“Clive was passionate about so many things and endeavoured to help as many as he could either by advice, support via his charity, fundraising events and opening his beautiful gardens at Lower Hope. He would often be seen wandering around his garden on the National Garden Scheme open days with his beloved Labrador dogs not far behind. “He kept strong connections with his old grammar school, Bishop Vesey in Sutton Coldfield, as his education and guidance there set him off on his career path to, in his own words, ‘make a few bob’ which he later generously shared with others.
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Clive Richards, City financier and owner of the finest collection of Nelson letters in private hands – obituary
Business successes enabled Richards to buy a Herefordshire estate and expand it to a multi-faceted rural enterprise of some 2,500 acres
Clive and Sylvia Richards
Clive Richards, who has died aged 83, was a City entrepreneur, Herefordshire farmer, generous philanthropist and leading collector of artefacts relating to Nelson and Brunel.
Richards was finance director of the merchant bank NM Rothschild & Sons before striking out on his own in 1976 as a venture capitalist and corporate financier. Over the following decades he held almost 60 directorships, buying and selling many businesses and launching several on the stock market.
He served articles with KPMG in Birmingham and qualified as a cost and management accountant in 1959, passed the final of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries and as a chartered accountant in 1960, it added. He has spent the rest of his career in the City of London firstly with the Jobbers Wedd Durlacher where he became managing partner 1960 to 1970 and then with Rothschild Group 1970 to 1976. He then became a serial entrepreneur for the rest of his career building up, floating and/or selling several PLCs. He was awarded the OBE for Charity in 2000 and in 2018 the KSG – Papal Knighthood of the Equestrian Order of St Gregory the Great.