Spending a small fortune
Article Date: Sep 15 2005
Name: Dominic Berger
Company: Venue Solutions
Career to date
A former film producer and managing director of music and DVD e-tailer business Blackstar (now sendit.com), Dominic Berger currently heads Venue Solutions, a specialist provider of IT solutions to concert halls, sports stadia, shopping centres and the like.
Founded by Berger in 2002, the company boasts a range of offerings – from CCTV cameras through to venue management software – to its clients, which include the Scottish Rugby Football Union and Fulham FC, among others. Currently loss-making but expected to break into profits next year, Venue Solutions is planning to list on AIM later this autumn.
£100,000 dream
Wine – and the vineyard it came from
‘My big hobby is wine. My father used to lay down a case for me every year on my birthday and that’s a tradition my wife and I are continuing with our children.
‘So with £100,000 I’d either buy a lot of wine or maybe even a vineyard. A £100,000 is about 1,000,000 Rand and for that I could probably afford a fairly nice estate in South Africa. I’d work the land and drink the fruits of my labour all the way through to the 2010 World Cup!’
Guitars, horses and houses in Jersey, the objects of desire for AIM-quoted leaders
John Kembery, chief executive of acquisitive AIM-quoted data capture specialist Belgravium Technologies, says he would use £100,000 ‘to buy a racehorse’, if he could find one with promise at such a price, though he might consider putting the money into a syndicate to buy a better one. ‘I’d like to buy a house in Jersey,’ he ruminates, ‘but even a flat there would cost much more than that.’
Grant Ellis, chief executive of Harrogate-based Broker Network, which links a collection of independent community insurance brokers, says ‘I’d buy ten or 12 things.’ They would include ‘a very nice electric guitar’, which he would play in a band of ‘closet rockers’, to which he belongs, consisting of like-minded business contacts who ‘strut our stuff for charity’.
Another item would be one of Eric Clapton’s old records. Ellis would spend some more on tuition to improve his guitar playing and golf skills and booking ‘two holidays a year surfing off Cape Town’. Much of what would remain ‘I’d put into a recording studio’.
Serial entrepreneur John French heads a range of young companies, from AIM-quoted surveillance and security equipment specialist Croma to OFEX-traded Sexual Health Group, whose products include ‘Condomania’ condoms, ‘Sutherland’ lubricating jelly for the British armed forces, and pregnancy diagnostic equipment. Eschewing frivolity, he says he would spend a £100,000 windfall on ‘investing in smaller companies. I look at early-stage companies and so I get "seed capital" [usually on appreciably better terms than those who buy when the companies are floated].’
