NICE INK -- "PDS" in the Headlines

Former UK challenge head Peter de Savary (1983, and a thwarted attempt in 1988) is in the news.

Today's Daily Telegraph reports that PDS, as he is known in AC and business circles, has been named as the new chairman of the Millwall (UK) football club -- soccer to you Yanks.

From the article, by Christopher Davies and Tim Jeffery:

He shot to national prominence with his Victory Challenge for the 1983 America's Cup in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a glitzy, but good, challenge, knocked out by the eventual winner, Alan Bond's Australia 11.

British-ness was a theme traded upon unashamedly by de Savary. Not content with the Victory name, there was a bulldog mascot, a cricket match in one of Newport's famous mansions and his mothership was Kalizma, a yacht once owned by Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor.

He missed the 1987 Cup but challenged again the next year. For this he secured backing of the then rapidly expanding Blue Arrow employment services company run by the former Tottenham Hotspur footballer Tony Berry. What was a great deal for de Savary was a poor one for Blue Arrow. Berry was later the subject of a Department of Trade and Industry investigation in 1989 but one legacy of the association was that the City viewed anyone wanting to raise backing for the America's Cup suspiciously for a long time afterwards.

The complete article is available here (free site but requires registration).



Peter de Savary