Might of the Hunter

LAST WEEK was not a good one for Tom Hunter, one of Scotland’s richest men, bon viveur and self-styled enterprise messiah.

Monaco probably helped as well. The Grand Prix revs up in the South of France next month and, courtesy of his private Learjet, Hunter, 42, will make his annual pilgrimage to the Riviera to watch the action from a hired yacht. Joining him will be close business associates and friends, and maybe the odd celebrity. Richard Branson and Jackie Stewart are no strangers to the Hunter entourage. He will use the time to talk business, and purge himself of his disappointment over Selfridges. When you are Tom Hunter, every cloud has a silver lining. As the sun set on the Selfridges deal, he took a holiday in the Caribbean. It must be hell.

Yet for all that, there is a self-effacing modesty about Hunter. He is passionate about Scotland and he has not forgotten his roots. His close friends include ex-schoolmates, such as Robert Wilson, a former miner, now a psychiatric nurse. Hunter lives in luxury with his wife Marion and their two children beside the golf course in Troon, and for his 40th birthday party in Monaco he flew in some old school friends for the occasion. That aside, the party was a little out of the ordinary: Marion hired Motown legend Stevie Wonder and soul band Kool and the Gang to play at the bash, which was hosted by Jonathan Ross.

His friend Wilson also writes poetry, Burns-style, including an ode to Andrew Carnegie which he read to an audience of business, academic and voluntary services leaders who gathered earlier this month to celebrate the life of the 19th-century industrialist at a Hunter-organised event in the National Museums of Scotland.

Hunter has become an evangelist for Carnegie, who made - in today’s money - $100bn from his vast industrial empire. But it is not the man’s wealth that Hunter so admires. It is the fact he gave it all away. He loves quoting Carnegie’s famous epithet that "the man who dies rich, dies disgraced". It has become a driving force in his life and works. He has declared he is working towards ensuring his fortune - estimated at 425m - is properly managed and distributed in ways that will bring great benefits, particularly to Scotland and especially to the young and those who seek to become the next generation of entrepreneurs.

If Carnegie oils Hunter’s philanthropic engine, it is the need to encourage Scots to think more about the value of wealth as a force for good that fires it up. His friends say it is no exaggeration to describe him as passionate about enterprise and about Scotland. His commitment to changing the culture, to ridding Scotland of its historical dependency on others for support, is used at every opportunity as a lever to influence those in power.

He helped create the Entrepreneurial Exchange, a means by which the nation’s wealthy tycoons could meet to swap ideas and advice. It was the first of its kind anywhere and is now being copied in other parts of Britain. Tickets for its annual dinner and awards night ceremony are among the most eagerly sought on the business dinner circuit and Hunter uses the occasion to ram home the message that Scots can do it for themselves and for the benefit of the country. At one event, he regaled a senior figure in the business community who had criticised what he termed "Armani-suited entrepreneurs", implying that they were "all fur coat and nae knickers". Hunter was apoplectic, banging the rostrum in indignation at such a slur.

But the critics - and they are a sizeable minority - find some of the entrepreneurial evangelising a little too much to bear. They regard it as little more than an opportunity for Hunter and his apostles - other self-made tycoons such as Chris Gorman and Chris van der Kuyl - to massage their egos, and note how they always manage to finesse the black tie code with extravagantly-designed attire which means they stand out from everybody else.

Hunter gets embarrassed talking about his own wealth, though friends say it is typical of a man who appreciates what life has given him.

He grew up in the mining village of New Cumnock, and attended Cumnock Academy where he was a good student, passing seven Highers. While attaining a marketing and economics degree from Strathclyde University he worked alongside his father Campbell, a fifth-generation grocer, in the family business. In 1984, when the Cumnock mine shut, Campbell closed the shop and helped keep the books of a local entrepreneur who sold footwear to retail outlets. Hunter noticed from the receipts that trainers appeared to be very popular. He borrowed 5,000 from his dad and 5,000 from the bank and started selling shoes to stores, which he delivered in an old van. It was his first step towards the retail hall of fame. He may have had serendipity on his side when in July 1998 he sold Sports Division, a modest chain of sportswear shops, for 290m, but few would argue that it can sustain success.

He has a reputation for not over-paying for his targets - hence his failure to bag Selfridges and House of Fraser before that. He is said to be acutely focused and astute in assessing what he should and should not buy. He was, some think, untypically caught out by an investment in a failed internet venture, though he was hardly alone, but more so when he invested in Michelle Mone’s brassiere adventure in which he had to make a further injection of cash to keep it afloat.

If his instinct for a good deal rarely deserts him, he owes a lot to Philip Green, a fellow retail buyer who helped transform Sports Division by tipping off Hunter about the availability of Olympus Sports. It was the phone call that changed his life. With that deal in the bag, it was fortuitous when former footballer Dave Whelan’s JJB Sports came along and handed Hunter his fortune in exchange for his endeavours in the high street. Shortly afterwards, the market in sportswear began to falter, but by then Hunter had jumped into his Bentley and roared back to Ayrshire.

There was another spat with the media when the deal meant some jobs had to go. He was seen as helping himself to a fortune while many of the staff were thrown on to the dole. It hurt, but it was a reminder of the jealousies and prejudices that continue to torment those who want to see Scotland adopt a more American attitude to business, including a more sympathetic view of failure.

Since Hunter’s Sports Division days, Green has been a constant source of advice, not least over Selfridges. But his main business friends are Jim McMahon and Brian McLuskey who run West Coast Capital, the vehicle Hunter created for acquiring businesses. His more recent vehicle, the Hunter Foundation, is a creature born of his obsession with Carnegie. So far, it has distributed more than 10m to mainly educational causes. It is described as "venture philanthropy", providing cash to pilot schemes that will be passed over to the Scottish Executive as proven concepts. It draws help from the Carnegie Corporation in New York.

Hunter regularly rubs shoulders with Cabinet Ministers. But he remains determinedly neutral in his political dealings and is a member of none of the business lobby groups. Instead, he relies on the power of the position he has carved out for himself to influence the political machine. He says his wealth has given him the opportunity to travel, it has also given him the chance to make a difference.