Amanda Staveley: the university dropout in the premier league of dealmakers

With Prince Andrew among her ex beaus, Amanda Staveley has used her upper-crust connections to build up PCP capital, her private equity business. She recently brokered the Abu Dhabi royal family's £3.5bn investment in Barclays bank.

"A woman of action, Amanda will do everything in her power to dismantle obstacles." That was the conclusion of a psychometric test conducted in 2004 barely a decade after Amanda Staveley opened her first business a small restaurant near Newmarket as an ambitious 22-year-old Cambridge University drop-out. She soon succeeded in attracting punters from the nearby Godolphin stables owned by Sheikh Mohammed of Dubai. Last week, that Gulf connection came spectacularly good, says The Daily Telegraph, although "quite how Staveley found herself alongside Goldman Sachs at the top table of one of the most extraordinary deals of the year is unclear". But having brokered the Abu Dhabi royal family's £3.5bn investment in Barclays, she has been catapulted into the "premier league of dealmakers".

Staveley, 35, who once rejected a marriage proposal from Prince Andrew, has had a roller-coaster career that has included several brushes with bankruptcy. Ironically, her last encounter with Barclays, says the Evening Standard, was when the bank sued her for £1m in 2004 to recoup a loan for her venture Q.ton (a souped-up e-conference centre outside Cambridge). Staveley responded by summoning The Mail on Sunday for an interview and launching a characterfully forceful personal defence. That, combined with Staveley's upper-crust connections, went down a storm with potential investors, says The Independent.

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