Richard Tice has been accused of “rank hypocrisy” after he appeared to have exaggerated his own business success on his website just a day after mocking Rachel Reeves over errors on her LinkedIn page.
The Reform UK deputy leader claims to have tripled the share price of real estate firm CLS holdings as chief executive from 2011 to 2014.
But The Independent has discovered that the share price did not triple under Mr Tice’s tenure.
It is an embarrassing revelation for Mr Tice, who on Thursday said: “Rachel Reeves cannot even manage her own CV let alone manage the economy.”
The former businessman, who was replaced as Reform leader when Mr Farage returned to fight the general election, has repeatedly attacked the chancellor as “Rachel from accounts”, a reference to allegations she embellished her CV relating to her time working at the Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS).
Supporters of Ms Reeves have described the nickname as “misogynistic and deeply unprofessional”.
At a press conference in the City of London on Wednesday, Mr Tice even directly compared himself to Reeves, stating: “When I was chief executive of a big multinational multi-billion pound property company, where in just four years I tripled the share price… not a track record I think our current chancellor can talk of.”
The “about” section on Mr Tice’s website states: “In 2010 I joined CLS Holdings, a large multinational real estate group with over £1 billion of assets in four countries. I led the group as CEO until early 2014, when it was making over £70m a year in profit.
“During my time in charge, the company grew strongly, the share price tripled and it was the top-performing property investment share on the London Stock Exchange.”
But financial disclosures from CLS, seen by The Independent, show that when Mr Tice was appointed chief executive on 1 January 2011, the company’s shares were worth 52.5p. When he stepped down as chief executive on 14 February 2014, the shares were worth 125.1p.
The increase is sizeable, with the shares more than doubling. But the rise is not equivalent to CLS’s share price having tripled, as Mr Tice claimed.
However, a spokesperson for Mr Tice said that the time he was “in charge” began in March 2010 when he was deputy CEO. The share price then was 47.5p. And they said that while the share price was worth 125.1p when Mr Tice left, it had risen to 141p in mid-January 2014.
Mr Tice told The Independent: “I am very proud that during my time in charge at CLS Holdings, the share price tripled. For this article to infer otherwise is simply incorrect.”
Mike Tapp, the Labour MP for Dover and Deal who has relentlessly campaigned against Reform, said the party’s “slogans and false patriotism completely fall apart” when you scratch beneath the surface.
He added: “From voting against this Labour government’s comprehensive plan to secure our borders to believing the West provoked Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Reform is not pursuing the interests of the British people. Mr Tice needs to throw all his party’s dodgy policy positions in the bin and, if this is correct, his CV too.”
Labour MP Josh Fenton-Glynn told The Independent the more scrutiny Reform gets, with the party surging past Labour and the Tories in the polls, the more they become exposed.
He added: “Tice’s dodgy CV, Nigel’s extra jobs and their plans to make you pay to use the NHS. I wouldn’t want them running my bath let alone my country.”
And a Labour source said: “No one should be surprised by rank and hypocritical misogyny from one of Reform’s frontmen.
“It’s easy to snipe from the sidelines, but it takes much more than that to actually govern,” the source added.
This article was amended on the day of publication to include Reform’s explanation of Mr Tice’s claim.
