Christopher Matthews (c. 1950 – 6 August 2004) was a British businessman, principally in internet services and dating agencies. He died in a helicopter crash in Wisconsin in August 2004. Matthews, the son of a statistician, was born in Cheshire. After education at St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey, he gained a degree in engineering and then went on to work for the

Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 189 ...

and for the

Courtaulds Courtaulds was a United Kingdom-based manufacturer of fabric, clothing, artificial fibres, and chemicals. It was established in 1794 and became the world's leading man-made fibre production company before being broken up in 1990 into Courtaulds ...

Group. In 1992 from a base in Macclesfield, Cheshire, Matthews founded Club Sirius, a dating agency for single professionals, which quickly became very profitable. He later acquired Dateline and others which were combined into the OneSaturday Group. Although Matthews sold OneSaturday shortly before his death, most of his wealth came from internet service company Telinco, which he sold for £250 million to

World Online World Online (WOL) was a European Internet Service Provider (ISP) which came to prominence in the late 1990s dotcom boom. Founded by Dutch entrepreneur Nina Brink, World Online's name indicated its aspiration to rival the hugely successful Americ ...

in 2000, shortly before the

Dot-com crash The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

. Other ventures included aviation company Cav-Air of

Fort Lauderdale A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

, Florida and boatyard Seastream in

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

, England. From 1998 Matthews lived as a tax exile on his yacht ''Tosca III'' in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. In 2001 Seastream purchased the former Irish naval patrol boat ''

Deirdre Deirdre ( , Irish: ; sga, Derdriu ) is the foremost tragic heroine in Irish legend and probably its best-known figure in modern times. She is known by the epithet "Deirdre of the Sorrows" (). Her story is part of the Ulster Cycle, the best-know ...

'' for conversion to a large yacht, renaming her ''Tosca IV''. Following Matthews' death the part-converted vessel was sold. He was married to Marie-France, with whom he had three of his four children. Piloting an EC130 helicopter registered N450CM, Matthews died aged 54, along with his aide Jim Beauregard, when it crashed at Sauk Prairie after hitting power lines over

Lake Wisconsin Lake Wisconsin is a reservoir on the Wisconsin River in southern Wisconsin in the United States. It is located in Columbia and Sauk counties, approximately southeast of Baraboo and NNW of Madison. Today it is home to the Wisconsin wine appella ...

on 6 August 2004. The subsequent investigation found that the helicopter was being flown inexplicably low.

References

External links

Interview with Christopher Matthews, 2003
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matthews, Christopher 2004 deaths Accidental deaths in Wisconsin Aviators killed in aviation accidents or incidents in the United States English businesspeople People educated at St John's School, Leatherhead People from Cheshire Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 2004 Year of birth uncertain