Sir Alan Sugar

Alan Michael Sugar (full name.) Born 24 th March 1947 Alan was born in Hackney- east of London- into a Jewish family. He was born into a quite poor family. His father (Nathan) was a tailor in the East End garment industry and his mother (Fay) stayed at home to look after Alan’s 3 other brothers and sisters.

As a child Alan lived in a council flat. Because of his Jewish curly hair his friends nick named him ‘Mopsy ’ He attended Northwold Primary School and then Brooke House Secondary School. Alan made money by selling yo-yos on the play ground and also selling boiled beetroot.

After leaving school at the age of 16, he worked briefly for the civil service as a statistician at the Ministry of Education. He started selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van he had bought with his savings of £100! In 1968 Alan founded the company Amstrad (Alan Michael Sugar TRADing.) The company began by buying electronics and then selling them on their self’s, but soon after the company decided to make their own electronics, Alan made up new modern ways to build a computer – it was his own original idea.

At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.2 billion By 1980 the Amstrad computer was worldwide and tremendously popular! It inspired many other companies to create computers very similar! In 1985 Alan had yet another breakthrough, he created the first word processor (for example Microsoft word is a word processor)

In 1991 Alan teamed up with Terry Venables and together they bought Tottenham Hotspur F.C, Alans initial investment helped save the club

Alan is now the star of his own hit TV show ‘ The Apprentice’ The Apprentice Alan fires a candidate each week until one candidate is left, who is then employed to work along side Alan, also Alan gives them an investment of £250,ooo (1/4 of a million pounds!) to their own business

Sir Alan Sugar is ranked the 89 th richest person in the world. He has an estimated fortune of £770 million

Thank you!