Karren Brady has succeeded in arenas dominated by largely unreconstructed men. She is widely referred to as the “first lady of football” for her quarter-of-a-century career running Birmingham City and then West Ham United. A supporter of David Cameron and George Osborne, the 49-year-old is one of just 206 women in the House of Lords (out of a total of 783 peers).
She has also famously advised Lord Sugar on The Apprentice, as well as Simon Cowell and the former pornographer David Sullivan. It was Sullivan who gave Brady her first big break in 1993 when she convinced him to buy Birmingham City out of receivership. He installed her as chief executive when she was just 23, but told her she would have to be twice as good as a man to run the club, to which Brady replied: “Well that’s not difficult.”
During her first press conference at Birmingham, she was asked for her vital statistics. And early on at the club, a player commented: “I can see your tits in that shirt.” Brady replied: “Well, don’t worry, when I sell you to Crewe you won’t be able to see them from there, will you?”. Three days later she sold him. “It was the best deal I ever did,” she told the Guardian last year.
In 1997 she became the youngest boss of a listed UK company when Birmingham City floated on the London Stock Exchange. Sullivan bought the club for £700,000 in 1993, and sold it for £82m in 2009. Much of Brady’s wealth is thought to date back to the sale of the club. By the time she left, 75% of senior management at the club were women.
She moved to West Ham, where she is vice-chair under the owners Sullivan and David Gold. Rumours have suggested she is actually an Arsenal supporter, but Brady’s website says she “is not an Arsenal fan, and her footballing loyalties have only ever lay with the two clubs she has represented”.
Brady grew up in Edmonton, north London, near Tottenham Hotspur’s ground. Her Irish father, Terry, was a self-made Rolls-Royce-driving millionaire, having worked in property and printing. Her Italian mother, Rita, was a full-time mum. She was sent to an all-girls’ Catholic boarding school, which she hated. “You do what you’re told, you wear what you’re told, you eat what you’re told, you go to bed when you’re told,” she said last year. “I was sick of being told what to do. The one thing I wanted was independence. And I realised to have that independence, you needed financial independence.” After passing nine O-levels, she left to join the sixth form of a former all-boys’ school – one of only six girls.
A lifelong Conservative supporter, Brady introduced the then chancellor George Osborne at the Tory party conference in 2013. She was subsequently appointed as the government’s small business ambassador. A year later she became a Conservative life peer. “I think it’s a bit like any industry that has never marketed itself to women,” she has said of politics. “A bit like football.”
At the same time she built up a series of business interests, including in 2017 accepting Sir Philip Green’s offer to become chair of his family’s Taveta Investments company, which owns Arcadia Group including the Topshop and Miss Selfridge brands. Her brief was to “beef up corporate oversight” and “sort out” corporate governance issues.
As a vocal campaigner for women in business, Brady has come under increasing pressure to speak out over allegations of racial and sexual harassment made against Green. He denies the allegations. Dragons Den’s Duncan Bannatyne has described her continued employment at Taveta as “disgusting”.
Two weeks ago Brady said she would stay at the company out of duty to Arcadia’s employees, including her daughter Sophia Peschisolido, who is a model. “I hope you would agree that walking away is the easy thing to do; staying in the role and ensuring the company is robust going forward is much harder,” she said.
Brady, who writes a weekly column for the Sun and tweets using the account Lady Karren Brady, has not commented on her decision to stand down from Taveta.
