Charles Wigoder
Encyclopedia
Charles Wigoder is an English
telecommunications entrepreneur
and philanthropist, associated with building both Peoples Phone and Telecom Plus (The Utility Warehouse) into substantial and successful businessses.
Lord Wigoder, QC
PC
(his children are entitled to use The Honourable title), Wigoder studied accountancy and law at University of Kent
.
Wigoder qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG
in 1984 and was subsequently employed by Kleinwort Securities
as an investment analyst in the media and communication sectors, where he met Michael Green
. Green later hired Wigoder in 1985 as head of corporate finance and development at television services company Carlton Communications
, to accelerate the growth of the organisation; whilst he was there, turnover grew from under £5m to over £200m. He subsequently moved to Sangers Photographic, a USM
listed wholesaler of photographic equipment, where he was responsible for rebranding the business as Quadrant Group. He took the business to a full stock market listing, and expanded its activities to encompass three separate divisions covering photographic, video and communications services.
, Nokia
, Marconi, Philips
and Motorola
. The business was highly cash generative; however a decision to write off all customer acquisition costs directly against profits meant that the company reported a loss after taxation of £10.6m on turnover of £175m for the financial year ended 31 October 1995. Following a disagreement between the major shareholders on the future strategy for the company, it was acquired by Vodafone
in November 1996 for £77m; however Wigoder only collected £6.5M from the deal, as most of the company was owned by venture capital
investors. Vodafone followed this deal with further acquisitions within the sector (namely Astec and Talkland in December 1996) giving it greater control over the customers using its network. According to Vodafone's 1997 annual report and accounts, Peoples Phone made £4.1m in the period to end of 1996.
shortly after its formation in 1998, investing heavily and listing it on the London Stock Exchange
(ticker = TEP).
Wigoder believed there was a significant opportunity to build a business supplying communications and energy services to the mass residential market, in competition with the former monopoly providers of such services, as de-regulation progressively opened up these sectors. It was clear to him that a low-cost route to market would prove to be a critical element in any successful business model, and he therefore established a multi-level marketing
system of agents across the United Kingdom to promote their services. In just over 12 years, the Company has gained more than 300,000 domestic and small-business customers through combining better value with consistently high standards of customer service. Trading as The Utility Warehouse, Telecom Plus is a “virtual” retailer, with no shops and no advertising, supported by a sophisticated head office infrastructure with more than 400 staff (most of whom are employed to support their customers). The business now has over 30,000 independent distributors, many of whom earn a significant recurring monthly income from their part-time involvement in promoting the Company's services to their friends, family and colleagues at work.
Low costs allow Telecom Plus to offer competitive tariffs to their customers, which has driven growth in customer numbers by an average of more than 30% pa over the 3 years to March 2009. Turnover grew to £136.3m (2007), £175m (2008) and £278m (2009), and pre-tax profits for these three years were £11.5m, £16.5m and £22.5m respectively. [6].
In 2001 Wigoder was the winner of the Communications category in the UK "Entrepreneur of the Year" awards sponsored by Ernst & Young, Citibank and the Times, and in 2009, he collected the award for Company of the Year at the Quoted Company Awards on behalf of Telecom Plus Plc.
. Wigoder is an expert bridge
player who won the prestigious Cavendish Invitational Teams in 2004.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
telecommunications entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
and philanthropist, associated with building both Peoples Phone and Telecom Plus (The Utility Warehouse) into substantial and successful businessses.
Biography
The son of The Right HonourableThe Right Honourable
The Right Honourable is an honorific prefix that is traditionally applied to certain people in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Anglophone Caribbean and other Commonwealth Realms, and occasionally elsewhere...
Lord Wigoder, QC
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
PC
Privy council
A privy council is a body that advises the head of state of a nation, typically, but not always, in the context of a monarchic government. The word "privy" means "private" or "secret"; thus, a privy council was originally a committee of the monarch's closest advisors to give confidential advice on...
(his children are entitled to use The Honourable title), Wigoder studied accountancy and law at University of Kent
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
.
Wigoder qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG
KPMG
KPMG is one of the largest professional services networks in the world and one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PwC. Its global headquarters is located in Amstelveen, Netherlands....
in 1984 and was subsequently employed by Kleinwort Securities
Kleinwort Benson
Kleinwort Benson is a leading Private Bank that offers a wide range of financial services to private and corporate clients from offices throughout the United Kingdom and Channel Islands. The bank has its headquarters on St George Street in Mayfair, and is supported by seven UK regional and two...
as an investment analyst in the media and communication sectors, where he met Michael Green
Michael Green (television magnate)
Michael Philip Green is a British businessman.He attended Haberdashers' Aske's School in Elstree, Hertfordshire on a scholarship and left, aged 17, with four O-Levels....
. Green later hired Wigoder in 1985 as head of corporate finance and development at television services company Carlton Communications
Carlton Communications
Carlton Communications was a British media company. It was led by Michael Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it taken over by Granada plc to form ITV plc with Carlton gaining 32% of the new company....
, to accelerate the growth of the organisation; whilst he was there, turnover grew from under £5m to over £200m. He subsequently moved to Sangers Photographic, a USM
Unlisted Securities Market
The Unlisted Securities Market , which ran from 1980 to 1996, was a stock exchange set up by the London Stock Exchange to cater for companies too small to qualify for a full listing....
listed wholesaler of photographic equipment, where he was responsible for rebranding the business as Quadrant Group. He took the business to a full stock market listing, and expanded its activities to encompass three separate divisions covering photographic, video and communications services.
Peoples Phone
Wigoder left Quadrant to set up Cellular Communications Corporation plc in March 1988, initially providing a mobile phone service to business customers through both a direct sales team and third party distributors. Demonstrating great vision and foresight, he recognised how consumers had the potential to transform the market, successfully positioning his company to take advantage of this opportunity by creating the "Peoples Phone" brand as the world's first virtual mobile network. To support this new type of customer, he established his own national High Street retail presence by opening more than 180 showrooms throughout the UK in just 12 months (a distribution model subsequently imitated by all the network operators), gaining around 10% of the UK market. Within 4 years he had built a market-leading position, having overtaken all the other independent resellers who had started several years prior to his entry into the market, including substantial multi-national companies such as Thorn-EMI, GranadaGranada Ltd.
Granada plc is a former British conglomerate which was best known as the former parent of the Manchester-based Granada Television....
, Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
, Marconi, Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
and Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
. The business was highly cash generative; however a decision to write off all customer acquisition costs directly against profits meant that the company reported a loss after taxation of £10.6m on turnover of £175m for the financial year ended 31 October 1995. Following a disagreement between the major shareholders on the future strategy for the company, it was acquired by Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
in November 1996 for £77m; however Wigoder only collected £6.5M from the deal, as most of the company was owned by venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
investors. Vodafone followed this deal with further acquisitions within the sector (namely Astec and Talkland in December 1996) giving it greater control over the customers using its network. According to Vodafone's 1997 annual report and accounts, Peoples Phone made £4.1m in the period to end of 1996.
Telecom Plus/Utility Warehouse
Wigoder joined Telecom PlusTelecom Plus
Telecom Plus PLC is a multi-utility supplier based in the United Kingdom. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.-History:The Company was founded in 1996 as a telecommunications business...
shortly after its formation in 1998, investing heavily and listing it on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
(ticker = TEP).
Wigoder believed there was a significant opportunity to build a business supplying communications and energy services to the mass residential market, in competition with the former monopoly providers of such services, as de-regulation progressively opened up these sectors. It was clear to him that a low-cost route to market would prove to be a critical element in any successful business model, and he therefore established a multi-level marketing
Multi-level marketing
Multi-level marketing is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they recruit, creating a downline of distributors and a hierarchy of multiple levels of compensation...
system of agents across the United Kingdom to promote their services. In just over 12 years, the Company has gained more than 300,000 domestic and small-business customers through combining better value with consistently high standards of customer service. Trading as The Utility Warehouse, Telecom Plus is a “virtual” retailer, with no shops and no advertising, supported by a sophisticated head office infrastructure with more than 400 staff (most of whom are employed to support their customers). The business now has over 30,000 independent distributors, many of whom earn a significant recurring monthly income from their part-time involvement in promoting the Company's services to their friends, family and colleagues at work.
Low costs allow Telecom Plus to offer competitive tariffs to their customers, which has driven growth in customer numbers by an average of more than 30% pa over the 3 years to March 2009. Turnover grew to £136.3m (2007), £175m (2008) and £278m (2009), and pre-tax profits for these three years were £11.5m, £16.5m and £22.5m respectively. [6].
In 2001 Wigoder was the winner of the Communications category in the UK "Entrepreneur of the Year" awards sponsored by Ernst & Young, Citibank and the Times, and in 2009, he collected the award for Company of the Year at the Quoted Company Awards on behalf of Telecom Plus Plc.
Personal life
Married to Elizabeth, the couple have a son, Benjamin,(born 1990), and three girls, Natasha, Clarissa and Emily,(born 1992, 1995 and 1999). The couple live in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Wigoder is an expert bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
player who won the prestigious Cavendish Invitational Teams in 2004.