Barry Moat tried to persuade Richard Harpin to invest in Toon.
Posted on October 26th, 2009 | 164 Comments |
Would-be Newcastle United owner Barry Moat tried to persuade Richard Harpin to invest in his bid to buy the club.
Richard Harpin is the head of HomeServe and has a personal fortune of more than £200m, which places him as one of the top 5 richest North-Easterners according to the Sunday Times Rich List.
Harpin was born in Huddersfield but moved to Stocksfield in Northumberland with his family when he was young and then went to the Royal Grammar School in Jesmond.
“I regard myself as an adopted Geordie,” says Harpin.
He launched his first enterprise – a mail-order fishing tackle business – at 15 with just £200 and by the time he was 22 it had a turnover of £45,000 on a gross margin of 40%. He had actually started five businesses by the time he was 20 in industries as diverse as Christmas trees, jewellery and magazines before going to work as a brand manager at Proctor & Gamble.
His ‘big break’ came when he partnered with South Staffordshire Water to set up a plumbing insurance cover business and it was after expanding this business to cover all utilities that HomeServe was born.
Anyway, to get to the point of this article …
Harpin was recently revisiting his old grammar school in Jesmond and was asked whether he would buy Newcastle United. He claimed that, whilst he’s not poor with his £200m, it takes a billionaire to fund a football club these days.
He does however say he was a approached by Barry Moat about investing in Moat’s bid to take over the Toon but said “It took me about 60 seconds to say no.”
It’s a shame he didn’t reveal any details about why he wasn’t interested in Moat’s bid.
If you’re wondering about the point of this article, you’re not alone – so am I and I wrote it. I just found a thread, pulled at it and got nowhere. Seemed a shame to waste all the electrons though.
so who is the richest north-easterner ??
shouldnt moat be trying to persuade him instead