The Steeple Times

Category: THE BOLD AND THE DARING

  • Archibald Hall (AKA Archibald Thomson-Hall, Roy Fontaine, the Killer Butler and the Monster Butler, 1924 – 2002)

    Archibald Hall (AKA Archibald Thomson-Hall, Roy Fontaine, the Killer Butler and the Monster Butler, 1924 – 2002)

    Archibald HallA bisexual conman, thief and serial killer who targeted the aristocracy. Hall was born in Glasgow and took elocution lessons during his first of many stints in jail. He variously pretended to be an Arab sheikh, a Lord and Sir George Aylwen and claimed to have had affairs with Lord Boothby and the playwright Terence Rattigan. He published his autobiography, The Perfect Gentleman, in 1999. In it, this crooked murderer stated: “There is a side of me, when aroused, that is cold and completely heartless”.

     

  • Paul Reichmann (1930 – 2013)

    Paul Reichmann (1930 – 2013)

    Paul ReichmannThis Vienna born Canadian businessman built and lost a fortune on Canary Wharf and was renowned for his frugality and as a “man of honour”. Strictly Jewish, Reichmann also developed New York’s Financial Center and donated up to $50 million a year to yeshivas, synagogues and hospitals around the world. His view on life was simple: “What could have been is a silly way to look at things. You are what you are”.

  • Yan Assoun

    Yan Assoun

    Yan Assoun and Polina ProshkinaThe term “bonfire of the bankers” truly applies to the life of this divorced Frenchman who has variously been based in London and New York. Back in 2009, he told Bloomberg: “I haven’t cried yet” after being made redundant by Credit Suisse in 2009 and then in October 2013, party loving Assoun informed a London court: “I don’t have any money… Yes I own a $3.3 million New York apartment — it doesn’t mean I’m rich”. This managing partner of the MYD Markets trade execution firm is plainly a man in need of a better publicist.

  • Catherine Hooper

    Catherine Hooper

    Catherine HooperThe founder of Black Umbrella moved in with Andrew Madoff three days before the black storm of his father’s Ponzi scheme broke. Hooper, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, launched her firm – which aids individuals with “emergency preparedness” and sells such items as anti-radiation suits and pocket sized radiation detectors – in 2009 and profited from her role in “arranging” the 2011 book Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family. She found it nigh on impossible to rent a TriBeCa flat despite a budget of $20,000 a month in 2012 due to landlords not wanting her partner in their properties. In 2012, she told Fortune: “You can’t let someone else write your epitaph”.

  • Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun

    Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun

    Ingrid Lederhaas-OkunIf being vice president of product development at Tiffany’s isn’t enough, why not help yourself to a little bit more to be sure? That’s just what Georgetown University graduate Ingrid Lederhaas-Okun did after 22 years with the company. Married to a hedge fund manager named Robert Okun, this sociable sort was used to Manhattan galas and weekends in Darien, Connecticut but decided she’d also help herself to $2 million of her employer’s property. Of the 164 items that have never been returned, in July 2013 she commented: “I knew it was illegal to steal, and I did so regardless… I’m very sorry”.

  • Nicholas van Hoogstraten (also known as Adolph von Hessen and born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten)

    Nicholas van Hoogstraten (also known as Adolph von Hessen and born Nicholas Marcel Hoogstraten)

    Nicholas van HoogstratenThis controversial tycoon is allegedly worth £500 million and believes Robert Mugabe to be “one hundred percent decent and incorruptible”. Nicknamed “The Maniac in the Mink” and “Nasty Nick”, van Hoogstraten is famed for a still unfinished mansion in Sussex with a frontage larger than Buckingham Palace and being exceptionally stingy with teabags. Of a nun who hit him with a chair leg at the Jesuit school he attended, he stated: “I grabbed it and hit her – and she never tried it again” and of himself, the father of five children by three women once commented: “Well a lot of people think I’m mad”. We most certainly agree.

  • Jesse Livermore (1877 – 1940)

    Jesse Livermore (1877 – 1940)

    Jesse LivermoreOne of the greatest traders ever to have lived. This thrice married American was famed for making and losing several multi-million dollar fortunes and once stated: “People who look for easy money invariably pay for the privilege of proving conclusively that it cannot be found on this earth”. Bankers today should pay heed. Nicknamed the “Boy Plunger” and “Great Bear of Wall Street”, Livermore’s end was tragic. A sufferer of clinical depression, Livermore shot himself in a cloakroom at The Sherry-Netherland Hotel in November 1940.

  • Michelle Mone OBE

    Michelle Mone OBE

    Michelle MoneWhen her husband left her, she could of ‘moaned’ but instead she got on with it and paid her now ex-husband some £24 million for his share of her lingerie business. Glasgow born, Mone “”grew up a Scottish, Labour voting Protestant and is now a Conservative voting Catholic” but it is for her patented Ultimo bra that women love her most. Like Margaret Thatcher before her, this high achiever sleeps for only 4 hours each night and goes for a 5-mile jog every morning. She especially likes the lyrics of Michael Buble’s Haven’t Met You Yet.

  • Hillel Nahmad (AKA “Helly Nahmad”)

    Hillel Nahmad (AKA “Helly Nahmad”)

    Hillel NahmadA scion of a prominent art dealing dynasty, Hillel Nahmad (or “Helly” as he’s known to his friends), is the proprietor of the Helly Nahmad Gallery. (more…)

  • Andreas Panayiotou

    Andreas Panayiotou

    Andreas PanayiotouA self-made mogul and former champion boxer who cannot read or write fluently. He thinks “differently” and built a £400 million fortune by creating and then selling a buy-to-let empire of almost 6,000 rental properties. Panayiotou takes the view that it is “moral[ly]” right to pay taxes in Britain and of those who call Heath Hall, a £65 million property he developed in North London, as “impersonally hideous as a brothel”, he rightly responds: “These guys are just jealous”. This maverick is indeed a businessman worthy of admiration rather than envy.