Lewis’ guilty plea in January, with the current management team running the company, a spokesperson said. The Bahamas-based firm declined to make Levy, who joined in 2016, available for an interview.
A succession plan has been underway for years, predating Lewis’ legal troubles, the spokesperson said. No additional alterations to the plan are currently being considered, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified as the details are private.
Lewis, 87, who has a net worth of about $7.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in New York in early April.
Tavistock named Levy as co-CEO along with Beucher in September, two months after federal prosecutors charged Lewis with insider trading.
In December, Levy replaced Dissanayake on the board of
Australian Agricultural Co., a Queensland-based beef producer identified in the insider-trading indictment against Lewis. The company hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing. Beucher, Dissanayake and Levy are also part of Tavistock’s board and executive committee.
Lewis “was part of my family my entire life,” Levy said in a 2021 interview. “I got to know him from a friend and an advisory perspective.”
Levy’s Tavistock roles date back almost a decade. He’s served since 2015 as a director of UK pub operator
Mitchell & Butlers Plc, in which the firm has a roughly $500 million holding, starting while he was still an investment banker at Investec specialising in UK deals.
The following year, he became Tavistock’s investment director and was appointed CEO in 2019 of Ultimate Finance, a UK bridge-financing firm backed by Tavistock. He still holds that position and led the Bristol, England-based firm to reporting a loan portfolio of more than £310 million ($395 million) at year-end, a 10% increase from 12 months earlier.
Still, financing small-to-medium-sized British companies represents just a fraction of Tavistock’s businesses. That underscores the challenges Levy faces as co-CEO of Lewis’ sprawling empire, leading some observers to question the onetime banker’s credentials.
“He’s appointed someone who has been head of a division,” said Christina Wing, founder of Wingspan Legacy Partners, an advisory firm to ultra-wealthy families. “But that doesn’t mean he knows how to run a multibillion-dollar empire.”
Discretionary Trust
Despite its long-term association with Lewis, Tottenham Hotspur has largely avoided the fallout of the billionaire’s insider-trading case. In 2022, Lewis transferred his majority stake in the team he’s supported since childhood to a discretionary trust. That ended decades of him being the direct owner of the club, where Daniel Levy is currently chairman.
Joe LewisSource: Bloomberg
Team representatives still moved swiftly to distance themselves from Lewis following the release of the charges against him in July, repeatedly describing the case to media outlets as an unrelated legal matter and outlining the recent changes in the club’s ownership structure.
Tottenham Hotspur — which still features prominently on
Tavistock’s website under key investments — is worth about £2.4 billion, according to research from Football Benchmark. That compares with a valuation of about £73 million when Lewis and the elder Levy took control more than two decades ago.
Daniel Levy and his family’s Tottenham Hotspur stake, which is also held in a trust, is worth more than £600 million based on the team’s current valuation, underscoring how their association with Lewis has turbocharged their fortune after selling their discount clothing chain in 2006.
Bahamas Advisers
When calculating the net worth of Lewis and his family, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index still attributes them a majority stake in Tottenham Hotspur, due to him being Tavistock’s founder and his relatives being beneficiaries of the trust that controls the holding. That stake is worth about £1.5 billion, based on Football Benchmark’s latest valuations.
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Two professionals based in the Bahamas — Katie Booth and Bryan Glinton — oversee the Lewis family’s Tottenham Hotspur trust and are now cited as persons with significant control of the club. Booth is an adviser on international asset structuring for private entrepreneurs, while Glinton is a veteran lawyer who has previously served as an adviser to Tavistock and Albany, a 600-acre gated community in the Bahamas that’s among Lewis’ largest investments.
A representative for Tottenham Hotspur declined to comment.
Read More:
Tottenham Hotspur Chairman Levy Is Open to Stake Sale
In a rare public
statement, Tavistock said in January it has retained law firm Sidley Austin to review its compliance programs in an effort led by the US Department of Justice’s former top criminal official.
Whatever happens with Tavistock going forward, Levy has made it clear he isn’t going to his allow relative youth to be an impediment.
“I have been trusted from a young age,” Levy said in the 2021 interview for content marketing firm Raconteur. “Age is just a number.”
— With assistance from David Hellier
tottenhamonmymind.com
etc...I'd happily buy a bowl of porridge for £17 for every day of the rest of my life and not feel ripped off.
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