Charles Dunstone

Sir Charles William Dunstone (born 21 November 1964) is the British co-founder and former chairman of mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse, former chairman of multinational electrical and telecommunications retailer and services company Dixons Carphone (formed on 7 August 2014 by the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse), and executive chairman of the TalkTalk Group.

Dunstone was born in 1964, in the town of Saffron Walden in Essex.

Dunstone was educated at Uppingham School, an independent school for boys (now co-educational), in the market town of Uppingham in Rutland, in Central England.

Dunstone's father was an executive at BP.

In 1983, having accepted an offer to study business at the University of Liverpool, Dunstone decided to defer his studies for a year and accept a sales job at Torch Computers in Cambridge.

After a year, he decided to continue at Torch instead of pursuing his studies, eventually leaving for a sales position at NEC in 1986.

It was whilst working at NEC, tasked initially with selling computers and then mobile phones, that he first spotted the potential of mobile phones and the future of mobile communications.

At that time, handsets were large, cumbersome and mainly purchased by big business and large organisations.

Corporate clients were well catered for but small businesses, the self-employed and the general public had nowhere to go.

Dunstone realised that mobile phones would eventually become ubiquitous and left NEC in 1989 to start his own business serving this larger market.

Naming his company The Carphone Warehouse (CPW), emphasising a broad choice of products and low prices, Dunstone first began selling mobile phones out of his flat on Marylebone Road in 1989.

He was 25 years old and had £6,000 of savings to start his business.

In July 2000, the company floated on the London Stock Exchange and based on an Issue price of 200p, the company was valued at approximately £1.7 billion.

In 2003 Carphone Warehouse established a subsidiary TalkTalk, from the assets acquired through the purchase of Opal Telecom in 2002.

TalkTalk provided home phone and broadband into the UK market.

TalkTalk aggressive pricing was disruptive to the market and grew its customer base rapidly.

In 2005 Dunstone's salary and bonus came to £689,000.

In 2005 Dunstone was awarded The Daily Telegraph's Business Person of the Year.

In the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 he was listed in 64th place, with an estimated fortune of £830 million.

Dunstone employed the controversial ex-convict Ernest Saunders as a business consultant for Carphone Warehouse prior to its flotation.

Dunstone is a major backer of discount online estate agency Strike.

Dunstone has 3 A-levels, grades B,C & D. He abandoned his business degree at Liverpool University after taking a gap-year with Torch Computers in Cambridge and then with NEC.

In May 2008, Best Buy, an American multinational consumer electronics corporation, and CPW agreed to create a new company, Best Buy Europe.

Best Buy acquired 50% of CPW's European and US retail interests for a cash consideration of £1.1 billion or $2.1 billion.

The assets of the newly formed company comprise CPW's existing retail business, operating from more than 2,400 stores in nine European countries under CPW and Phone House brands.

These include the UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

CPW became the world's largest independent mobile communications retailer, but may now have lost this position.

Growth was also through acquisition, purchasing one.tel, AOL, Tele2 and lastly the Tiscali ISP businesses in the UK, this led to the demerger of TalkTalk as a separate business in March 2010.

He was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List 'for services to the mobile communications industry and to charity'.

In November 2013, the Prime Minister appointed Dunstone to the board of trustees of Royal Museums Greenwich.

In the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours List, he was appointed Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) for his work with The Prince's Trust.

Dunstone established a charitable trust, which is the main sponsor of the Fulwood Academy school in Preston, Lancashire.

Dunstone was reappointed in 2017 but resigned in February 2021 before the end of his second term.

He has donated to both the Labour and Conservative parties.

Dunstone is married to Celia Gordon Shute, a public relations consultant.

Dunstone is considered a member of the Chipping Norton set.

His hobbies include sailing, and he is the owner of the classic 64 m motor yacht Shemara.

In December 2019, Dunstone purchased £10 million worth of shares in TalkTalk, meaning he now owns 29.5% of the company's stock.