Purely Man City » Boler family factfile

Boler family factfileUpdated: September 5th, 2005

Timeline

1943: Stephen Eckersley Boler born in Middleton, Manchester. He is brought up in Saddleworth.
1956?: Becomes Unilever trainee in Tanzania.
Date unknown: Founds G A Robinson.
1974: Buys Kwik-Fit from founder Tom Farmer for £750,000. Farmer becomes large shareholder in GA Robinson. Farmer buys back after Robinson runs into trouble during 3-day week. Boler sells Robinson to Quinton Hazell. (Gowpen.biz)
1980: Buys Kitchen Queen from the Moben Group. Subsequently, Kitchen Queen goes into receivership.
1982: Founds Limelight.
1983: Builds a 5,500-acre luxury site offering facilities for conferences and business meetings in Warwickshire.
1984: Buys Mere Golf Club.
1985: Sells Kitchen’s Direct to Kean & Scott for £22m.
1989: Buys Moben Kitchens Direct from ADT. Adds Sharps and the Worcester-based Dolphin Showers to the business.
1993: Buys around 25 farms in S Africa for 150m rand (c£15m). In next three years he creates Tswalu, a 750 square km game reserve on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.
Nov 1994: Sells 26.9% stake in Limelight for £23m.
February 1994: Sells half his 30% holding in Man City to Francis Lee (consortium?)
July 1996: Offers £100,000 scholarship for disadvantaged South African students to study at Cambridge University.
Nov 1996: Receives almost £60m after Limelight is floated for £175m. The shares, which floated for 186p plummeted to 40.5p by the end of September 97, leaving the value of his remaining 17% stake down from £30m to £6.5m.
Dec 1996: Pays £5m for 6,250,000 new shares in Man City, increasing his stake from 9.17% to 24.12% and making him the largest shareholder. As part of the deal, Boler will receive 2,500,000 free shares should City fail to be promoted by end of 98/99 season.
Feb 1997: Cheats death after being bitten by a snake (Sunday Mirror).
1997: Major capital expenditure at 120,000 hectare Tswalu game reserve completed. Boler is now South Africa’s biggest private landowner.
Oct 30 1998: Boler dies, aged 55, following a heart attack on his executive jet heading to Tswalu.
April 1999: Nicky Oppenheimer family buys Tswalu for unknown amount.
April 1999: Trustees of the Boler family estate sell a 10% stake in Limelight for £5m. Bolers left with a 7% holding.
Dec 1999: Boler family holding in Man City increases to 27.75% following 1996 bonus shares agreement.
Aug 2000: Limelight sold for £57m in management buyout. At the time, the company had 400 outlets. Name changes to HomeForm Group.
Aug 2000: Mark Boler pays a reported £5m for Hawkstone Park, a 400-acre hotel and golf club in Shropshire.
June 2003: Eldest son Nick Boler dies of heart attack, aged 33.
March 2004: Executors sell 4,750 acres of land in Warwickshire (out of 6,000 acres) to publisher Felix Dennis for ‘well in excess of 15m’.