Who is Amanda Staveley? The rise of the Gulf state fixer
When Newcastle United is finally signed over to the Saudi Public Investment Fund, one woman stands to benefit more than any other
Words: Joseph Bullmore
The Premier League has a great deal in common with the Middle Eastern princehood. There’s the unimaginable wealth and dubious morality; the rapier ambition and wild pomp; the feverish tension and international intrigue; the cars, the mansions, the circus, the power. But the thing that truly links the two worlds is Amanda Staveley.
Staveley is the Gulf fixer extraordinaire — the gilded key stone. She, and she alone, holds aloft the intricate bridge between the desert states and the British footballing complex. Staveley was thrust back into the limelight last week as it emerged that an agreement has been reached for the £300 million purchase of Newcastle United from retail mogul Mike Ashley. The buyers? Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, in an echo of the deal Staveley brokered between Manchester City and the Abu Dhabi royal family in 2008.
Amanda Staveley is said to have dated Prince Andrew — and rejected his marriage proposal
Staveley is an enigmatic character — an entrepreneur and former model who became a tabloid regular thanks to her relationship with Prince Andrew. (It’s said that the Party Prince proposed to her two years into their courtship, and that she turned him down because she didn’t want to join the Royal Family — evidence, perhaps, of her strength in judgement.) Born in north Yorkshire to a landowning family (she still has the no-nonsense vowels to prove it), Staveley was told, as a teenager, that she’d have to go out and earn her own money — her father would be leaving the estate to the eldest son.
Staveley dropped out of university in her early twenties and borrowed some cash to set up a restaurant near Cambridge called Stocks. Close to the Newmarket Racecourse, it soon became a favourite with the wealthy owner-trainer-punter nexus of the emerging Gulf. After shutting up shop, Staveley found Q.ton, a high-concept conference centre in Cambridge Science Park — it was bought by communications giant EuroTelecom in 2000, but floundered in the dot com crash.
Next Staveley set up PCP Capital Partners, a private investment firm and consultancy with offices in Dubai and London. Which is where the story really takes off. Staveley’s true genius, it soon emerged, was not in restaurants or tech — but in penetrating the clandestine circles of extreme Gulf wealth, and doing so with charm, focus, and unwavering insight. She is said to have the ability to perform rapid arithmetic gymnastics in her head, and a fearless tenacity. As one source told the Financial Times: “She hobnobs with these guys and some of these guys are not very sophisticated. She has a way of dealing with these pockets that is anti the Wall Street playbook. I think part of her success is that she is systematically underestimated.”
Another said: “She has the charm and cunning of an old-colonial diplomat plus the brains of a double-first nuclear physicist.”
Staveley doesn’t trade in bullshit, either. Gulf families, like Premier League footballers, tend to collect layers of clinging, superfluous, puffed-up intermediaries. These brokers are simply links in long, fragile daisy chains of dubious access and vested interest. A guy who knows a guy who knows a guy — and each guy takes a nibble of the cake. Staveley, somehow, always seems to cut out those slick, jumped up middlemen. Her access, it’s said, is direct, efficient — and effective.
Serene, the super yacht owned by Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was crucial in the planning of the deal
That’s why PCP Capital Partners has been involved in more than £8 billion of acquisitions and deals in the last few years. Staveley buys homes and commercial properties for Emerati investors; snaps up distressed debt for Saudi royals. In 2015, she was the broker behind the lucrative Qatari acquisition of the Maybourne Group of heritage hotels (Claridge’s, The Berkeley, and The Connaught.) But it’s the Newcastle United deal that will put her on the map. Elite Mayfair hotels and off-market mansions have a niche (albeit shiny) appeal. Football clubs, on the other hand, are embedded in the fabric of the nation.
According to the FT, the takeover was masterminded below deck on Serene, the superyacht owned by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, on the Red Sea in October 2019. It was there, under the gaze of a priceless Da Vinci, and surrounded by business honchos including SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, that the funding was secured to buy out Ashley.
Mike Ashley, the current owner of Newcastle United, has rebuffed Staveley’s approaches in the past
The controversial high street mogul has rebuffed Staveley in the past. But this deal looks set to stick. Staveley will stump up 10% of the £300 million price tag, while the Saudi Public Investment Fund will take the lion’s share, along with Mayfair property barons the Reuben Brothers.
If the deal comes off, it could transform the fortunes of a football club that has been wilting under its owner’s bulbous shadow for too long. It will also boost those of its broker — the ingenious, imperial fixer-in-chief. As the pandemic continues, more trophy assets will become available at compelling prices. It is Staveley who will decide which mantelpieces they’re placed on.
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