From Homeless To #1 On The UK Powerlist
The Dean Forbes Story: Trade Not Aid ????✨???? Meet Dean Forbes who was released by Crystal Palace Football Club at 17. Homeless twice. £88K in debt. Today: #1 on UK Powerlist 2025. The most influential Black person in Britain. One of a tiny handful of Black CEOs globally leading companies valued at over €2 billion. […]
Black News 
The Dean Forbes Story: Trade Not Aid 
Meet Dean Forbes who was released by Crystal Palace Football Club at 17. Homeless twice. £88K in debt. Today: #1 on UK Powerlist 2025. The most influential Black person in Britain.
One of a tiny handful of Black CEOs globally leading companies valued at over €2 billion.
CEO of €4B company. $2B+ in exits. He didn’t just survive. He scaled.
His story is raw, real, and remarkable.
The Fall
:
Raised on a council estate in Lewisham by a single mother with muscular dystrophy. At 11, Dean was shouldering adult responsibilities, caring for his brothers while chasing a dream of professional football.
He signed with Crystal Palace’s academy. But injuries caught up with him. The club released him at 17.
Then the walls caved in.
His mother lost her job. Then the family home. Dean had already been homeless once at 14. Now it happened again. At 17, he left to make his own way, carrying £88,000 in debt from trying to keep up with wealthy football friends, including Rio Ferdinand.
He calls it: “a twice homeless failed footballer who found himself doing telesales to service a mountain of debt.”
That telesales job was at Motorola Solutions. Entry level. Cold calls. Zero.
But Dean Forbes is not a man who stays at zero.
The Rise
:
Within five years he was VP at Primavera Systems. At 29, he helped broker its $550M sale to Oracle.
Then he kept going:
KDS Group → sold to American Express, Amex’s largest tech deal at the time.
CoreHR → sold to The Access Group.
Forterro → acquired for €1 billion in 2022, now valued toward €4 billion.
Across his career, Forbes has added over $2 billion in exits. One of very few CEOs in Europe to deliver that consistently, across multiple companies.
The Full Circle
:
Four years after leaving home, he bought his mother a house.
He founded the Forbes Family Group. Raised €1B at Corten Capital.
And in one gala night raised £400,000 for the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust — ten times what that charity normally raises annually.
The Reframe
:
He says he is grateful for the debt.
It forced him to fail at football fast, and pivot into the boardroom.
That reframe is everything.
Dean Forbes: Brilliant stuff and well done for turning your situation around – two bouts of homelessness to Britain’s most influential Black person, you didn’t just survive. You scaled. You exited. You gave back. You opened doors.
What’s the biggest “rock bottom” moment you’ve faced, and how did it become fuel for your greatest comeback?
