All you need to know about Derby County owner Mel Morris (original) (raw)

Mel Morris has been Derby County owner and chairman since 2015.

Here, we look back at the life and times of Mr Morris ...

You could say that Mel Morris has done pretty well for himself since leaving school at the age of 16.

After walking out of the gates of Etwall’s John Port School for the final time back in 1973, Littleover-born Mr Morris has enjoyed an incredible business career, which has netted him hundreds of millions of pounds.

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Although his bank balance has changed immeasurably over the past four decades or so, it is clear that one thing has not – and that is his passion for all things Derby County.

There are many Rams fans out there who can only dream about having enough money to buy the club, and still have enough left over to make investments that will bring success.

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For most of us, the only way that this might be achieved is a massive win on the lottery.

But football these days is an expensive business. Even a £100 million-plus lottery windfall might not be enough. So, we can all carry on dreaming.

However, in the case of Mr Morris, here is one Rams fan who has been living the dream.

Mel Morris at a Rams game (Image: Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Back in April 2015, he was placed in the top 300 richest people in Britain in the annual Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated personal fortune of £400m on paper.

According to the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List, Morris is said to be worth £515m.

He tops the Gaming Rich List for those who have made their money from the computer gaming industry.

So, how has he achieved such massive wealth? A large dollop of luck plays its part in business but, over the years, Mr Morris has developed a habit of having the right idea in the right place at the right time and with the right backing.

Developing computer software and timely investments in the right technology has put him in a similar league to tycoons such as Sir Alan Sugar and Peter Jones.

From the word go, it was technology that inspired Mr Morris. A childhood fascination with the sci-fi world of shows such as Star Trek, Lost in Space and Stingray fired his imagination.

Derby County owner Mel Morris (Image: PA)

Devices dreamed up in Hollywood and beamed to the Morris family home in Littleover proved to be the spark that began a career at the cutting edge of technology.

He left school with a vague idea of working with computers. However, one of his first jobs was training to be a metallurgist at the Qualcast foundry in Derby.

His big break came when he landed a job as a trainee computer operator at a firm in City Road, which was involved in producing brake shoes for cars.

He developed a talent for writing software quickly and efficiently.

In 1981, he left Derby for the United States, where he worked for computer giant Wang, near Boston, Massachusetts.

Football fans in the 1980s will remember that the company once sponsored the shirts of Oxford United.

Mel Morris with Frank Lampard (Image: Derby Telegraph/Alex Cantrill-Jones)

Mr Morris was a project manager at the company, which made word processors, minicomputers and micro computers Wang folded in 1992 but that was long after he had left – in 1985 – to return to Derby to set up his own company, called Minitech.

A few years away from his home city had left him with a deeper understanding of the business environment in the US, many American friends and a number of high-profile contacts.

Minitech, in Litchurch Plaza, developed software that speeded up data storage and retrieval.

Mr Morris wrote a piece of software that enabled computers to access information more quickly. It would recognise the information that a user needed most often and make it readily available.

People were sceptical to begin with but, once the technology was seen to work, it sold like hot cakes.

Minitech employed around 120 people at its peak, turning over £20m with profits hitting £4m, but it was not all plain sailing.

Derby County chairman Mel Morris and manager Phillip Cocu at the first press conference (Image: Andy Clarke)

The aforementioned Wang was one of his biggest customers and when it filed for bankruptcy in the US, Minitech lost a lot of money.

Mr Morris also built the Mickleover Court Hotel but the property crash of the early 1990s wiped many millions off its value.

After picking himself up and dusting himself down, Minitech morphed into Prometrics, producing software that monitored how office workers used their PCs.

It was a hit with those big firms who like to keep an eye on what their employees are doing so as to increase efficiency.

It caught the eye of US-based Platinum Technology. The business saw potential in the software and was intent on selling it to the US military.

It resulted in Mr Morris returning to the US and spending time involved in high-level talks in Washington DC.

Wayne Rooney is welcomed to Derby County by Mel Morris (Image: Andy Clarke)

He ended up becoming senior vice-president at Platinum. But being an employee was never part of his plan and by the mid to late 1990s, it was the worldwide web in which he saw potential.

He came up with an idea for an online dating site. Founded in 1999, at its height, uDate, based on Derby’s Pride Park, had 15 million users in more than 100 countries, making it the second largest dating site in the world at the time.

Although he did not realise it then, the uDate site could do everything that Facebook does now.

In an interview with the Derby Telegraph many years later, Mr Morris conceded that he probably could have made much more money out of the venture if he had realised uDate’s full potential.

Despite the dotcom crash, uDate floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange in 2000.

Money raised amounted to a few million rather than tens or even hundreds of millions that the founders might have expected at the height of the dotcom boom. Nevertheless, after being built up on a relative shoestring, it sold for £100m.

The Mel Morris business formula tends to involve developing innovative ideas and technology then matching them with the sales and marketing muscle of a third party.

It worked a treat with uDate and the company netted Mr Morris a reported £20 million.

At that point, he could have retired to the country and taken it easy. Instead, the cash provided the seed funding for King, then an Anglo-Swedish start-up specialising in tournament-style games played over the internet.

It also funded Prevx, an internet security company, developing software that could detect viruses and protect computers from malware, which is malicious software designed to specifically damage or disrupt a system.

It was a hard slog for Mr Morris to get the security software right. It had a good reputation with experts and when the US Department of Transportation and some high-profile US corporations had information stolen, he was called in to help the FBI to solve the problem and

discover who was responsible.

Derby County owner Mel Morris celebrates victory at Leeds United (Image: PA Wire)

In late 2010, he sold Prevx to US firm Webroot for a sum substantially higher than the £10 million reported in the national press.

Prevx had the technology and expertise while Webroot had market penetration that the Pride Park business could only dream about.

So what of King, the small games company that Mr Morris had also invested in? Back in 2003, he took a punt on it, taking an 11.5% stake.

More than a decade later, he received a more than generous return on his investment. In fact, it was an astronomical return.

The game changer was that King had gone on to develop a very popular game indeed – Candy Crush Saga.

In March 2014, it was announced that King was to be floated on an American stock exchange – and the figures being bandied about were eye-watering.

Mel Morris at Pride Park

King was valued at £4.5 billion, giving Mr Morris’s portion of the company the potential to be worth up to £518 million.

Candy Crush, a game for computers, smartphones and tablets, had become huge, with hundreds of millions of people around the world downloading it.

The flotation of the company instantly made Mr Morris Derby’s wealthiest-ever businessman.

In May 2014, the Derby Telegraph caught up with him to talk to him about his success. During that interview, he revealed plans to invest some of his fortune in local businesses, helping them to expand and create jobs – effectively becoming a one-man Dragons’ Den.

He announced he was investing in a couple of local businesses and had agreed to spend a seven-figure sum on a state-of-the-art computer-assisted surgery machine for the Royal Derby Hospital.

He also confirmed funding a five-year support programme for the Prince’s Trust to help young people find work.

So, where does Derby County fit into all this? Despite his business commitments, Mr Morris made time for his other love – the Rams.

It was in 2006 when he first found his way into the Derby County boardroom. In February that year he was named among a consortium of local business people, all of them Derby County fans, led by former Rams vice-chairman Peter Gadsby, who wanted to take control of the Rams.

By the end of April, the takeover was completed with Mr Gadsby installed as chairman, along with directors Mr Morris, Mike Horton, John Kirkland, Don Amott and Jill Marples, wife of associate director Peter Marples.

The group rescued the club from financial oblivion. At the time, the Rams were on their knees, crippled by debts of about £50 million, with a team struggling to compete in the Championship.

In just 12 months, the fortunes of the club turned around. Finances were brought under control, with the debt reduced to £8.5 million and the Rams were promoted to the Premier League via the play-offs in the 2006/07 season.

In January, 2008, halfway through the 2007/08 season, US-based General Sports and Entertainment bought the club, with Andy Appleby becoming chairman and a new-look board introduced.

Mel Morris has been sole owner of the Rams since 2015

As a result, Mr Morris and the rest of the board stepped down, although Mr Gadsby and Mr Amott were re-appointed as non-executive directors.

Derby’s stay in the top flight that season was to be short-lived. The Rams endured a disastrous season on the field and were relegated.

On May 29, 2014, Mr Morris officially returned to the Rams after the club narrowly missed out on the Premier League via the play-offs.

He was named as co-lead investor and director, taking up a significant minority shareholding.

But there were signs later on in 2014 that indicated he was ready to increase his involvement.

Derby County fan forum at Nunsfield House in Alvaston on 20/03/19. Chairman and owner Mel Morris, manager Frank Lampard and chief executive Stephen Pearce were in attendance. (Image: Andy Clarke)

Towards the end of 2014, he stood down as non-executive chair- man of King and six months later, he was announced as Derby County’s new chairman.

At the time, he stressed that it was a non-executive role, no doubt to allow him to juggle his other business commitments.

For example, in March 2015 it was announced that he had made a “significant” investment in Restoration Partners, a firm which specialises in arranging funding for technology firms.

The following month it was revealed that he had made a seven-figure investment in a fast-growing marketing firm called BriefYourMarket.com, based at Little Eaton.

But Derby County are now well and truly his biggest investment - in August 2018, he revealed he had invested more than £100m in the club.

In June 2017, Mr Morris was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours, for his services to business and charitable services.

In January 2019, has was nominated as the City of Derby’s first ever Ambassador for Business and Innovation.

And in November last year he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Derby Telegraph Sports Awards.