Steve Hayes is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 businessman

Businessperson

A businessperson is someone involved in a particular undertaking of activities for the purpose of generating revenue from a combination of human, financial, or physical capital. An entrepreneur is an example of a business person...

, and the current owner of both League One

Football League One

Football League One is the second-highest division of The Football League and third-highest division overall in the English football league system....

 football club Wycombe Wanderers and Aviva Premiership rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 side London Wasps

London Wasps

London Wasps is an English professional rugby union team. The men's first team, which forms London Wasps, was derived from Wasps Football Club who were formed in 1867 at the now defunct Eton and Middlesex Tavern in North London, at the turn of professionalism in 1999...

.

Originally a double glazing salesman, Hayes also worked for his father-in-law selling secondary mortgages

Mortgage loan

A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...

. In 1997 with David Cowham he founded loans.co.uk, a Watford

Watford

Watford is a town and borough in Hertfordshire, England, situated northwest of central London and within the bounds of the M25 motorway. The borough is separated from Greater London to the south by the urbanised parish of Watford Rural in the Three Rivers District.Watford was created as an urban...

 headquartered finance

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

 broker

Mortgage broker

A mortgage broker acts as an intermediary whose brokers mortgage loans on behalf of individuals or businesses.Traditionally, banks and other lending institutions have sold their own products. However as markets for mortgages have become more competitive, the role of the mortgage broker has become...

. Hayes became Chief Executive, expanding the firm to become the UK's then leading finance broker, on an earnings package of £5.5million in 2004/2005. In June 2005, Cowham and Hayes sold loans.co.uk to MBNA

MBNA

MBNA Corporation was a bank holding company and parent company of wholly owned subsidiary MBNA America Bank, N.A., headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, prior to being acquired by Bank of America in 2006...

 for an undisclosed amount, reported to be worth £50million to each partner.

Hayes became a 25% shareholder through an initial £250,000 investment in Wycombe Wanderers in June 2004, when the football club became a plc

Public limited company

A public limited company is a limited liability company that sells shares to the public in United Kingdom company law, in the Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth jurisdictions....

, and later became managing director. Hayes bought an 11.6% stake in London Wasps Holdings Ltd in August 2007, and became chairman of Lawrence Dallaglio

Lawrence Dallaglio

Lorenzo Bruno Nero "Lawrence" Dallaglio, OBE is a retired English rugby union player and former captain of the English national team. He played as a flanker or number eight for London Wasps and never played for another club, having arrived at Sudbury as a teenager...

's benefit committee. In December 2008, Hayes bought Chrysalis Records

Chrysalis Records

Chrysalis Records was a British record label that was created in 1969. The name was both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and a combination of its founders names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis...

 founder Chris Wright

Chris Wright

-Sports:* Chris Wright , plays for Essex County Cricket Club* Chris Wright , a guard at Georgetown University* Chris Wright , a forward at the University of Dayton...

's controlling interest and John O'Connell's shareholding in London Wasps to take complete control, and in July 2009, following a shareholders' meeting, he took full ownership of Wycombe Wanderers, in the process writing off £3m of the club's debt to him in exchange for shares.