Mining mogul's golden goal

As he comes to the phone in his Monaco villa, there is a clear sense of relief in the voice of the 57-year-old mining tycoon. Selling the stake marks an end to two and a bit years of largely unwanted attention for the man usually dubbed "reclusive".

"I suppose I’m an ex-shareholder now," he says dryly. "I sold my shares in the marketplace. There’s a buyer in the market - I presume it’s Glazer. That’s it, it’s gone. I’ve made a profit. I bought at 127p, I sold at 300p. I hadn’t counted that up, but you must be about right with 30m."

He adds: "Nobody had talked to me at all. I’ve never had any conversation with Glazer or his people or anyone else. But this afternoon there was a big cross in the market - 75 million shares went through.

"It was obvious that could only be Cubic Expression [the investment vehicle for Irish racing tycoons John Magnier and JP MacManus]. My man followed on. That would have given Glazer 56% or something. There was very little point in me holding on after that.

Dobson admits he is not a football fan. His hobbies are horseracing and shooting. As for Magnier and McManus, who triggered Glazer’s takeover move by selling out to the American leisure entrepreneur, Dobson has known them both for over 20 years. "We don’t go to dinner or parties together or anything like that," he says, "but if we see each other in the parade ring at the Galway races or somewhere, we say hello."

Although there have previously been attacks on some of the club’s directors as part of the violent objections to the Glazer takeover, Dobson is unperturbed at the possibility of him being drawn into the melee.

"It must be understood that this is a public company," he says, with the frustrated tone of most businessmen who get lured on to the Manchester United topic. "The shares trade publicly in the marketplace, and as I said two and a bit years ago when I bought them, it was an investment for me. It was nothing more.

"Everybody knew there was a day when I would be a seller as well as a buyer. I realise these things are a bit more emotive than the normal sort of investment - which is something I know now, but didn’t know before."

It seems hard to believe that an astute, self-made man like Dobson would fail to realise the implications of buying the 6.5% stake formerly held by United chairman Martin Edwards at a time when takeover speculation surrounding the club was already bubbling.

"I knew it would attract attention," he retorts. "I just didn’t expect to find photographers running through my garden and jumping over the wall when I got home - I think one of your guys was one of the jumpers.

"I was in Finland when I bought the shares. At the time I came back my mother was very unwell and I flew from Helsinki to Edinburgh. I didn’t think much would happen. I got off the plane and thought I would get the papers to read in the car going home to the farm and, my goodness, there I was on the front page of all the papers. I went out of the airport with my coat over my head. I was terribly embarrassed. I had no idea it would cause so much attention."

Dobson is well regarded in the mining industry, but much of his business interests are in private companies and family trusts which he is reluctant to talk about in detail. He admits the profile he gained through his Manchester United involvement did open some doors with bankers and shareholders, but insists it has been a double-edged sword.

"The old expression holds true, particularly in Scotland - a prophet is not without honour save in his own land. In other words, you can do quite well abroad but they don’t like you to do well at home. Scotland can be a difficult place in that regard.

"Some people don’t like it all that much when you make money - which is understandable. What’s the other expression you lot use? ‘Ah kent his faither’? You get a bit of that."

He adds: "I have done things in the public markets all my career. I’ve just been doing things perceived to be terribly boring. When I got involved in a football team it was considered I was not boring all of a sudden. I’ve not changed. I’m doing the same as I’ve always done. The company I’m floating now [Borders & Southern] is a good example of what I do."

It can be difficult to get a handle on exactly what Harry Dobson does do. Borders & Southern, an oil and gas exploration company, is his latest venture. It has a large block of acreage south of the Falkland Islands.

It will be Dobson’s second float of the year when it joins the Alternative Investment Market a week on Tuesday. Only a couple of months ago he listed Rambler Mines, a gold prospecting company focused on interests in Canada. He is already involved in Canada’s largest gold exploration programme through Kirkland Lake Gold, a business he has been working with for about four years.

Mining is his main concern and is where he began to make his way in the world. He left the family farm in Lauder aged 19 to join Voluntary Service Overseas. He was placed in the Solomon Islands with the department of agriculture, and that led to a job with a Bauxite mining company, running exploration crews.

"It was dealing with soils," says Dobson. "I was supposed to have some knowledge of soils, but I probably didn’t." He then went to Australia, where he worked his way to a role in the financing of mining businesses.

By the time he was 30, he had moved to Canada and was a partner in Yorkton Securities, a small investment bank in Canada. They grew Yorkton to be the third or fourth largest in Canada, with offices around the world. When the partners sold out, Dobson decided to start arranging deals for his own benefit.

These days Dobson considers Monaco to be home. He describes it as a "strange place where everybody minds their own business" and says he doesn’t really know who his neighbours are.

"Occasionally, when you’re out shopping, you nearly speak to somebody, then realise you only know them from the telly," he adds.

The Dobson empire also includes an enormous array of property interests, mainly in Ireland, which he began building 20 years ago, before anyone appreciated the growth that Dublin and the rest of the Irish economy would go on to experience.

His horseracing interests are managed through the stable of Irish trainer Jim Bolger. He has about 40 horses in training and a number of breeding mares. He says the venture doesn’t make money, but he considers it a business rather than an expensive hobby.

Overall, his investments are heavily biased towards commodities. Thanks to a mixture of macroeconomic forces and a mistrust of governments, he is confident that this is the right thing to be doing.

"We’ve now got China and India and certain other far eastern countries like Indonesia that are in full expansion mode," he says. "There’s going to be blips along the way with the economics, but the fact of the matter is that you’ve got possibly three billion people now coming into some measure of economic activity that were not there before.

"You have a vast middle class being created in India and China - and they are middle class consumers. They’re going to want to drive things, they’ll want nice things like we have. And why not? They work very hard, they’re entitled to it, they’re entrepreneurial - they’re good guys, so to speak.

"There’s never been a time in history when there’s been that volume of people moving into that economic category. So I think we will see a sustainable oil and gas and commodities market over the foreseeable future - 15, 20, 25 years.

"We’re going back into a commodities-based market. And that’s what I do. I’m a mining person that’s having a dip into the world of oil and gas."

He adds: "I’m a believer in gold. I’ve always believed in it and I always will. I really don’t believe in fiat currencies. Governments by their very nature can’t help printing money. That’s just what we’ve been doing. We’ve been printing it, printing it and printing it - and we’re going to pay the price in future years. But that’s just my own personal view."

Apart from regular fleeting visits to the Borders to see his mother, he doesn’t spend much time at the family farm outside the shooting season, though almost 40 years spent largely on foreign shores have failed to change his accent and wit, which remain unquestionably Scottish.

He puts his success down to luck and meeting the right people at the right time, but is reluctant to comment on the size of his fortune - estimated at between 470m and 500m.

"I’ve never commented on it. I read things in the newspapers from time to time and all it does is make my wife wonder where I’ve got it hidden. If my wife can’t find it, I’m damned sure you can’t," he says.

AWAY FROM THE DAY JOB

When did you become a millionaire?

I don’t really remember. I would have been in my early 30s - although I think I would only have been a dollar millionaire then.

What car do you drive?

A Lexus.

What book are you reading?

Enron: The anatomy of greed. It doesn’t have much to tell anyone, except the madness that’s going on in this world.

What are your hobbies?

I’m very keen on my horses and racing, and I shoot as much as I can.

Favourite holiday venue?

The Scottish borders - for the shooting.