$1.3 Billion
Wiki Biography
Peter Andrew Cruddas (born 30 September 1953) Peter Andrew Cruddas (born 30 September 1953) Peter is an English banker and businessman, and philanthropist.[2][3] He is the founder and majority shareholder (through his family holding) of online trading company CMC Markets. In December 2007 Peter sold ten per cent of CMC Markets to Goldmans Sachs that valued the company in excess of £1.1 billion. Peter and his family still own in excess of 88 per cent of the company. In the 2007 Sunday Times Rich List, he was named the richest man in the City of London, with an estimated fortune of £860 million.[1] As of March 2012, Forbes estimated his wealth at $1.3 billion. Cruddas claims to have invented the first on line trading platform in Europe for buying and selling financial products when he launched the market maker platform in 1996. [4]In February 2011 Peter was appointed Treasurer of the No2AV campaign; the referendum campaign against a change in the UK voting system. The “NO” campaign won 68 per cent of the referendum vote in May 2011 to maintain the existing voting system in the UK. Following this successful campaign Cruddas was appointed Conservative Party co-treasurer in June 2011.[5] In January 2012 he was elevated to Treasurer of the Conservative Party, a main board member and a member of the Conservative Party Finance and Audit Committee.In March 2012 on its front page story it was alleged by The Sunday Times that Cruddas had offered access to the Prime Minister David Cameron and the Chancellor George Osborne, in exchange for cash donations of between £100,000 and £250,000.[6][7] Cruddas resigned the same day.[8] The story was billed as “cash for access” In July 2013, Cruddas successfully sued the Sunday Times and its two journalists Heidi Blake and Jonathan Calvert for libel and malicious falsehood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_falsehood over its coverage of him, which the High Court found had been defamatory. http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2013/2298.html&query=cruddas&method=boolean.[9] Following his victory Cruddas’s lawyers (Slater Gordon) commented “Cruddas v Calvert, Blake and Times Newspapers is the most significant libel case of 2013 and one of the most significant libel cases of the last decade. http://www.slatergordon.co.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2013/07/peter-cruddas-wins-his-libel-and-malicious-falsehood-trial-against-sunday-times/The award of £180,000 in damages to Mr Cruddas (including £15,000 for aggravated damages) and his legal costs of £1million is one of the highest libel awards in recent years and it reflects both the seriousness of the allegations and the damage and distress they caused to Mr Cruddas.The Sunday Times defended the action by maintaining that the articles it published were true. However, Mr Justice Tugendhat rejected the defence and castigated the journalists (Blake and Calvert) for being malicious - they knew that the articles were false, they had a dominant intent
