Sir Terry Matthews is Wales’ first billionaire. Born in Newport, Wales, he graduated from Swansea University in 1969 with a BA in Electronics and went on to develop technologies at the forefront of the IT revolution.
Since 1972, he has founded or funded more than 100 companies, three of which have grown to exceed $1.0B in valuation.
He is the founder and Chairman of Wesley Clover International, a private, global investment management firm and holding company. Today, Wesley Clover has interests in a range of next-generation cloud and SaaS technology companies, as well as in selected commercial real estate and leisure properties. In addition to being the Chairman of Wesley Clover, Sir Terry is also Chairman of a number of these private and publicly traded companies, and he sits as a Director on the Boards of several others.
In Wales, Sir Terry is well-known as the owner of the Celtic Manor, a five-star resort with a golf club attached to it, in Newport. He has a particular connection with the resort – he was born there in the days when it was a maternity hospital.
Sir Terry is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by several universities, including Swansea University and Carleton University in Ottawa. In 1994, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and in 2001, as part of the Queen's Birthday Honours, he received the honour of Knight Bachelor. He was also appointed Patron of the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute in 2011, and in 2017, was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada for his outstanding achievements.
In 2012, Sir Terry addressed an audience at the University for Global Entrepreneurship Week where he told students some of the secrets of his success, saying that a good team of people was imperative, as was persistence. “Don’t give up,” he said, “never go away.”
