Tony Goodwin

The entrepreneurial bug bit Tony Goodwin early. “I think I’ve had it all my life,” he reckons. “Even at the age of eight, when I got a blow-up dinghy, I was selling rides on the dinghy on the River Darent in Sevenoaks in Kent.”

Fast forward several decades, and Goodwin is in his element, an entrepreneur among entrepreneurs in the recruitment industry as founder and chief executive of Antal International, a recruitment business that has most definitively put its stamp on emerging markets. Now his immersion into the world of creating and building businesses has taken him onto new ground: turning author, he examines the dark side of contemporary entrepreneurship in a new book, How They Blew It.

Co-written with business writer Jamie Oliver, Goodwin’s book scrutinises the downfalls of 16 entrepreneurs who hit the heights of wealth, only to experience financial and personal losses of staggering depth. In fact, six of those profiled spent time in prison, one died before his trial and two committed suicide.

Launched on 3 July, How They Blew It is the antidote to the crush of self-congratulatory ’How I Made It’ books by the likes of Richard Branson, Read More