Page 38 - Yorkshire Rich List 2017

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Amanda Staveley £110m
new entry
ON THE MONEY: Financier Amanda Staveley giving a speech at her old school, Queen Margaret’s, in York.
North Yorkshire-born Amanda Staveley runs Mayfair-based PCP Capital Partners which advises businesses on acquisitions, investment strategy and wealth management.
PCP, founded by Ms Staveley, has an impressive client list which includes the ruling family of Abu Dhabi and the Qatar Investment Authority. She oversaw the purchase of Manchester City by Sheik Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the Abu Dhabi royal family. That deal reportedly earned PCP £10m in commission.
She is believed to have shown an interest in Mike Ashley’s Newcastle United on behalf of a Middle Eastern group and PCP has conducted due diligence.
PCP is in the process of suing Barclays Bank for close to a billion pounds over fees from the 2008 deal in which the Abu Dhabi royal family took a stake in the bank. It is represented by prestigious US banking specialist law firm Quinn Emmanuel.
Ms Staveley, 44, was born near Ripon, the daughter of landowner Robert Staveley who founded the Lightwater Valley theme park. As a
child she was a waitress there. She was educated at Queen Margaret’s School, York, and read modern languages at Cambridge, although she didn’t complete her degree.
She began share dealing while working in Newmarket where she met contacts from the racing community and from Dubai. A er a couple of failed ventures she moved to Dubai and began cultivating contacts across the Middle East. She successfully advised deals involving the investment of Middle Eastern money.
Ms Staveley hit the headlines in 2003 a er dating the Duke of York. She married Iranian-born Mehrdad Ghodoussi in 2011. She has property in Dubai and in London’s Park Lane.
‘Ms Staveley hit the headlines in 2003 a er dating the Duke
of York.’
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Jeffrey Pears and family £105m
New entry
Farmer Jeffrey Pears and his family own and run Ripon-headquartered Dearnehead Farms. They also own JG Pears Ltd, one of the few animal- rendering facilities le in the UK.
JG Pears, which supplies the pet food industry, is developing a combined heat and power plant to provide steam and electricity to its rendering facility in Low Marnham, Newark. The plant will also generate its own energy, supplying excess power to the National Grid.
The plant replaces more than 90 per cent of the fossil fuel used in the rendering process using meat and bone meal, which has the same calorific value as coal.
The project is not without detractors and
in 2013 was rejected on visual impact grounds by Bassetlaw District Council. A er a public inquiry the original decision was overturned and the Department for Communities and Local Government granted planning consent.
In 2016 JG Pears Holdings, which controls the company’s six wholly-owned subsidiaries in Yorkshire, No inghamshire and Leicestershire,
made a pre-tax profit of £10.5m on a sales turnover of £55m.
The family also owns JG Pears Power and a property company.
Mr Pears has a flock of white-faced woodland sheep – a breed listed as vulnerable by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust – on his farm at Penistone, near Barnsley. He is president of Penistone Agricultural Show.
He started farming, keeping pigs on his father’s four-acre smallholding a er leaving school at 17. He now has a 1,500-acre farm with 5,000 breeding sheep and 370 breeding ca le.
‘He started farming, keeping pigs on his father’s smallholding a er leaving school at 17.’
SHOW TIME: Jeffrey Pears is the president of Penistone Agricultural Show.
38 THE YORKSHIRE POST TUESDAY NOVEMBER 28 2017
www.yorkshirepost.co.uk
DEAN ATKINS