John David Caudwell (born 7 October 1952) is a British billionaire businessman who founded the now defunct mobile phone retailer Phones 4u. He also invests in fashion, real estate and other industries, and chairs Caudwell Children, a children's charity, and Caudwell LymeCo, promoting chronic Lyme disease beliefs in the UK. According to the Sunday Times Rich List in 2022, Caudwell is worth £1.58 billion. On the Forbes 2022 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked #984 with a net worth of US$2.8 billion. Early life Caudwell was born in Birmingham but moved with his family as a baby to Stoke-on-Trent and raised in Wellesley Street in Shelton, Staffordshire, and with his brother Brian attended Shelton Church of England School, and then Berry Hill High School. His father had a stroke when Caudwell was 14 and died four years later. Caudwell abandoned his A-levels to become an apprentice at Michelin, and worked for several years there as an engineering foreman while gaining a HNC in mechanical engineering. Whilst working at Michelin he also ran a corner shop and started a mail order business selling clothing to motorcyclists. Caudwell Group In 1987 Caudwell registered Midland Mobile Phones as a mobile phone wholesaler, initially taking 26 Motorola mobiles at £1,350 each. It took 8 months to sell these 26 phones to local plumbers, taxi drivers and television repairmen at a price of £2,000 each. The company made a loss every month for the first two years of operations. The business became the Caudwell Group part of which was an independent mobile phone network service provider called Singlepoint and a high street mobile phone retail operation called Phones4U. The group also owned The Discovery Store from 2001, renamed it to Must Have It in 2004, and closed it in 2005. In 2003 he sold Singlepoint to Vodafone for £405m (then $648m). Caudwell completed the sale of the wider business on 26 September 2006, when it was revealed that the Caudwell Group had been sold for a £1.46 billion to private equity firms Providence Equity Partners and Doughty Hanson. Other projects Caudwell was the owner of the South African F1 Powerboat racing team Caudwell Racing which competed in the championship between the 2012 and the 2014 seasons. The team made history by competing with four-stroke engines compared to the traditional and widely used two-strokes. Caudwell Racing did not return for the 2015 season, having