Clive Calder
South African-born British businessman
Clive Ian Calder (born 13 December 1946) is a South African-British billionaire record executive and businessman primarily known for co-founding the Zomba Group with Ralph Simon, and its subsidiary Jive Records. As of 2026, Calder has an estimated net worth of US$9.89 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index & Forbes.
Early life
Calder was born in and grew up in Johannesburg, Transvaal, Union of South Africa.
Career
Calder started his first record company in 1971 in South Africa with Ralph Simon. By 1975, Calder and Simon had relocated to London and established Zomba as an artist and producer management company. By 1978, Zomba had expanded to include music publishing and opened offices in New York City. In 1981 Calder and Simon formed their first record label Jive, and Calder began to create a name for Jive as an important outlet for hip hop and rap music with the help of new hire Barry Weiss.
Jive's success was followed by Silvertone Records in 1988 and countless others throughout the nineties. After an unspecified "ethical disagreement," Calder bought Simon's stake in Zomba and became the sole owner in 1990. In the late nineties, Jive expanded its success to include teen pop phenomenons such as the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC and Britney Spears, all of which topped the charts.
The public source identifies “Clive Calder” as south African-born British businessman. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clive, Calder and South.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1101884. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2026, 1971 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clive Calder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.