The CV

Street, just off Tottenham Court Road, and walked into the premises of the first supplier to A M S Trading Company, my new company. Many of the big importers in the marketplace used to name their companies after themselves, but I thought Sugar Trading wouldn’t have gone down too well, so I decided upon A M S Trading, which stood for Alan Michael Sugar.
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1967 – 1980:
    My wedding day. A memorable and wonderful occasion, but I couldn’t wait for it to be over!
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1979 – 1990:
    ‘So, what do you want, Stanley? What have you schlapped me over here for? I’m busy. I’ve got no time for tea.’
    ‘Calm down, Alan. I just thought it would be nice for us to touch base.’
    ‘Yeah, okay, Stanley, forget all that touching base stuff and tell me what you want.’
    ‘Oh, you are terrible, you really are terrible, Alan. All right, well, look, let me tell you this – this Clive Sinclair fellow is going bust.’
    I was shocked, but seconds after digesting the statement I remembered hearing rumours that he was running out of money fast and I’d seen a frontpage story in the Mirror about how the mogul Robert Maxwell was going to rescue Sinclair.
    ‘Right, okay . . .’ I said cautiously.
    ‘Well, we sell hundreds of thousands of his products and we’ve been approached by Price Waterhouse to see whether we would take over his company to get him out of trouble. Now as you know, Alan, we are retailers. We’re not interested in this, so I’m giving you the heads-up. You need to jump in quickly and see if you can sort a deal out.’
    Wow! Now that was interesting. It actually took the wind out of my sails.
    First of all, I couldn’t help feeling some satisfaction that my arch-competitor was going down the pan. I know it’s not a nice thing to say, but I’m being honest. Secondly, the acquisition of the Sinclair brand would be a massive coup for Amstrad.
    After further discussion with Mark and Stanley, the story became clearer. The truth of the matter was that the man at Price Waterhouse had not suggested that Dixons buy the company, but had actually asked for an introduction to me, knowing that I was also a supplier to Dixons.
    Dixons quite selfishly realised that if Sinclair went bust, they would be stuffed in two ways. One, they would lose a lot of business because they were selling hundreds of thousands of Sinclair Spectrums; and two, they wouldhave no after-sales service path for the millions of Sinclair units they’d put into the marketplace.
    From Stanley’s suite in the Mandarin Hotel, we called London to speak to the guy at Price Waterhouse. From what I could gather, Sinclair was in dire financial straits. Barclays Bank had a debenture over the company and by 31 March 1986 either Sinclair had to cough up the money they owed them or they were going to force them into administration.
    Clive Sinclair at that time was a national treasure and the guy at Price Waterhouse explained to me that there were deep political connotations here. They could not allow Sinclair to go into bankruptcy – it would be deemed a disaster for the flag-bearer of the British computer industry to go under. So many songs had been sung about his enterprises and Barclays Bank would be seen to be the people that shot Bambi’s mum. It’s true to say that if Clive Sinclair, who by then had been knighted, wasn’t as famous or popular as he was, the company would have simply been slung into liquidation and no one would have heard any more about it.
    I agreed to call the guy from Price Waterhouse back in a couple of hours as I didn’t want to discuss my business affairs in front of Stanley and Mark. On my second call with the chap, it became clear to me there was a deal to be done. I discussed this with Bob Watkins, who was very excited at the prospect and understood what a blockbusting event this would be.
    Now, here is where I defied all business logic. With no deal done, I decided there and then – before meeting Clive Sinclair or discussing numbers with banks – that I was going to buy the Sinclair business one way or another.
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1979 – 1990:
12
‘Who on Earth Is Rupert Murdoch?’
    When You See a Satellite Dish, Think of Sugar
    1988–90
    ‘Alan, I’ve got Rupert Murdoch on the phone,’ my secretary Frances said. ‘Can I put him through?’
    ‘Nah, not really. Tell him I’m not in – do the usual,’ I said.
    About five minutes later, she walked into my office and asked,