John Robert Camber Porter (5 January 1953 - 10 November 2021) was an English businessman best known as the grandson of Sir Jack Cohen, founder of

Tesco Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. In 2011 it was the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in th ...

and son of

Dame Shirley Porter Shirley, Lady Porter (''née'' Cohen; born 29 November 1930), styled between 1991 and 2003 as Dame Shirley Porter, is a British politician who led Westminster City Council in London, representing the Conservative Party. She is the daughter and ...

.
Why Shirley’s boy is the Porter who carries bags of money.

Early life and education

When John Porter was young, he was given £4 million by his grandfather, Sir Jack Cohen, the founder of Tesco. He was educated at

Highgate School Highgate School, formally Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate, is an English co-educational, fee-charging, independent day school, founded in 1565 in Highgate, London, England. It educates over 1,400 pupils in three sections – Highgate ...

and obtained degrees from Oxford, the Institute d’Etudes Politiques in Paris, and

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business schoo ...

, where he has also served on the advisory council.

Business career

In 1985 Porter became chairman of

Verifone Verifone is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Coral Springs, Florida. Verifone provides technology for electronic payment transactions and value-added services at the point-of-sale. Verifone sells merchant-operated, consum ...

and remained a director until the company was sold to

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

in 1997. During the early 1990s he became involved with a property development company called Chelverton Investments, owning a 45 percent stake as of 1993. A key plank in John Porter's empire was said in 2000 to be the fortune he had made out of the US computer company

Telos Telos (; ) is a term used by philosopher Aristotle to refer to the final cause of a natural organ or entity, or of a work of human art. Intentional actualization of potential or inherent purpose,"Telos.''Philosophy Terms'' Retrieved 3 May 2020. ...

, based in Virginia, which has close ties to the Pentagon. Telos was originally called C3, and specialised in the communication systems that formed the backbone of the US Army. In 2015 Porter used his holding company i-Spire to acquire a 50% stake in

digital marketing Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...

firm of LD Sharma i.e. Shoogloo. In 2016 Porter joined the Board of Trustees of UK charity

Paintings in Hospitals Paintings in Hospitals is an arts in health charity in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1959, the charity's services include the provision of artwork loans, art projects and art workshops to health and social care organisations. The charity's acti ...

. Porter died on 10 November 2021 after a five-year battle with lung cancer, aged 68.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Porter, John Robert 1953 births 2021 deaths English businesspeople Angel investors People educated at Highgate School Tesco people British venture capitalists English Jews Businesspeople from London Deaths from lung cancer