The Sovereign Art Foundation – where art, charity and fine wine blend
The Sovereign Group, a successful asset management and wealth group started off in a small office in 1987. Today it has 600 employees across 20 offices in multiple international jurisdictions with €20Bn under assets. CEO and founder Howard Bilton entertained the American Club of Lisbon in September with stories about his life, career and charitable work.
Text: Chris Graeme; Photos: Color Shop by Joaquim Morgado
They say a people, their culture and temperament is informed by its landscape, the weather and any invading conquerors that have left their mark through history.
Entrepreneur Howard Bilton hails from Yorkshire, a land of desolate moors, rugged upland moors with bleak ‘wuthered’ stones and lush ‘dales’ or valleys about which the author Emily Bronte in her seminal novel of cruelty and antiheroes summed up so well in a nod to the main character Cathy’s self-cantered and cruel emotions: “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary”.
Before the ‘fireside’ style chat curated and organised by ACL Vice-President Sheree Mitchell, President & Founder of Immersa Global, an award-winning agency that tailor-makes travel programmes and boutique events for discerning travellers, Sheree informed me that this was not going to be the average American Club of Lisbon event.
Howard, she said, was outspoken, witty and at times “colourful” in his use of language, but he disarmed and regaled the 30 or so club members with his stories and a fascinating career, ladled lavishly with hilarious anecdotes washed down with quite a few glasses of some of the fine and award-winning wines produced in Portugal this year from his charming award-winning winery Howard’s Folly nestled in the historic and picture-postcard beauty of Estremoz in the heart of the stunning, rolling expanse of the Alentejo landscape.
Pigs and Sh**t
The son of a Yorkshire pig farmer (or as he likes to say the ‘Independent People’s Republic of Yorkshire’ since it is one of few regions of England where people “care so fiercely about their local identity”), Howard studied Law and Classics at Keele University (which, he says, looks like a lunatic asylum) and came away with his first life’s lesson: “semper in excretia sumus, solim profundum variat” – “we are always in the shit, it’s only the depth that varies”.
He first became a tax lawyer and then a barrister (in addition to being an ordained religious minister in the comic conspiracy theory group ‘Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster which believes that there is a correlation between global warming and the number of pirates in the world, and that it must be true because there are many more pirates in the world than examples of how global warming is accelerating!)
Joking aside, Howard had just come back from a two-weeks stint on an arctic research vessel and discovered “we will be in a dreadful state if we don’t do something about global warming”. To coin an iconic phrase from the popular 1970s UK TV sitcom Dad’s Army, “we’re doomed” he says.
A berk’s peerage!
Howard also informs us that he was recently made a lord — but a brief glance at Birke’s Peerage finds him not. He says that his sons bought him the title Lord Howard of Sealand (an unrecognised micronation, claiming a decommissioned World War II sea fort in the North Sea off Margate as its territory, but it is not officially recognised as a country by the United Kingdom or any other nation. Founded in 1967 by Paddy Roy Bates, Sealand has a constitution, flag, currency, and a royal family, but its status remains a legal and political anomaly) as a Christmas present. “The idiots left the invoice of the title in an envelope, so I happen to know it cost them 35 quid!”
After qualifying for the bar, Howard went to the Isle of Man and then Gibraltar in the early 1970s and then on to Hong Kong where he spent 28 years. Howard arrived in Portugal in June 2020 intending to return to Hong Kong in September 2020 and couldn’t get back because of the lockdown.
The second lockdown meant only returning if he were quarantined on arrival in Hong Kong in a hotel for three weeks. “I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being locked in a hotel room alone with me for three week!”
To cut a long story short he stayed and bought a house in Estremoz, although Portugal was very familiar since he had visited on and off since 1987, and there set up his Howard’s Folly winery in 2005.
First urban winery in Portugal
In what he trumpets as the “first urban winery in Portugal”, Howard converted a heritage building into a state-of-the-art winery, using small tanks to take advantage of higher fruit quality while keeping wine batches separate so that more reserve, varietal and premium wines are produced.
Howard, who proved indeed to be as ‘bold as brass’ (to coin a northern English phrase), as promised by Sheree, also took the time to talk about his Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF), an international charity across five continents which is making a difference in children’s lives in Portugal and across the world.
Established in 2003, the SAF celebrates contemporary art and uses its reach to support vulnerable children – often sexually, mentally or physically abused – and through its international art prizes recognises outstanding artistic talent, while funds raised are directed to community programmes that use the arts as a tool for empowerment and healing.
In Portugal, SAF runs the Sovereign Portuguese Art Prize and funds expressive art therapy workshops across three locations – Lisbon, Estremoz and Loulé. Delivered by professional art therapists, these workshops provide children from low-income backgrounds with special educational needs the opportunity to develop confidence, self-awareness, and communication skills.
Guided sessions help participants manage challenges such as perfectionism, anxiety, and frustration, while offering a safe space for creative expression and personal growth.
“What you’re drinking tonight brings wine and charity together, a charity designed to help disadvantaged children around the world”, he said.
The fundraising model is based on art prizes with a Portuguese, Asian and African art prize as well as schools prizes around the world – many in the favourable tax jurisdictions where Sovereign operates: Bahrain, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Malta, Mauritius, Portugal, Singapore, London and Chester.
“We believe that art is under-taught and under-represented in the school curriculum. We pick the best 30 pieces, showcase them in a public space and give the students an opportunity to sell their work, and if they succeed they keep 50% and the charity takes the rest,” said Howard adding that money is ploughed into the charity for the underprivileged children.
The relevance to the wine is very simple. “Every bottle has a label which is done by a professional artist or by the children we help through our programmes, so every bottle references the charity and 20% of the price of each bottle goes to the charity,” he explained. It was these wines we were enjoying.
True to form, at the start of the evening Howard had said: “I plan to get you all drunk, tonight”, and judging by the way many, including me, swayed towards the lifts of Ando Living’s Club House Bar own the way out after the event’s six-wine tasting session, it was mission accomplished!
About Sovereign Group
The Sovereign Group provides independent corporate and private client services, offering services such as company formation and management, trust and wealth management, retirement planning, and residency services to international businesses, entrepreneurs, and high-net-worth individuals. They specialize in creating and managing structures like companies, trusts, and foundations to help clients with tax planning, asset protection, and cross-border operations.
What they do:
Corporate Services: Sovereign forms and manages companies and other structures in numerous jurisdictions, providing the necessary support for businesses to operate internationally.
Private Client Services:
They assist internationally mobile families and high-net-worth individuals with wealth and succession planning through structures like trusts and foundations.
Retirement Planning:
The group devises and administers international pension schemes, offering clients choice and portability across different countries.
Residency & Citizenship Services:
Sovereign helps clients obtain residence and citizenship in various countries, often through investment programs.
Asset Management and Protection:
They provide services to manage and protect assets and investments.
Specialist Services:
This includes foreign property ownership, insurance, yacht and aircraft registration and management, and other ancillary services.
Who they serve:
Companies and international businesses, Entrepreneurs, Private investors, High-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and their families, and Expatriates.
How they operate:
Sovereign has a global network of offices and agents in key international financial centers. They also manage a large number of structures for their clients. The company is privately owned and co-owned by senior staff across its worldwide network.
