Joe Lewis loses $1bn in Bear Stearns collapse

The collapse of the American investment bank Bear Stearns has claimed at least one high-profile British casualty. He is Joe Lewis, the 70-year-old billionaire (still, just) who owns Tottenham Hotspur football club and lives in the Bahamas from where he has made a fortune - estimated at $2.8bn before this hiccup - in currency trading.

Last September he decided to buy 11m shares in Bear Stearns - nearly 10 per cent - at $100-plus a share. Today, after the fire sale of the bank to JP Morgan Chase at $2 a share, Lewis has lost on paper close to $1bn, or a third of his fortune. The Wall Street Journal headlined today's coverage of the hit taken by Lewis and American stake-holders such as James Cayne and Bruce Sherman, 'A Stake Through the Heart'.

For Lewis, who grew up above a pub in the East End of London, and left school at 15 to work as a waiter, the investment in Bear Stearns represents a rare mistake. He has made his name as a canny trader - every room of his Bahamas mansion houses a trading screen - making millions in 1992 when he, along with other speculators including George Soros, gambled on the pound crashing out of the European exchange rate mechanism. It did - and while the British Treasury lost £3bn-plus on Black Wednesday, Lewis, Soros and co raked it in.

Lewis is unlikely to say anything public about his losses. He guards his privacy resolutely. "He doesn't like to talk to people," his daughter Vivienne once explained. "It aggravates him."