Amanda Staveley's Biography

Who is Amanda Staveley?

Amanda Staveley was born in Yorkshire, the daughter of Robert, a landowner based in North Stainley who founded the Lightwater Valley theme park, and Lynne a champion show-jumper.

She was a good athlete as a teenager, but when she snapped her achilles tendon, it put paid to her chances of success in that arena.

Staveley was a boarder at Queen Margaret's School near York, and then studied modern languages at Cambridge.

Whilst at Cambridge, she also worked as a model, and her heavy schedule caught up with her when she was admitted to hospital with stress.

She dropped out of University.

A key element in Amanda Staveley's future success was when she opened a restaurant, Stocks, between Newmarket and Cambridge. It led to her developing important business contacts from the Middle East as many were in the area because of their connection with the world of horse racing.

Another Staveley business that led to an elite connection was Q.ton, a restaurant, gym and health club complex, through which she met Prince Andrew in 2003.

Amanda Staveley and Prince Andrew had a brief relationship, during which time he reportedly proposed to her.

She continued to thrive in the worlds of business and investment and was voted businesswoman of the year in 2000.

A lower point came when she allied herself with an enterprise called EuroTelecom, which crashed.

Better times were, however, on their way.

As senior director of PCP Capital Partners, a private equity company, Amanda Staveley was a key player in Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family's purchase of Manchester City, having originally been involved through Manchester City's previous owner Thaksin Shinawatra.

Amanda Staveley also reportedly gained a £40m fee for herself and PCP Capital Partners for their role in the ruling families of Abu Dhabi and Qatar and the Qatari sovereign wealth fund's investment in Barclays in 2008.

In 2011, she married Mehrdad Ghodoussi.

In 2013 she was diagnosed with the gene for Huntington's Disease.

In 2017 and 2018, Amanda Staveley's PCP Capital Partners group were involved in talks about buying Newcastle United FC.

It was not until 2020, however, that a £300m purchase of Newcastle United, engineered by Staveley, was agreed between Mike Ashley and a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund.

In February 2021, Staveley sued Barclays for hundreds of millions of pounds but lost her High Court battle.

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