Robert Bull, the bungalow tycoon nicknamed “Bob the Builder”, is being chased by creditors just nine months after being crowned as one of Britain’s richest men with an estimated fortune of £1.9bn.
Now, his holiday park empire is being broken up bit by bit, as those who lent Bull money seek to reclaim more than £725m in debts.
The second paragraph explains the first, no?
As with the Murphonomics of the state, you can put up a prettygood show with a rising debt pile but it will come back to bite you on the arse at some point.
Bull’s network of single-storey villages was spread out across the country, including in the South East and Cornwall, where his acquisition of holiday parks was fuelled by billions of pounds in loans.
The key word is “estimated”
A friend of a friend back in the 1990s claimed to be a millionaire, on the grounds that he had a property empire with assets of more than £1m.
He was not dissuaded from this belief when it was pointed out that his outstanding loans exceeded the value of his assets.
In his day job, he worked for the Official Receiver. I surmised that he had learned about business from the people he encountered there.
These “Rich Lists” always look at assets (often in the public domain) and ignore liabilities (often closely guarded secrets). Thus Bob Maxwell (aka the Bouncing Czech) was vastly wealthy, until suddenly he wasn’t.
Chris Miller,
They’re just entertainment, like most things in newspapers. None of the people involved care, and none of the people reading it have a clue.
Like Ed Sheeran is down as $300m, and I seriously doubt that someone who sold 150m albums and did some touring has that. Maybe half that. And that’s gross. Before paying staff who help him for years like lawyers, accountants, PR people, general management. Oh, and 40% to the taxman, of course. And maybe he spent a lot on nice things, gave a load to charity.
Donald Trump once pointed to a homeless man on the street and said “That guy has 4 billion dollars more than me.”
Ah, think he may be the bloke who bought the old camp / caravan site on the outskirts of my village, started turning it into residential caravan site for the elderly. Went bust, apparently quite spectacularly. All closed down and deserted at the moment. Presumably at some point the liquidators will put it up for sale.
Will be interesting to see what happens to the Issa brothers, owners of Asda and a lot of petrol stations. Can’t see what value they’ve added other than taking out a load of debt to buy up other companies. High interest rates make that unworkable.
“the bloke who bought the old camp / caravan site on the outskirts of my village, started turning it into residential caravan site for the elderly“
Seems like quite a sensible solution to housing issue. I wondered locally why they didn’t just ship in a bunch of those emergency shelters they send to disaster zones to help with homeless issue, would be a damn site better than ramshackle tent cities, but apparently there are regulations for acceptable standards of housing for homeless people that this wouldn’t meet. Worlds crazy
Bob has over 300 UK companies registered. Plus some in the channel Islands, based on car registration nos.
Anyone lending money into that whirlwind shell and pea game deserves everything they get.