21 (18) Paul Newey £250m (£280m)
Paul Newey is known as a gambler - the man who broke the bank at Star City (sorry - doesn’t quite have the same ring as Monte Carlo, does it?)
But selling his Tamworth-based debt consolidation business - Ocean Finance and Mortgages - for a rumoured £200 million- plus was no gamble.
Last year he offloaded Ocean Finance to American General, a subsidiary of US insurance giant AIG who are probably best known in the UK for their £56 million shirt sponsorship deal of Manchester United. The deal followed two years of talks.
Paul Newey, aged 39, famously came close to breaking the bank at Star City Casino in Birmingham when he won £3 million 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 and the rest is history.
Ocean Finance is based on Centurion Park in Tamworth where it now employs nearly 300 people.
The company helps around 50,000 applicants a year with homeowner loans, mortgages and refinancing and has a residential mortgage portfolio of more than £60 million. And while AIG might be sponsoring Manchester United, they haven’t forgotten the little guys, continuing Ocean Finance’s sponsorship of local team Tamworth FC.
Paul Newey, who continued as CEO of Ocean after the sale to AIG, lives in a seven-bedroom Regency-style home in Sutton Coldfield.
His other business interests included Marlborough Loans, Ocean Finance’s lending arm, which is now known as Ocean Money. Paul Newey continued as CEO of Ocean Finance after the sale to AIG
