Finance
2017: No.20 - £240m
2016: No.17 - £240m
Paul Newey has had a good year at the poker tables.
He has risen to 9th in the England all time money winners list with winnings of more than £3.4 million. He is 211th in the world rankings.
The highlight of his poker year was a second place in the Asia Championship of Poker high roller event in Macau, netting £362,000.
He finished third in the super high roller tournament at the same championships, earning another £330,000.
He also finished third in the European Poker Tournament in Barcelona in August.
He doesn't need to win big to make his fortune, though.
He did that in 2006 when he sold Ocean Finance – the Tamworth debt consolidation business he founded in 1991 – for £200 million.
He sold the business to American General, a subsidiary of US insurance giant AIG. He stayed on as chief executive but stood down in 2009.
To say that Paul Newey, aged 48, enjoys a flutter is an understatement.
He famously came close to breaking the bank at the soon-to-close Star City Casino in Birmingham when he won £3 million in 2005 and forced owner Stanley Leisure to issue a profit warning, wiping 12 per cent off its share value.
Luck has been something which has followed Paul Newey since he lost his job back in 1991 when his employer went bust.
With a business partner and just £2,500 he set up Ocean Finance – based on the Centurion Business Park in Tamworth - and the rest is history.
Paul Newey lives in a seven bedroom Regency style home in Sutton Coldfield.
London-based New Wave ventures, which he set up in 2010 with ex-Lloyds managing director Tim Bullock, invests in businesses with growth potential.
He is chairman of the company.
Investments include Aeristech, a Kenilworth-based engine turbo-charger company, Nottingham synthetic bone graft company Orthogem, Cambridge drug company Bactevo and Cambridge Scientific Innovations Ltd, a food and pharmaceutical product testing company.
