Residence Switzerland Nationality British | Name Stewart Ford Role Businessman | |
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Full Name Stewart Owen Ford Occupation Founder and CEO, Keydata Net worth GBP £160million (September 2010) | ||
Stewart Owen Ford (born 1964) is a British businessman, the founder and chief executive (CEO) of the failed financial company Keydata. He was fined a record £75 million by the Financial Conduct Authority in May 2015.
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Early life
Stewart Owen Ford was born in 1964. When he was 10 years old, his alcoholic mother left him at an orphanage in Edinburgh "for a weekend that turned into seven years"; he lived there until he was 17.
Career
Ford studied printing in London when he was 20. Afterwards, he went back to Edinburgh and started in business for himself. He had a career as a printer, publisher and then a financial services entrepreneur.
By 2010, prior to Keydata's collapse, he was living in Switzerland, and his net worth was estimated at £160 million.
According to Richard Dyson from This is Money, the demise of Keydata in 2010 "almost certainly claimed the savings of more than 40,000 people".
On 26 May 2015, it was announced that Ford had been fined a record £75 million by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA fine is in connection with the alleged mis-selling of £475 million of "death bonds", wrongly encouraging buyers to believe that they were entitled to tax-free ISAs. Ford is counter-suing the FCA for £370 million, claiming that the closure of Keydata was "politically motivated", that the company was a "highly successful" one with nearly £3 billion of assets under management, and that his reputation had sufferered "grievous and irreparable" harm.
According to Ford, the one-day Upper Tribunal case management hearing for his challenge to the FCA's decision to fine him £75 million has been set for 23 September 2015.