Craig Whyte
Scottish businessman

Craig Thomas Whyte (born 18 January 1971) is a Scottish businessman best known for his controversial spell as owner of Scottish football club Rangers.
Whyte first entered business in a plant hire company, after which he moved into security, manufacturing and property. He bought the controlling interest in Rangers Football Club from its majority shareholder David Murray in May 2011, and subsequently put the club into administration in February 2012 and then liquidation in July 2012.
Early life
Born in Motherwell, Whyte was educated at Kelvinside Academy in Glasgow. When he was 15, Whyte took an interest in financial markets, and made more than £20,000 buying and selling shares before he left school.
Business career
Whyte's first job was with his father's plant hire firm, and in 1990 he set up his own plant-hire company. The company, Whyte Hire, was not a success and went bankrupt in the early 1990s with debts of around £300,000. Whyte recovered from this loss and branched out into security, manufacturing and property. In 1997, aged 26, he was Scotland's youngest millionaire. After selling off most of his businesses, he moved to Monaco.
“Craig Whyte” enters the record as scottish businessman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Craig, Whyte and Scottish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Craig Whyte” 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.