There is an A to Z of private equity jargon on the website of Jon Moulton’s company, Better Capital. U is for unions, the “greatest ally” of private equity firms, it says. “Particularly helpful in restructuring dying businesses to meet the needs of the market economy. We are all capitalists now.”
It is perhaps a reflection of the lighter side of the outspoken 64-year-old, who apologised on Monday for the Christmas collapse of City Link, the delivery business which his firm bought last year for £1. The RMT union is now battling to save the jobs of 2,000 workers.
In three decades of buying and selling companies that have helped him amass an estimated £100m fortune, Moulton has become best known for the deal he failed to pull off – the acquisition of the troubled car company Rover in 2000. Bought by John Towers’s Phoenix, Rover then became embroiled in controversy over payments to its rescuers.
Moulton got a taste of what was to become a lucrative career in private equity while working in Liverpool as a trainee accountant on companies going bust.
Accountancy was not his first choice of profession; he might have been a scientist, having set up a laboratory in the family garden shed in Stoke when he was child. He has described himself as being a sickly child - including suffering from aplastic anaemia, a disease of the bone marrow. His father was a master engraver in the local pottery industry and Moulton has said that this grandfather – who ran his own engineering business – was his mentor. After a false start at Aberystwyth University, Moulton did his degree at Lancaster and joined Coopers accountants – now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers – before a stint in New York.
His break into private equity came when he set up Schroders Ventures, later to become Permira, before setting up Alchemy in 1997 after a brief period at Apax. It was while at Alchemy that he tried to bid for MG Rover, and at one point proved prescient when he warned in 2006 that the economy was overheating and heading for crisis.
He walked out of Alchemy in 2009, a year before he was due to retire, after falling out with his anointed successor. His resignation letter ended with the words: “I’d do it again, but better.”
The phrase reportedly provided the name for his latest firm, set up in 2010. It has a range of investments including the recently-acquired Walkabout drinks chain, the Everest double glazing business and the high-end fashion brand Jaeger which its former boss Harold Tillman is said to be trying to buy back.
Moulton is now based in Guernsey and told the Financial Times that he can still get up at 6am and be in London by 8.55am each day.
“The government provides the same services as the UK but without a deficit and much less tax. Life expectancy exceeds the UK and unemployment is very low,” he said. Moulton has been a donor to the Conservative party in the past.
