How to spend IT?

(By Richard Holway 7.00am 8th July 09) So you’ve earned your fortune by selling your IT company. How do you spend IT? A yacht perhaps? A helicopter? An aeroplane?

Seems the most coveted IT ‘Boy’s Toy’ is a football or rugby club. John O’Connel, Paul Thompson, Patrick Cryne, Chris Moore…the list goes on of IT people we know that have ‘invested’ in football or rugby clubs. (When I say ‘invested’ I use it in the same way as “I invested in a Sunday lunch at the Waterside Inn” or “I invested in a Madoff investment fund”)

Latest example is Keith Todd who has joined a Japanese consortium to buy a 51% stake in Plymouth FC. (See Todd could be on board if Kagami takes over from The Plymouth Herald; the first and probably only use of that source on HotViews) Todd is chairman and chief executive officer of FFastFill plc. But we knew him best in the late 1990s as CEO of ICL in one of their most troubled period leading to Richard Christou’s elevation from CFO in 2000.
Don’t get me wrong, what people spend their money on is clearly their business. But as an ‘investment’ it never stacks up. I know of many that have lost millions in the process!