M&S: FOPS who made a killing

THEIRS is a club of unique exclusivity for which the old adage 'It's not what you know, but who you know' might have been coined. A disparate bunch, they are drawn into each other's lives by the one factor that drives them all - a love of making money.

Plus an instinct for doing so that exasperates and is even offensive to people on modest incomes struggling to pay their mortgages.

These men have two other things in common. They all know legendary retail tycoon Philip Green and they all bought shares in M&S before the aforesaid Green launched his audacious takeover bid for the ailing company on 27 May.

Take party-loving Michael Spencer, who will no doubt be completely frank with the investigating City watchdog the Financial Services Authority about the reasons behind his decision to buy £5.5m worth of M&S shares on 10 May.

The shares are now worth £7.2m, profiting Spencer, the City's richest man with a fortune approaching £400m, by £1.7m.

Or Tom Hunter, the property magnate who once sold sports shoes from the back of a van but is now the richest man in Scotland. On 16 April, he bought 375,000 M&S shares which are now worth £1.36m - a profit of £460,000 destined, apparently, for the trust fund he has set up for his two sons. A great deal of money to most of us, but small change, you may think, to a man worth half a billion at least.

As for Stuart Rose, the new M&S boss who is also worth tens of millions, his paper profit on £277,000 of shares bought on 7 May is a relatively modest £86,000. Pocket money.

The FSA - now investigating M&S share deals around the time that Bhs owner Philip Green (estimated worth, £3bn) was assembling his £8.4bn takeover bid for the High Street store, which sharply pushed up the share price - will be questioning all three tycoons.

The FSA has already dispatched Section 212 notices to a number of people jokily known as 'FOPs' (friends of Philip Green) requiring them to disclose details of their share dealings during the relevant period.

They include Formula One motor racing boss Bernie Ecclestone, who is worth £2bn or so, the property billionaire Reuben brothers, and Allan Leighton, chairman of Royal Mail. It is a broad sweep - many of the recipients of the notices, it must be stressed, may never have even considered the purchase of M&S shares.

They are being contacted by the City watchdog because they know Green. Of course, the word 'friend' can often be hugely overworked in matters of high finance, and may mask a fierce, obsessive rivalry. Tycoons can be friends who, far from passing sensitive information to each other, keep it tightly to themselves.

Social circuit

DOUBTLESS when Rose, Spencer and Green were all enjoying themselves in Sydney at the Rugby World Cup last November, the last thing they would have talked about was business.

And the fact that Messrs Green, Rose, Spencer and Hunter are all on the intimate social circuit created by Mark Birley through his exclusive clubs Annabel's, Mark's, Harry's Bar and George is to be expected only among businessmen wealthy enough to pay their prices.

Spencer belongs to three - Annabel's, Mark's (traditional moguls' meeting places for lunch) and Harry's Bar; Green is a member of Harry's Bar; Rose and Hunter are members of George.

Since all four are known to enjoy eating good food and drinking fine wines, they would be bumping into each other quite a lot, so one has to wonder about the significance of murmured conversations in the bustle of the Chelsea Flower Show, or of a brief phone call from Green to Rose suggesting a meeting.

There are also business links. Spencer and Rose are directors of Image Restaurants, which owns several upmarket London premises including The @venue in St James's, used so much by the Queen's staff that it is known as 'the Buckingham Palace canteen'.

Hunter and Green are old friends who have done big business together - Green helped Hunter buy the Olympus sports shops chain for £15m in 1995 which was later sold on at a huge profit.

For each of these figures, such deals are not just about making money for its own sake, nor even the sheer enjoyment they get from the luxuries and power that money brings. It is also about the palpitating pleasure of winning.

Spencer, who once asked police to investigate allegations that a rival firm's executives had considered using a hitman to assassinate him, is a gambler turned bookmaker.

In 1986 he founded his company ICAP with just £80,000. Today it is the world's biggest money-trading broker, employing 2,800 people, some of whom received £2m bonuses last year. Spencer, 49, married with three children, has been known to bet on how many lace-up shoes were under the table at lunch or how many sugar lumps were in the bowl.

He covers his bathroom walls in Holland Park and in Suffolk, where he owns a rambling former rectory in five acres, with press cuttings about his money-making skills.

Gold disaster

HE WAS the brilliant son of a colonial civil servant in Malaya, and went to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to read physics, after which he put his mathematical skills to use making money in the City.

He has not always been as correct in his judgments as his recent purchase of M&S shares. He lost one early job because he spent so much time playing backgammon at the Clermont club in Mayfair. Later he lost everything he had - around £40,000 - betting that the price of gold would fall when Russia invaded Afghanistan. Instead, its value quadrupled.

That error cost him his job, and he calls it 'a painful but useful lesson in speculation', adding: 'Trying to get rich quick more often than not results in getting poorer quicker.'

These days, the balding Spencer enjoys being seen as a buccaneer, in his trademark red braces and owlish spectacles, challenging the world to take him on while casually ordering another bottle of his favourite wine, Cheval Blanc 1982, at almost £6,000 a time.

For some years, Spencer has been as notorious for his parties - often fancy dress - as Philip Green, thinking nothing of spending half a million pounds on entertaining friends.

Five years ago some of his employees ran riot in a Hampshire hotel at the end of a birthday bash, letting off fire extinguishers and reportedly dragging guests from their beds. They caused £20,000 damage and, while Spencer solemnly admitted they 'behaved very badly', he claimed reports were exaggerated. He would, wouldn't he?

He does, at least, openly enjoy his money, with two Aston Martins and a Mercedes with his company name ICAP on the number plate.

He has also put money into Ipswich Town FC, mischievously allowing himself to be built up as a rival to millionaire cook Delia Smith, who has put large sums into Ipswich's East Anglian rivals, Norwich City FC.

'I assume one day I'll just lose my desire to make more money, and then I'll stop,' Spencer says. 'I've secretly always had a big number in mind.' How big? 'Too big for the M&S profit to make a difference,' says a friend.

Hunter, who left university in 1983 with a marketing degree, is a very different man. Quiet and unassuming, his red Ferrari is one of the few openly displayed trappings of vast wealth. But flaunting his riches would not go down very well in the coastal resort of Troon, Ayrshire, where he, wife Marion and their two sons live quiet lives.

Hunter was forced into business because he couldn't find work. He hired an ageing Transit van and began selling cheap footwear in local markets. Eventually he persuaded a department store to allow him to set up under its roof.

Soon he had sports shoe outlets in several stores, but it was when, with Green's help, he bought out the Olympus chain that his rapid expansion began.

In 1998, when he sold out, he pocketed £250m, but staff at the Ayrshire-based company called him a 'traitor' when he announced 550 job losses forced through by the new English-based owners.

Since then, his fortune has grown with shrewd property investments, often based on intelligence gathered during visits to London.

'Study in contrasts'

WHICH brings us to Rose, who is said to have taken a call from Green and bought his 100,000 block of M&S shares later that afternoon on 7 May. 'I have nothing to hide,' says Rose, who was appointed chief executive of the High Street chain some three weeks later, on 31 May.

He and his friend, the rough-and-tumble Green, have been described as 'a study in contrasts', one gently spoken, with a smoothness polished over years working in the food department at M&S before moving on, the other loud, frank and foul-mouthed.

Rose, hastily-appointed chief executive of the High Street retailer to help block the Green bid, considers his extraordinary wine cellar with its Montrachet and grand cru burgundies to be his most precious possession, while Green is very fond of the jewel-encrusted solid gold Monopoly set commissioned from Asprey as a present from his wife Tina.

Rose's paternal grandparents were White Russians and his mother committed suicide when he was 24. He believes this focused his ambitions. 'She believed in me and I wanted to prove her right,' he says.

He and his wife of 13 years, who have two children, are separated but have a 'cordial relationship'. His enjoyment of his money is most transparently manifested in his flying to Le Touquet for lunch in his four-seater Rockwell Commander plane, and wearing Hermes silk socks at £26 a pair.

Rose, who has a Mayfair apartment and, like Spencer, a country house in Suffolk, is not a party animal, much preferring private dinner parties. And yet he accepted Green's invitation to the Bhs billionaire's glistening 50th birthday toga party for 200 friends in Cyprus.

Friends one minute, bitter rivals the next.

The FSA will have a difficult task unscrambling the facts behind the share deals that made these rich men just that little bit richer.