Amstrad founder and star of The Apprentice, Lord Alan Sugar has an estimated net worth of £1.4 billion.
Alan Michael Sugar was born in Hackney, East London. Whilst growing up, he made extra money by working at a local greengrocer. After leaving school at the age of 16 he began selling car aerials and electrical goods out of a van which he had bought with his savings for £50.
In 1968, Sugar founded Amstrad, which would become his largest business venture. The company, being an acronym of his initials, started as a wholesaler and importer/exporter and eventually began selling consumer electronics. At its peak, Amstrad achieved a stock market value of £1.2 billion.
However the nineties proved to be a difficult time for the company, after a range of businesses PCs were marred by unreliable hard disks. During July 2007, Amstrad was sold to BSkyB for £125 million.
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Sugar teamed up with Terry Venables and purchased Tottenham Hotspur football club in 1991. This journey turned out to be a rocky one, and saw Sugar own the club for 16 years before deciding to sell.
Despite selling Amstrad, Sugar still owns several technology companies including Amscreen, a digital signage company and YouView, a free-to-air internet TV service, through which Sugar reportedly received £500,000 for the year ending in March 2012.
His other business ventures include Amsprop, a property investment company, and Amsair, an executive aviation company.
2005 saw Sugar become the star of the hit BBC business reality show The Apprentice, taking on the same role as Donald Trump in the US version. It is now in its tenth series.
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He has been awarded two honorary Doctorates of Science, by City University in 1988 and Brunel University in 2005. In 2000 Sugar was knighted for services to business and became Sir Alan Sugar.
Back in 2009, Sugar was offered a peerage by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown as part of a new enterprise role in the Labour government, and subsequently created Baron Sugar of Clapton in the London Borough of Hackney. He is now a member of the House of Lords and is more commonly known as Lord Sugar.
A keen philanthropist, Sugar donates his BBC fee for presenting The Apprentice to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
He regularly divides his time between luxury multi-million pound homes in Chigwell, Essex, Spain and Boca Raton, Florida.
Besides his homes, he owns two private jets and a fleet of expensive cars including a Land Rover, Bentley, Ferrari and a Rolls Royce Phantom, which regularly features on The Apprentice.
