Bolton Wanderers Football Club Fan Forum for all BWFC Supporters.


You are not connected. Please login or register

Eddie Davies - Obituary

+6
BoltonTillIDie
luckyPeterpiper
Boggersbelief
karlypants
Growler
Sluffy
10 posters

Go to page : 1, 2  Next

Reply to topic

Go down  Message [Page 1 of 2]

1Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Eddie Davies - Obituary Fri Sep 21 2018, 22:57

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

Excellent article here - well worth a read (a big thank you to Frensic Fred for brining it to our attention).

By Ian King, Sky's Business Presenter.

Read the latest speeches from the likes of the Archbishop of Canterbury and John McDonnell and one could be forgiven for assuming most business leaders are rapacious, callous souls with no thoughts other than to enrich themselves and - possibly - their shareholders.
There probably are some business folk out there like that, but they are decidedly in the minority. Most are just as thoughtful, caring and considerate as every other human being.
And, every so often, there comes along an exceptional business person who does fantastic things for wider society without making a big song and dance about it. Tragically, we have just lost one such individual.

Eddie Davies, who died last week aged 72, is perhaps best known for his bankrolling of Bolton Wanderers.
During that time, the club enjoyed more than a decade in the Premier League, four successive top-eight finishes and its first campaigns in Europe.
It was the millions he invested that bankrolled Sam Allardyce's successful management of the Trotters and enabled the signing of globally-recognised stars such as Jay Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka, Youri Djorkaeff, Bruno Ngotty, Ivan Campo and Fernando Hierro.
When he handed over control of the club in March 2016, following the most successful period in its history, he wrote off £171m in loans he had made to it and left it with an extra £15m as a farewell gift.
His passing has prompted an outpouring of love and affection, both from within football and across the North West.
The actor and comedian Paddy McGuinness summed up the feelings of many when he praised Ed for investing millions of pounds of his money "putting a smile on the faces" of Bolton supporters.

His backing of Wanderers reflected his pride in where he came from.
Born into a working class family in Little Lever, a village two-and-a-half-miles away from Bolton, he was educated at nearby Farnworth Grammar School. Alan Ball, one of England's 1966 World Cup-winning team, was a contemporary.
Ed became a Bolton supporter as a boy when, in 1958, the Trotters - led by Nat Lofthouse - won the FA Cup.
But his hometown club, which paid tribute with a minute's applause and wreath-laying ceremony before last Saturday's home match with Queen's Park Rangers, was merely one of a number of local institutions and organisations that Ed backed generously.
He was, for example, to have been the guest of honour at the opening of the Egyptology Gallery at Bolton Museum on Saturday, having helped finance it.
As a child, he had developed a passion for art and culture at the museum, eventually inspiring him to become a collector of paintings and ceramics.

Another local institution he supported was the Royal Bolton Hospital. It received £200,000 from him towards a new coronary care unit after Ed underwent a heart bypass operation in 1996.

He also donated towards the original National Football Museum just up the road in Preston.
Ed, who never lost his warm Lancashire accent, once said: "I have got Bolton written through me like [a stick of] rock. I have been born and bred in Bolton and, although I travel all over the world, I still pick up the paper to find out what's happening in Bolton. I'm still a Bolton lad at heart."
Other institutions Ed supported included Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), where he studied during the 1980s, for which he funded a Chair in Entrepreneurship.
The AMBS library was renamed the Eddie Davies Library in 2004 in recognition of his generous support of library services at the university (full disclosure: Ed was also chair of the AMBS Advisory Board, to which he recently recruited me).
Further afield, he was a generous supporter of the Victoria & Albert Museum, to which he donated many of the pieces of art he had collected, and the museum named its Edwin and Susan Davies Galleries in honour of him and his wife Sue.
His donations of more than £1m also helped construct the much-admired Davies Alpine House at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.

Ed was able to make these generous contributions because of the wealth he accumulated during a successful business career.
After graduating with a degree in mathematics from Durham University, he joined the Lancashire-based Scapa Group, then an industrial manufacturer of paper, travelling around the world in its employ and at one stage running its Latin American operations from Brazil during a difficult period of runaway inflation.
In 1984 and still in his 30s, he was headhunted to run Strix Group - a two-year-old manufacturer of thermostats for electric kettles based on the Isle of Man - by its founder and inventor John Taylor.
Within a few years, it was the world's biggest supplier of heating controls for kettles, and by the turn of the century it accounted for around three-quarters of global supplies.
Its devices were by then found in kettles in around one in five homes around the world and used an estimated one billion times daily.
The pair sold the business to private equity in 2005 but Ed stayed on as non-executive and continued to hold a modest stake in the business.
He remained proud of Strix, which floated on the stock market in August last year, arguing its prospects remained as strong as ever.
Business people and entrepreneurs do not always get credit for their wider contribution to society. Some, like Ed, do not actively seek it.
Yet the world would be worse off without such people. It is certainly worse off without Eddie Davies. We could do with a few more like him.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

2Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 09:05

Growler


Tony Kelly
Tony Kelly

Eddie Davies wouldn't pay Bolton Wanderers' tax bill when he was the owner, that's what i'll remember him for.

3Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 10:00

Guest


Guest

Bit unfair, didn’t he wipe off £200 million in debts in the sale but said any new owner had to pick up the tax bill?

4Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 10:28

karlypants

karlypants
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!

5Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 10:34

Boggersbelief

Boggersbelief
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

karlypants wrote:We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!

Had the best times, splashing money we didn’t have.

Caught up with us eventually and has put us in this dramatic decline ever since. We still haven’t recovered

6Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 13:50

luckyPeterpiper

luckyPeterpiper
Ivan Campo
Ivan Campo

That's true boggers but it was a hell of a ride while it lasted. I for one will never forget the sight of World class and World Cup winning players in our shirt making the likes of Man Utd and Arsenal look ordinary. We might not see those days again in my lifetime and perhaps we shouldn't have spent that sort of money back then but if nothing else those of us lucky enough to have been there will always remember when BWFC were a major force to be reckoned with and no one looked forward to playing us.

7Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 14:49

Growler


Tony Kelly
Tony Kelly

karlypants wrote:We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!
The glorious era was under Sam Allardyce, it turned to shit when Sam Allardyce left.

8Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 15:16

karlypants

karlypants
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

Growler wrote:
karlypants wrote:We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!
The glorious era was under Sam Allardyce, it turned to shit when Sam Allardyce left.

And who funded it?

9Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 15:28

luckyPeterpiper

luckyPeterpiper
Ivan Campo
Ivan Campo

Actually I'd say the real glory years started under Bruce Rioch and Sam was the culmination of that process. In truth it was great to be a Bolton fan pretty much all the way from 1992/93 to when Sam left. However I doubt those awesome Premiership years would have happened without Eddie.

10Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 15:50

Growler


Tony Kelly
Tony Kelly

karlypants wrote:
Growler wrote:
karlypants wrote:We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!
The glorious era was under Sam Allardyce, it turned to shit when Sam Allardyce left.

And who funded it?
Sky Tv and normal revenue from things like ticket sales and sponsorship provided the money during the Sam Allardyce era.

11Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 15:56

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

Growler wrote:
karlypants wrote:
Growler wrote:
karlypants wrote:We had the best times under ED. People like growler seem to forget that!
The glorious era was under Sam Allardyce, it turned to shit when Sam Allardyce left.

And who funded it?
Sky Tv and normal revenue from things like ticket sales and sponsorship provided the money during the Sam Allardyce era.

That was enough to buy us Anelka then?

:bomb:


12Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 17:12

Growler


Tony Kelly
Tony Kelly

Anelka.That would be the deal Eddie paid himself £1.5 million out  of the club accounts as a transfer success fee .Odd behavior for a man who gave the club £170 million according to some.Did Jack Walker take a cut of the fee when he sold Shearer?
Bolton budgeted to finish 4th bottom according to Gartside in the first few seasons.It was worth £400k or so a league position in those days so Allardyce's 8th,6th, 7th league positions the 3 seasons before Anelka signed would have funded that deal

13Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 21:39

BoltonTillIDie

BoltonTillIDie
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

Nice little tribute here:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

14Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Sat Sep 22 2018, 21:59

karlypants

karlypants
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

BoltonTillIDie wrote:Nice little tribute here:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Nice to see him get a mention on TV.

15Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Wed Sep 11 2019, 21:02

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

One year ago today since Eddie died.



16Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Wed Sep 11 2019, 21:08

karlypants

karlypants
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

He will no doubt be sleeping better knowing his beloved club has been saved.

17Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Wed Sep 11 2019, 21:49

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

He won't be sleeping easier though if he knew that Iles seems to be launching an attack on him on the first anniversary of his death!

18Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Thu Sep 12 2019, 08:48

Norpig

Norpig
Nat Lofthouse
Nat Lofthouse

Iles has a point in my opinion. For all the good he undoubtedly did he left us in a massive mess when he pulled out of the club.

19Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Thu Sep 12 2019, 11:00

rammywhite

rammywhite
Frank Worthington
Frank Worthington

Anybody who criticises ED needs to take a long hard look at themselves. His money gave us the best times we have had for decades- it was a brilliant ride. If he hadn't put his money in and then wrote it all off we would be in the  same position we are in now, or probably worse. Some people make out he did damage to the club and that is a monstrous suggestion. Without his cash we would just have been a struggling outfit as we are now. He lifted us out of that for a good few years and gave us a period of success that none of us will ever see again.
He didn't dictate how the cash was use- he left that to a series of poor quality professional managers ( and a subsequent charlatan owner) who dragged us down year by year and we ended up where we are now.

20Eddie Davies - Obituary Empty Re: Eddie Davies - Obituary Thu Sep 12 2019, 12:40

Sluffy

Sluffy
Admin

Well said Rammy.

Here's the ST's Board member (and its public face) Maggie Tetlow's opinion however!

" Who is to blame? It goes back further than Ken Anderson, who has been owner since March 2016. To me Anderson is definitely to blame but the writing was on the wall when it was Phil Gartside, chairman from 1999 to 2015, to be honest. There didn’t seem to be any checks and balances, it was a closed shop, nobody got to know what was going on behind the scenes. It felt as if they just ruled everything between them, and you just think: where on earth did the money go? All those seasons in the Premier League, where did it all go?

You just can’t believe we’ve ended up in the situation where we are. It was bad management and kicking the can down the road, and not investing in the future, not being frugal".

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Sponsored content



Back to top  Message [Page 1 of 2]

Go to page : 1, 2  Next

Reply to topic

Permissions in this forum:
You can reply to topics in this forum