Early Years and Business Career
Sangster was the son of Vernon Sangster, who founded the Vernons Pools business in 1926, and his wife Peggy (Margaret) Smith. He was born in Liverpool and educated at Repton School, where he played cricket and boxed. He did National service with the Cheshire Regiment, winning a brigade heavyweight boxing championship in Berlin.
After National Service Sangster joined the Vernons organisation, becoming managing director and then serving as chairman from 1980 to 1988. In that year, aware of plans for the creation of the National Lottery, he sold the Vernons Pools business to Ladbrokes for £90 million. Ladbrokes subsequently valued their acquisition at £1.
Read more about this topic: Robert Sangster
Famous quotes containing the words early, years, business and/or career:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“With care, and skill, and cunning art,
She parried Time’s malicious dart,
And kept the years at bay,
Till passion entered in her heart
And aged her in a day!”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)
“To brew up an adult, it seems that some leftover childhood must be mixed in; a little unfinished business from the past periodically intrudes on our adult life, confusing our relationships and disturbing our sense of self.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)