Nick Candy

It’s true we’ve got some fantastic clients. We’re very fortunate to be connected with the movers and shakers of all the global cities of the world. You can usually tell when we’ve got a client in here because their bodyguards are all over the place: two outside the front door, two in the lobby, one in the lift…

Possessions are always secondary, loved ones are all that matters.

One client didn’t want to go out so had us build him a nightclub in his house.

In New York and Los Angeles, you can throw your car keys to the valet and he parks it. Same in Hong Kong and Singapore, the service is off the scale. In London it’s sub-standard to abysmal.

London has got better as it’s become more international – you only have to look at the quality of the restaurants to see how improved it’s become.

When you are in real estate, you are going to make some mistakes.

We decided not to show One Hyde Park til we were 100% ready. A lot of people open the doors too early.

The main job of the entrepreneur is to define the mission, find and inspire the team, and lead.

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.

We, we – as I say, we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.

I think I’ve got the best staff in television.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.

As far as competition is concerned, that must continue. But we must learn what competition really is. It is a striving to attain the best. To throttle it would mean to stop all progress. Certain men do not need to compete. They are pioneers.

I built a great company, one of the – some of the most iconic assets in the world, $10 billion of net worth, more than $10 billion of net worth, and frankly, I had a great time doing it.

I cannot remember a time when the Golden Rule was not my motto and precept, the torch that guided my footsteps.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

It took only 10 minutes to do Chelsea deal with Roman Abramovich but I had to Google him first … I wasn’t sure if Jeremy Beadle was going to jump out.

Competition whose motive is merely to compete, to drive some other fellow out, never carries very far.

I get my design inspiration from Christian Dior and Chanel.

Fairs and public displays are the best means we have yet found of showing large numbers of people the real methods of industry.