Gerald Ratner: The Prawn Sandwich Joke That Wiped Out £500 Million

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Gerald Ratner built one of the largest jewelry empires in the world and destroyed it with a joke. Born in London in 1949, he took his real education from the shouting vendors of Petticoat Lane Market, joined the family jewelry business in 1966, and as CEO in the 1980s tore up the hushed, intimidating model of the traditional jeweler. Fluorescent orange posters and cut prices turned the shops into high volume discount stores, and the Ratners Group grew to well over a thousand outlets, absorbing H. Samuel, Ernest Jones, and Kay Jewelers in the United States.

On April 23, 1991, speaking to the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall, he explained how a sherry decanter set could sell for four pounds ninety-five by calling the product garbage, then joked that a pair of earrings cost less than a Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich and would not last as long. This episode examines why an outsider mocked his own customers to amuse the establishment, how quickly shoppers deserted him, and how he has spent three decades trying to write a second act.

• After the press reported the speech, customers boycotted the shops and the value of the Ratners Group fell by roughly 500 million pounds.
• Ratner went on Terry Wogan's chat show the next day to say it was a joke and to blame the media, which failed to calm anyone.
• The chairman he brought in to steady the company dismissed him in November 1992, and by September 1993 the business had been renamed Signet Group.
• He rebuilt by opening a health club in Henley-on-Thames in 1996 and selling it in 2001 for nearly four million pounds, then ran the online jeweler Gerald Online from 2003 to 2014.
• Reports from December 2025 have Ratner, now in his mid-seventies, attempting a buyout of H. Samuel and Ernest Jones from Signet Jewelers.