I have done this site especially for Elliott Bernerd
in order to visit crazybillionaire.org
Elliott Bernerd took the quoted Chelsfield property group private in January with an £895m offer, valuing his stake at £109m. His backers included David and Simon Reuben (qv). Bernerd, 58, made Chelsfield his principal company in 1987, floating it in 1993. Its assets include Wentworth golf course, Surrey, and Merry Hill shopping centre in the Midlands. We add £50m for Bernerd's other wealth.
-------------
An example to follow
Why do we praise Elliott Bernerd? Why do we firmly believe that he should be recognised by the high-powers of this country? Well, in the words of Professor Ian Hutchinson: "Elliott is the supreme example of an indomitable human being overcoming adversity. He has never exhibited any weakness at all; never shown any hint of self-pity. He has a phenomenal drive and power".
Elliott Bernerd, a warm, approachable and generous individual, who is not at all the stereotyped cold, ‘business-only’ kind of tycoon, can be seen as a down-to-earth man. Even regular, in some ways, but extraordinary, nevertheless, in many more. He is not only a benefactor of many charities, but also, informally and anonimously, a benefactor for many who have been in the receiving end of his genereosity and helping hand.
Elliott, 60, a Londoner who left school at 15 with no qualifications, has been a giant of the UK property industry for 30 years. He is the Executive Chairman of the group Chelsfield Partners.
He made his name developing Britain's first American-style business park, Stockley Park, near Heathrow, and had huge interests in Paddington Basin and White City. He owned Wentworth Golf Club, was chairman of the South Bank arts complex and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
He was described by a financial commentator as "very much the debonair man-about-town," who “had a certain good-looking schmaltz and women found him irresistible."
The Telegraph online reported: “It was towards the end of 2000 that he discovered "something very simple in my mouth. It felt like an ulcer but it wouldn't go away. When it was diagnosed as cancer, my reaction was very simple: fear, surprise and then, because I am a fighter, the determination to fight."
"It is the most mutilating and socially isolating cancer," said Bernerd, according to the Telegraph, whose own psychological robustness has been a revelation to friends and continues to be a scourge to business rivals. "Patients who have cancer in the head and neck tend to stay at home, they lose touch with their friends, they become hermits, they're frightened to do anything, they retreat into themselves.
“I wanted the operation done there and then," Bernerd says, snapping his fingers. "I wanted the cancer out. I didn't want to mess around." He moved his office, his secretary and his family to New York and continued to work from hospital. The first operation lasted 14 hours. A year later, the cancer returned and he underwent more extreme surgery, lasting 22½ hours.
"I handled my problem my way, with a very radical solution," he says. His ex-wife, his estranged wife and his two grown-up daughters supported him throughout.
In the entrepreneurial sense, Elliott Bernerd was given up for dead but astonished his rivals by embarking on an 18-month fight in 2004 to take his company private. "Some of them expected me to lose my edge," he says, a smile behind the mask. "Some hoped. Some of them have had a shock. I won the fight."
"In a short time, you forgot about any disabilities he had,'' says one business associate. "What he did would have been monumental even for a man who was 100 per cent fit and 30 years old."
-----------------
Great survivor faces threat of demolition
The deals he has strung together over 30 years are the envy of the property world, but time and his enemies are catching up with Elliott Bernerd, writes Nick Mathiason
Elliott Bernerd, who today is worth upwards of £160 million, was a teenage car thief. Aged 14, he stole his stepfather's luxury Bentley to rescue his girlfriend in a blizzard. Unfortunately the roads became impassable, Bernerd and the Bentley were stranded and the budding tycoon was forced to confess all to his stepfather.
Was this an early sign of the shape of things to come? After all, flamboyance, opportunism which steers pretty close to the wind and the occasional comeuppance define the man who stands shoulder-to-shoulder with John Ritblat and Gerald Ronson as one of Britain's most irascible property deal makers.
Hooded eyes, sideways smile and bags of charm - or smarm, depending who you talk to; Bernerd has prowled the corridors of power, influence and money for over 30 years.
The 59-year-old property tycoon has amassed a vast personal fortune. His complex network extends from Peter Mandelson and David Mellor, to whom he famously lent a flat while the former Heritage Secretary 'entertained' Antonia de Sanchez, to financier Lord (Jacob) Rothschild, the late Charles Hambro and Lord Young, the former Cable & Wireless chairman.
Most usefully, Bernerd owns a contact book of wealthy Middle Eastern investors that's second-to-none. The book has helped him piece together a string of deals that are the envy of the property world.
But it is one of his best contacts - a friendship which dates back 40 years - that could prove his nemesis.
Elliott Bernerd has known the Russian metal trading billionaire Reuben brothers since he was a teenager. Five months ago, the Bombay-born twins helped Bernerd exit the stock market by investing £135m in a new private property company, Chelsfield.
Now the tycoons are at war. The Reubens are unhappy with Bernerd's management style. The schism has prompted two giant Australian firms - Multiplex, currently building Wembley Stadium, and Westfield, the world's second largest shopping mall developer - to submit offers for the company.
It seems inevitable that Chelsfield will be sold and ripped from Bernerd's control. A key insider said the company, which has possibly the most lucrative development portfolio in Britain, requires investors who are in it for the long term. 'Unstable shareholders make carrying on almost impossible,' he said pointedly.
Whatever happens, Elliott Bernerd will be quids in. His 12 per cent stake is worth tens of millions and crucially, much more than when his firm went private in April. But the son of a film industry executive will be furious at being effectively thrown out of his fiefdom.
Those close to him said this is not the end. Others are not so sure. Whatever, even his enemies, and he has many, say that the fact that Elliott Bernerd has survived this long is an achievement in itself.
Bernerd has endured two life-threatening operations in his fight against mouth cancer. It nearly killed him.
Money has bought him extra time. He sought the best cancer doctors in the world, though operations in New York have left him wearing a face mask. Facial reconstruction surgery has been postponed so he can fight for his company, or extract the best price.
He is not shy of his own worth. When Chelsfield floated in the mid-90s, most property company bosses were insuring themselves for £2m. Bernerd was covered for £17m.
There are many who resent him. One influential investor said: 'I don't trust him. He's not a crook but he says one thing and then changes his mind.'
Just four words illustrate why Bern erd is worth it: Merry Hill Shopping Centre. Bernerd paid just £35m for a 90 per cent stake in the West Midlands mall. Chelsfield now owns the lot. It is currently worth close to £2bn.
The initial deal was a lesson in mind games and chutzpah. The preferred buyer put about the idea that the site was contaminated. Intelligence revealed to Bernerd that this was a stalling tactic rather than a way of beating down the price.
So he persuaded the mall's receivers to let him do an environmental test. This proved the site was largely fine. Meanwhile, he structured a rival deal with a group of Saudi Arabians which paid £120m in debt and equity. Chelsfield took 25 per cent of the equity for just £546,000. What's more, Bernerd was paid £6m by the Saudis for an introduction fee.
His admirers say he thrives on deals such as this. The windfalls kept coming. With his long-time collaborator Sir Stuart Lipton, and Rothschild, Bernerd bought a site near Heathrow airport for £8m. Five years later, Bernerd and his partners sold what is now the Stockley Park office campus for £356m.
And in 1994 a stake in a Russian telecom company soon found its way into Lord Young's Cable & Wireless, enabling Bernerd to turn $24m into $40m in just a few months.
But insiders say dabbling in Russia was not without personal risk. The story persists that heavies once crashed into his Chelsea home brandishing firearms, although he denies it.
There have been pitfalls. Bernerd was caught out badly in the Seventies property crash and two decades later his venture into the world of dotcom has bled him of cash. Chelsfield invested huge amounts in so-called internet hotels but its Global Switch subsidiary got badly burnt as sentiment turned.
Bernerd was born to wealthy parents who divorced. He left school at 15 and became an estate agent. Because he never formally qualified, he was not debarred from investing in his own deals. By his mid-20s, with his partner and mentor the late Stephen Laurie, he amassed a big property portfolio.
The Seventies property bust looked as if it might ruin him but he recovered thanks to an alliance with Lord Sterling of P&O. Bernerd's business was bought out by Roger Seelig while the flamboyant banker was making Morgan Grenfell the most active bank in the mergers and acquisitions market.
It was Seelig who involved Bernerd in the Guinness affair. He subsequently found himself a witness for the prosecution, explaining the arrangement under which he had suggested to the sister of a property dealer, 'Black Jack' Dellal, that she buy Guinness shares as part of an operation that landed people, including Gerald Ronson, in jail.
A patron of the arts, Bernerd was a controversial chairman of the London Symphony Trust. He threatened to sue former Arts Council chief Lord Palumbo for withholding a grant. He was put in charge of trying to redevelop London's South Bank. The masterplan was overblown, unwieldy and never materialised.
Bernerd now stands on the cusp. The portfolio he owns through Chelsfield includes some of London's most prized development opportunities - a shopping centre at London's White City; a vast retail, housing and office development next to Stratford Channel Tunnel rail terminal; and sites in Paddington and Southwark.
But with the bids from Multiplex and Westfield, there is a real prospect that Elliott Bernerd will fail to pocket the proceeds of realising these projects.
What Bernerd has been best at is seizing control of assets against all odds. That skill is now being sorely tested.
Profile
Name: Elliott Bernerd
Born: 23 May 1945
Education: Left school at 15
Family: Married twice. Two daughters
Career: Property tycoon
Hobbies: Tennis, skiing
Clubs: Savile, Cavalry and Guards, Royal Automobile and Wentworth (which he owns)
-----------------
I refuse to hide my face away
By Elizabeth Grice
Mouth cancer may have changed the way property tycoon Elliott Bernerd looks but it won't diminish him, he tells Elizabeth Grice
Up-front is a term that could have been invented for Elliott Bernerd, the property tycoon who refused to hide away after his face was mutilated by mouth cancer.
Two colossal operations left him with much of his chin missing and his speech impaired but he returned to a life of active wheeling and dealing as if it were something his doctors had prescribed.
Wearing the white surgical mask that has become his trademark, he addressed a public gathering at the Royal Society in London last month. "I hope you can hear me," he rasped. "It's not my choice I'm this way."
Courage is the word that comes to mind, but it doesn't begin to do justice to the combative streak that has played a big part in his resumption of public life and entrepreneurial chutzpah - probably even to his survival. "It depends on willpower," he says, "on the sheer determination not to be pushed to one side in society - and why should I be?"
His greeting to me is as much a challenge as an introduction: "I'm Elliott Bernerd. I've a sore mouth from my operation. If you don't understand me, there's nothing I can do." It takes concentration at first because his tongue and lip movements are so restricted but Bernerd is a man used to making himself understood.
He has just given £1 million to Saving Faces, a charity run by Prof Iain Hutchison, one of Britain's leading oral and maxillofacial surgeons, to fund a facial surgery research programme. This has been matched by £1 million from Cancer Research UK for a clinical trial.
Though Hutchison didn't operate on Bernerd, he became his medical mentor throughout the ordeal and the two are now firm friends.
"Elliott is the supreme example of an indomitable human being overcoming adversity. He has never exhibited any weakness at all; never shown any hint of self-pity. He has a phenomenal drive and power," says Hutchison.
Though mouth cancer is as common in Britain as leukaemia and melanoma, and twice as common as cervical cancer, much less is heard about it because the inevitably disfiguring surgery, affecting the most public part of the body, makes many patients reclusive.
"There are two ways of dealing with something like this: you sit in a corner feeling sorry for yourself, or you get on with it. I just get on with it. You can't wrap yourself in cotton wool. Of course, I'd rather not be in the position I'm in. But that feeling lasts for about one moment in 10. In the other nine, I say: I am a very fortunate person to be here. Feeling sorry for myself doesn't help." He blames his cancer on cigars, stress and overwork.
Elliott Bernerd, 60, a Londoner who left school at 15 with no qualifications, has been a giant of the UK property industry for 30 years. Chairman of the group Chelsfield Partners, he features 217th in the current Sunday Times Rich List, at an estimated worth of £277 million.
He made his name developing Britain's first American-style business park, Stockley Park, near Heathrow, and had huge interests in Paddington Basin and White City. He owned Wentworth Golf Club, was chairman of the South Bank arts complex and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
"He was very much the debonair man-about-town," says a financial commentator. "He had a certain good-looking schmaltz and women found him irresistible."
It was towards the end of 2000 that he discovered "something very simple in my mouth. It felt like an ulcer but it wouldn't go away. When it was diagnosed as cancer, my reaction was very simple: fear, surprise and then, because I am a fighter, the determination to fight."
"It is the most mutilating and socially isolating cancer," says Elliott Bernerd, whose own psychological robustness has been a revelation to friends and continues to be a scourge to business rivals. "Patients who have cancer in the head and neck tend to stay at home, they lose touch with their friends, they become hermits, they're frightened to do anything, they retreat into themselves.
He approached Hutchison - whom he'd met socially before - for a fourth opinion. Who was the world's top oral and maxillofacial surgeon, he wanted to know. Hutchison recommended Jatin Shah at the Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York.
'I wanted the operation done there and then," Bernerd says, snapping his fingers. "I wanted the cancer out. I didn't want to mess around." He moved his office, his secretary and his family to New York and continued to work from hospital. The first operation lasted 14 hours. A year later, the cancer returned and he underwent more extreme surgery, lasting 22½ hours.
"I handled my problem my way, with a very radical solution," he says. His ex-wife, his estranged wife and his two grown-up daughters supported him throughout.
In the entrepreneurial sense, Bernerd was given up for dead but astonished his rivals by embarking on an 18-month fight in 2004 to take his company private. "Some of them expected me to lose my edge," he says, a smile behind the mask. "Some hoped. Some of them have had a shock. I won the fight."
"In a short time, you forgot about any disabilities he had,'' says one business associate. "What he did would have been monumental even for a man who was 100 per cent fit and 30 years old."
Then, just weeks after selling Chelsfield in a £2.1 billion deal, Bernerd was busy assembling a team of financial backers for what has become Chelsfield Partners.
There may be an element of bravado in Bernerd's refusal to let the disease conquer him but the people around him are in awe of what he has achieved, the scale of his physical rehabilitation and his apparent indifference to people's reaction to his damaged face.
Always suave and impeccably turned out, Bernerd was a man for whom appearances mattered. They still do, but now he is grateful simply to be alive. "The only thing you are interested in is the next day. Whether the sun is shining or it is raining, it's wonderful. How you look becomes less of a priority.
"The mask is my invention. I don't have to wear it at all. What's under it is not all that frightening, I can assure you. But I've got into the habit."
Most mouth cancer patients are fed with food supplements through a "peg" in the stomach and, after his second operation, Bernerd was told he would never have food by mouth again. (He refuses to go into detail about the surgery, but his jawbone was reconstructed with bone from his leg, leaving him with very limited tongue movement.)
He took the news with characteristic defiance. "I enjoy flavour and taste, so I taught myself to eat by mouth. I can have everything I want now - pasta, potatoes, fruit, sausages and fried eggs - but I have to have it puréed. Certain of my taste buds are more acute than they were before. I can work out what's in the food, even the herbs."
His chef prepares it specially for him. And when he goes to London's River Café, a place where he feels comfortable because his special requirements are understood, the co-proprietor-chef, Ruth Rogers, looks after him in the same way.
Though he has trouble with certain consonants and projecting his voice seems an effort, Bernerd's ability to communicate is astonishing for a man with so little movement in his tongue and lips.
"I have my moments," he says. "When I'm overtired, it's harder to talk. It depends on how happy or unhappy I am." He has become so expert in managing his condition and its side-effects - coughing in the night, a dry mouth - that Hutchison sends other patients to him for advice.
Bernerd has refused requests to speak about his illness because he doesn't want to be the subject of voyeuristic journalism, and he declined to be photographed for this article. Even now, he is reserving aspects of his singular medical history to be written up in a medical journal.
"It's not about me," he says repeatedly. It's about a cause that he and Hutchison are passionate about - the need for a scientific exchange of data between Britain's leading surgeons so that new and better ways can be found to treat mouth cancer. A team of independent researchers will work with surgeons to recruit patients into clinical studies.
"Saving Faces is the only charity dedicated to this," says Bernerd. "The survival rate for mouth and neck cancer is 60 per cent. I would like it to be 80 or even 90 per cent. We have a huge resource that is being lost to the world - every day, every week - because records of what surgeons do in their individual operations are not being kept. Once we have the data, we can make fast inroads into what will and will not help."
Hutchison believes a centralised system of analysis is essential. He envisages a data bank and a tumour bank. "The tumour that is removed is gold dust. It could be used for genetic studies or to trial new drugs. Surgeons often forget to collect samples."
Saving Faces runs programmes in schools to illustrate - gruesomely, in the case of mouth cancer - the dangers of smoking. It's an initiative Bernerd supports fiercely. "I can't bear the smell of smoke now and I won't have anyone near me who smokes. I find it repugnant for what it represents, not for me, but for society."
----------------
Elliott Bernerd kicks off takeover battle for Chelsfield
By Saeed Shah - independent.co.uk
Chelsfield was put up for auction yesterday after the property company's independent directors failed to recommend an £858m indicative bid from its chairman and founder, Elliott Bernerd.
Chelsfield was put up for auction yesterday after the property company's independent directors failed to recommend an £858m indicative bid from its chairman and founder, Elliott Bernerd.
The independent directors, led by Sir Bruce MacPhail, did not reject the 305p-a-share "proposal" however. The independent committee will now consult shareholders, some of whom were already making it plain yesterday that the bid undervalued the company. The independent directors said they "believe this [Bernerd] proposal may not fully reflect the long-term value of Chelsfield". The shares rose 4p to 315.5p.
Earlier this week, the committee rejected a 300p-a-share approach from Mr Bernerd's consortium, which speaks for 30 per cent of the company.
In taking the new offer to discuss with shareholders, the independent directors extracted what they believe to be a major concession from Mr Bernerd's side. He has committed his consortium to backing a better rival offer, if one emerges, after his 305p offer is recommended.
In this way, the independent committee believes it can, in effect, start an auction of the business. A statement from the independent directors talked of "certain other potentially interested parties". Other possible bidders were being deterred by Mr Elliott Bernerd's strong position and the fact that he could have held out as an awkward minority shareholder, should other investors accept a bid from a rival.
Standard Life Investments, which has a 3.3 per cent stake in Chelsfield, dismissed Mr Bernerd's approach. Helen Driver, a fund manager at Standard Life, said: "The proposed offer of 305p significantly undervalues the group. Any bid below 400p undervalues the company.... The bid process has been protracted and the disclosure provided by the company has been poor."
Mr Bernerd's initial approach was in the spring of this year. Industry sources said shareholders had grown impatient with the bid process. They said that, while 305p-a-share was not "materially different" from the 300p approach rejected by independent directors, the independent committee felt that it needed to sound out shareholders before it made further decisions.
The shares were trading under 200p before the first approach was revealed, though Chelsfield's last stated net asset value was 349p. The "adjusted" NAV being used by the independent directors is 299p.
-------------
| This site is for Mr Elliott Bernerd |
|
Profile: Just par for his course: For Elliott Bernerd, acquiring the Wentworth golf club marked another great round in a career of spectacular deals. Martin Tomkinson reports
MARTIN TOMKINSON - independent.co.uk
If joining a golf club is a dream for many people, being the person who actually owns Wentworth must rank as their ultimate fantasy.
Elliott Bernerd currently holds that fairy-tale position. This afternoon, while millions watch the televised climax of the Toyota World Matchplay Championship over Wentworth's West Course, the 47-year-old property tycoon can savour the occasion.
Compared with his last bout of publicity, when he was revealed as the provider of David Mellor's Mercedes and the flat where the then Heritage Secretary, his close friend, met Antonia de Sancha, Wentworth's autumnal splendour will make a welcome change.
He controls 52 per cent of Chelsfield, the company that owns the golf club. So Wentworth is more or less his to do with as he pleases.
But that, in part, is also Mr Elliott Bernerd's problem. First and foremost a businessman, he has made changes to Wentworth that have not been to everyone's liking. He has added a third, reportedly excellent course, is redeveloping the clubhouse and facilities, and upgrading the catering. Unfortunately, such improvements have to be paid for. The result has been that some veteran members have left. Others, who are being asked to pay a full subscription of pounds 2,150 next year, have stayed, while making their discontent known.
Their main grouse is that their distinguished, private club has been thrown open to the great unwashed, as long as they pay a green fee or their company purchased shares when Mr Bernerd sold 40 per cent of the club for pounds 32m last year (40 shares were sold at pounds 800,000 each).
For them, golf is a deep, abiding passion. In the case of Mr Bernerd, who is a fitness fanatic but not a mad-keen golfer, Wentworth appears to be just another stunningly successful property project. In 1988, Chelsfield and Benlox, a property investment company, paid pounds 17.7m for the club. Then Benlox sold its 40 per cent share to Chelsfield for pounds 12.5m. That was followed by last year's share issue valuing the whole club at pounds 80m.
A few months ago, Mr Bernerd scored another coup. In 1986, he bought a flat in Eaton Square, in London's fashionable Belgravia, for pounds 2m and has since spent about pounds 1m doing it up. But last May he was made the sort of offer that no one could refuse - pounds 10m from an unnamed Arab, widely believed to be Wafic Said, a Syrian-born businessman and former associate of Mark Thatcher.
At a time when the property market is at rock-bottom and although the flat, described as 'the finest in London', only has a 20-year lease from the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estates, Mr Bernerd turned a quick pounds 8m.
Mr Bernerd, divorced with two teenage daughters, is immaculately groomed from his mirror-glass shoes to his Savile Row lapels. Darkly good-looking, he sports a permanent tan, jet black hair and undeniable personal charm. He mixes with City grandees on one hand, and on the other with distinguished figures of the arts; he is chairman of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a regular at Glyndebourne and a serious purchaser of modern art.
Elliott Bernerd was born in May 1945. An only child, the son of a film producer father, he was seven when his parents divorced, leaving him in the care of his grandmother. He went to a number of schools, finally ending up at Davies Tutorial College in Holland Park which he left at 15, determined to make his way in property.
He started at the bottom, as a tea-boy in the offices of an investment trust, but soon moved to Michael Laurie & Partners, commercial estate agents, as a trainee.
He immediately hit it off with young Stephen Laurie, and at the tender age of 20 he became the fourth partner in the firm, and a full equity partner a year later.
His first deal was the letting of a shop in Wealdstone High Road to Radio Rentals. His lack of paper qualifications as a chartered surveyor worked to his advantage, as he was not prevented by any professional code from doing his own deals while also acting as an agent.
By 1972 the business had so flourished that the two young men received an offer from Barry East's Town & City Properties and they sold out, becoming non-executive directors of the larger company.
The property crash of 1973-4 proved a formative experience. He recalled: 'It was better than any Harvard course. Stephen and I had learned how to create assets from nothing. Then we had to find solutions to the balance sheet in a property market where there were no buyers at all. It was important to see how well some leading institutions and banks behaved and how badly others behaved. It was experience which only comes from being at the coalface.'.
His next test was more personal. In 1979, Stephen Laurie, his close partner for more than a decade, died of a brain tumour. Bernerd was devastated - 'Whatever happens, I know it can never be as bad as losing my partner' - but he somehow managed to weather the loss and went on in the Eighties to build a formidable array of City connections, including Sir Jeffrey Sterling, Stuart Lipton, Jacob Rothschild and Roger Seelig.
He also formed links with a solicitor turned private investigator called George Devlin.
Mr Bernerd has described the value to him of Mr Devlin's profession thus: 'I make reconnaissance a key feature of everything we do today. If you lose deals because your reconnaissance has not been fulfilled, it doesn't matter. There will always be other things to do.'
By 1986, Mr Bernerd was finally able to realise his own dream and form Chelsfield, his property company, and Mr Devlin became a founder-director. That year Mr Bernerd also became chairman of the LPO trustees, despite boasting that he could not distinguish a crotchet from a quaver. It was in this capacity that he first met David Mellor, another trustee and then a rising star in the Tory party.
By now he was being described in the press as the greatest deal-maker of his day - a single coup, the rescue and subsequent sale of the near-bankrupt Stockley Business Park, netted him a personal pounds 20m profit.
But a minor and innocent involvement in the Guinness affair revealed some of the pitfalls that go with such a reputation.
In the past, Mr Bernerd had dealt with the stock market player 'Black' Jack Dellal. He knew Mr Dellal, a multi- millionaire, and members of his family well. So when his friend Roger Seelig was looking for investors to support Guinness during the 1986 takeover battle for Distillers, Mr Bernerd offered to talk to Mr Dellal's sister, Swiss-based Victoria Seulberger-Simon, who agreed to buy pounds 17m of Guinness shares. When Mr Seelig subsequently stood trial for allegedly masterminding the illegal Guinness share support scheme, Mr Bernerd played a different role - as a prosecution witness. Mr Bernerd did not allow Guinness to divert him from deal-making. The past two years have seen his name linked to a succession of rescues for ailing property giants such as Mountleigh. However, his route now seems to be the public flotation of Chelsfield. The savage recession in the property market seems to have caused even Mr Bernerd some second thoughts, but word in the City is that the flotation will go ahead before the end of the year.
It seems that he will end up beneficially owning 52 per cent via the Bermuda- based company Chelsfield International. According to the offer documents for Laing Properties (mounted jointly by Chelsfield and his old friend Jeffrey Sterling of P & O in 1990), Mr Bernerd now beneficially owns about 80 per cent of Chelsfield International. These documents do not reveal who owns the remaining 20 per cent, except to state that 'the other two shareholders in CIL are foundations (each of which holds 10 per cent of the shares of CIL), the main objects of which are charitable'.
Earlier this year, it was revealed Mr Bernerd and along with his friend Mr Mellor were able to advise the Chelsea Football Club chairman, Ken Bates, in his battle to preserve the club against the wishes of its landlord, Cabra Estates. In a neat turning of the tables, Mr Bates was able to buy up around 29 per cent of Cabra's shares, becoming the largest shareholder. To observers, the football chief's timing smacked of the cool, steering hand of Mr Bernerd - although Mr Bernerd is not known as an ardent football fan. As with golf, football is business: at one time or another, Mr Bernerd has expressed a possible interest in redeveloping both Stamford Bridge and the jewel in Cabra's crown, Craven Cottage by the side of the Thames.
As the golfers wend their way around the West Course, nicknamed the Burma Road, this afternoon, it is hard not to recall the words of one old associate: 'Mr Bernerd is a creature of the jungle.' In the midst of the slump, animal cunning has served him well, so far.
|
