Danish tycoon Lars Seier Christensen talks to ME & MY MONEY

Multimillionaire Lars Seier Christensen knows how important it is to keep a cool head when it comes to money.

He told Donna Ferguson that he was only ‘a little upset’ the day he lost £12 million and barely celebrated when he sold his stake in the company he founded, Saxo Bank, for £280 million.

The 69-year-old, who drives a £250,000 Bentley, lives in a 750-year-old castle in Switzerland with Englishwoman Yvonne, with whom he has five daughters.

He prefers to invest directly in companies than in the stock market, pensions, real estate or art.

For the past four years, he has been working on a blockchain project, Concordium.com. Blockchain is an information storage system to prevent hackers from stealing digital currencies, such as bitcoin.

What did your parents teach you about money?

Few. I grew up in the countryside in Denmark. My parents divorced when I was ten. I stayed with my father, a school teacher who taught physics and chemistry. He was careful and made sure we always had what we needed to live comfortably. But we certainly weren’t rich.

Have you ever struggled to make ends meet?

Yes, when I was 19 my boyfriend and I set up a business in southern Spain with a bar. We did it for four years and it was fun. We made decent money in the summer, but sometimes we were quite thin in the winter.

Still, we had enough to survive. And if we didn’t have any money, we could always have a drink in our own bar.

Have you ever gotten a lot of money?

Yes. While in Spain, I developed a passion for reading the Financial Times. I found it quite exciting to read about commodities and foreign exchange. I decided to throw myself into that industry.

So I moved to London at the age of 23 and got a job with a broker by convincing them to develop a new market in Denmark and get rich Danish clients like the smaller Danish banks.

Although I had no qualifications, I knew as much as many of my colleagues.

You don’t learn trading at university anyway. It’s something you learn the hard way by making mistakes. I went in, showed some ambition, knew roughly what I was talking about and learned on the job.

I went from skin color to £200,000 to £250,000 a year, which was a lot of money in 1988.

What was the best year of your financial life?

It was 2018 when I sold my stake in Saxo Bank. I had set it up 26 years earlier to facilitate investment in various stocks and commodities and foreign exchanges. I made about 280 million pounds. That was a good day.

What did you do to celebrate?

I think you have to be careful not to be destabilized by both good and bad events in your life. They come and go, and when you’re in the money world, strong emotions are not your friend. You have to keep a cool head and a calm mind. I think I had a good dinner with friends. I can’t remember if we had champagne – more likely I would have opened a large bottle of red wine.

The most expensive thing you bought for fun?

A Bentley Brooklyn. It probably cost me about $250,000. It is black, beautiful and powerful.

What is your biggest money mistake?

Investing in a jewelry business several years ago. I lost about £12 million. I felt a little upset. But when I make decisions, I’ve learned that sometimes they go well, sometimes they don’t. I’m not too excited about it either.

The best money decision you’ve made?

I invested £30,000 in Saxo Bank when I started it in 1992 with three other people. It became worth over a billion pounds.

Are you saving for retirement?

No, I invest in companies I believe in. My main area of ​​investment is blockchain related companies. That’s an area I see as important technology – transformative. I was lucky that Saxo Bank got involved with the internet very early on. Since then, I haven’t seen any technology that excites me as much as blockchain. I recently discovered that the brokers I had worked for in London in the 1980s had paid me a pension that is now worth £100,000. That was a nice surprise.

Do you invest directly on the stock exchange?

No, I’m not fond of the stock market. My strategy is unusual. I like to keep half my money safe so I don’t end up with nothing one day. And then I take the other half and invest it in risky things.

It often goes wrong, but every now and then I get a good return. I prefer to invest early in companies that are not listed and have real growth potential. And maybe one day those companies will make a list and then, if you’re lucky, you can make many multiples on your investment.

What is the only luxury you treat yourself to?

I like a night out in a good restaurant. I usually spend £1,000 at a time eating out, maybe three or four times a week. I also think life is too short for bad wine so I spend anything from £50 on a bottle.

Do you own real estate?

I own four properties: an old villa north of Copenhagen in Denmark, a traditional lakeside summer house in Sweden, a 13-bedroom house in Italy and a small 750-year-old castle in Switzerland, where I live. It has ten bedrooms and is surrounded by a beautiful park, with a river running through it.

What would you do if you were chancellor?

Give companies that have had a hard time during the pandemic a tax break that means they don’t pay tax for a year. It would give healthy companies a chance to survive. Ultimately, these companies will be your tax base in five years.

Do you donate money to a good cause?

Yes. During the pandemic, I set up a charity initiative to provide daily meals to homeless people from one of the restaurants I own in Copenhagen. Every day, 365 days a year, we deliver about 400 meals. Police have told us that in the areas where we operate, calls for violent events have fallen by 30 to 40 percent.

What is your top financial priority?

To have enough money left over so that I can continue to invest in new businesses and make sure that my family does not end up among the homeless.