Billionaire John Caudwell: Britain needs to stop criticising the wealthy and start celebrating success
Phones4U founder John Caudwell’s new Riviera development features a £250k statue of himself. Billionares should be proud of their success, he tells Felix Armstrong
“If I was trying to purely make money, I would have built student accommodation in Manchester and put another 5,000 Chinese people in there,” billionaire and philanthropist John Caudwell says as he prepares for the opening of his £300m development on the French Riviera.
“I only say Chinese because my son went to university in Manchester, and the building that he was in was full of Chinese people,” he clarifies, “our universities are really successful at attracting foreigners from all over the world to come and study, which is great to see.”
Upon setting foot in Le Provencal, Caudwell’s ten-storey passion project in the south of France, two facts immediately become apparent: a lot of money went into this development, and it is far from certain that a lot will come back out.
The businessman says he is not expecting to make anything out of this project, and wanted only to “create the very, very best in class that was the best in the area, the best in the world”.
Caudwell founded Phones4U in 1987 and scaled the business to become the UK’s largest independent mobile phone retailer, operating more than 600 stores before he sold its parent company for just under £1.5bn in 2006.
The businessman has since taken on a number of major property projects and is currently developing 1 Mayfair in London, which he claims will be the most valuable apartment complex in the world.
Labour wealth policies ‘disastrously unfair’
It is the early hours of the morning and 73-year-old Caudwell – a fitness enthusiast – is fresh from a two-hour cycle from Monaco, but these factors do not dim his energetic enthusiasm for Le Provencal.
Caudwell jumps up from his seat on the balcony of one of the building’s many luxury apartments to gesture at features of the renovation work he oversaw – details of which he has an impressive memory, given that the project has been decades in the making.
Le Provencal was originally built as a hotel 100 years ago, but stood derelict for 20 years before Caudwell spotted the building on a cycle ride along the coast – and for another 20 years after that.
If you drive people out, how do you attract new people that are not in?
Caudwell has personally overseen the redevelopment of the site into 41 super-luxury flats and penthouses, and the properties opened to agents on Wednesday.
The development will host dozens of the world’s most wealthy, some of whom may have recently left the UK. Caudwell says Labour’s decision to end the non-dom regime, which ended tax breaks for foreign residents, was “disastrously unfair”.
“There’s a handful of friends in Monaco that have left the UK. That’s just in my life, you know, with my connections,” he says.
Labour’s “draconian” Budgets are “driving people off,” Caudwell says, “but that’s not the end story, because if you drive people out, how do you attract new people that are not in?”
Churchill, Fitzgerald former visitors
The billionaire backed Sir Keir Starmer at the 2024 general election but says he feels “misled” by the Labour party and hopes to switch his allegiance back to the Tories.
The government’s policies – including the end to non-dom status and its hikes to minimum wages and national insurance contributions – have undermined its ability to help the most vulnerable, Caudwell says.
“We’re all pushing to the same level of success to make Britain successful, to make companies successful, and as a consequence to be able to look after the poorer people in society […] and I think what Labour have done is just misguided,” he says.
People in the UK want to knock successful businessmen off of their pedestals
In its heyday, Le Provencal attracted starry guests including Zelda Fitzgerald, Coco Chanel and the cream of Britain’s aristocracy. Villa Zelda, which will go on the market for €27m, looks onto a lawn where Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald and former Prime Minister Winston Churchill reportedly shared a bottle of whiskey.
“I think it’s great that you’ve got that extra heritage,” Caudwell says.”When you talk about all these names, and it’s also inspirational for some of the interior design that you do, so it’s affected the naming of the rooms, and it’s affected the style of the place,” he adds.
Caudwell’s £250k statue – of himself
Muscling in alongside this line up of celebrities, authors and politicians is Caudwell himself. The development’s founder has immortalised himself in the form of a £250k marble statue at the property’s entryway, casually posed in a water fountain, clad in jeans and a suit jacket.
Has this statue always been planned as the development’s centrepiece? “No,” he laughs, “that was an afterthought”. Caudwell admits he has read the comments beneath The Times’ coverage of the statue: “Most people were very on-side about it. But you still get quite a decent percentage of naysayers,” he said.
Does he feel that our society is uncomfortable with wealth? “We’re clearly not the Americans, [who] praise people who are successful. Often in the UK [when] people are successful, people want to knock them off the pedestal. You can see that on my social media all the time,” he says.
Caudwell has committed to giving away 70 per cent of his wealth to charity, and thinks every billionaire in the world should do the same. “In spite of that, there’s always people who want to keep criticising,” he says, adding: “I think Britain ought to be more proud of success.”
There is no better symbol of pride, then, than the 7ft likeness which looks out on Le Provencal, and the dozens of million-pound properties that lie within.
While Caudwell wants his charitable work to be his biggest legacy, he admits he is “proud of this building.” He says: “I just came up with the thought: ‘why aren’t I doing something that identifies me with the building?’. There is a plaque going up, but that’s not very prominent, really. So I just suddenly came up with the idea: why don’t I put a statue in that pool?”
With the epic regeneration project – and the statue – Caudwell has ensured he’ll become part of the site’s legacy alongside its famous patrons of the past.