David Peter John Ross (born 10 July 1965) is an English millionaire businessman, and one of the co-founders (with Charles Dunstone and Guy Johnson) of Carphone Warehouse.
[1] He graduated with a BA degree in law from the University of Nottingham and worked at Arthur Andersen from 1988, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1991.
[8] He was the chairman of National Express from 2001[5][c] and also had directorships of several other companies, including the publishing and newspaper group Trinity Mirror, Big Yellow Storage[5] and Frontiers Capital.
[7] A private investment business called Kandahar had been formed by Ross, comprising a team that had gained much experience of the UK high street property market as the number of Carphone Warehouse stores had grown.
[8] Ross resigned from Carphone Warehouse, National Express and Big Yellow in December 2008 after using a large proportion of his shares in the businesses as collateral for personal loans without informing the companies, which is a breach of stock market rules.
[13] Shortly afterwards, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said that the rules on the issue, governed by the EU Market Abuse Directive, were unclear and inconsistently applied across the European Union.
[17] Other sales followed as the portfolio was divested during the year, including shopping centres in Bishops Stortford, Caterham, Ipswich and Market Harborough.
[18] Like his grandfather and father before him, Ross was chairman of Cosalt, which by his time had become primarily a group of companies involved in offshore safety.
Despite selling its marine division to raise £27 million, the company was in dire financial circumstances by 2011, when Ross held 15 per cent of the shares and had loaned it money.
Following a profits warning in October, Ross proposed to turn it into a privately owned business, offering £400,000 to have it delisted from the stock market, where it had had a presence since 1971.
Some individual shareholders tried in December 2012 to have the Takeover Panel and Financial Services Authority investigate Ross amid claims that he had abused his position in an attempt to buy the business cheaply.
Jo Swinson, then a minister, said that "there was insufficient evidence of relevant misconduct for it to be in the public interest to investigate further since the issues raised are unlikely to be viewed by the Court as serious enough".
[27] Ross, who has a strong personal interest in sport, was for some time on the board of Wembley Stadium[9][clarification needed] and, with his friend Gary Lineker, was part of the consortium which rescued Leicester City Football Club from receivership, before it was later sold to Milan Mandarić.
[28] The group has been described by The Independent as "an elite diners' club whose members get frequent access to David Cameron in exchange for donating more than £50,000 a year".
This was to satisfy the Gallery's desire to recruit "a person with senior level of financial, accounting, strategic planning and risk management skills".
It believes that "every child and young person has passions and talents" and that its intention is to "help them discover their strengths by offering them a wide range of world class educational opportunities".
[43] He had been shortlisted for the role of chairman of Ofsted by an independent panel in 2014 but his involvement went no further due to objections from the Liberal Democrats regarding a potential conflict of interest relating to his past political donations.
[6] Ross's main residence is the 13th-century, Grade I-listed Nevill Holt estate, near Market Harborough, Leicestershire, on which he has spent millions of pounds.