For an award-winning multimillionaire businessman, Paul Bassi maintains a remarkably low profile.
At 44, he has an estimated personal fortune of more than £40m and is the largest private landlord in the Black Country. He ranks at 182 in Estates Gazette’s 2004 Rich List, is the third richest Asian in the Midlands and the 50th richest in the UK. And, last month, he was given a lifetime achievement award for being one of the most successful businessmen in the Midlands.
Yet in spite of all this, few people outside the Black Country have heard of him.
That changed somewhat in March. Amid the collapse of Chesterton, Bassi emerged as one of the prospective buyers of the agency’s Birmingham office. If the deal had gone ahead, he would have gone from client to owner, while existing office head Carole Taylor would have continued to run the operation.
Bassi’s offer was taken off the table, however, when receiver Grant Thornton made the 60-strong workforce redundant.
Difficult to stack up the deal
“I sat down with a calculator and went through everything. But it was difficult to stack up,” Bassi recalls.
“Everyone had been made redundant and had handed back their mobile phones, which made it difficult to contact them and tell them about our plans.”
Despite emerging as a surprise suitor for the Chesterton branch, Bassi had been stalking it for some time to serve as a bolt-on agency arm for his private property company, Bond Wolfe. In 2003, Bassi’s company had cast its eye over the practice when the agency was being courted by Iranian investor Mohammad Jafari-Fini.
“At the time Mohammad Jafari-Fini was bidding for Chesterton, we also expressed an interest. However, we only wanted to buy the commercial business,” says Bassi. So Bassi and Jafari-Fini made a deal.
“I spoke to Jafari-Fini and agreed not to counter-bid if he would offer us the Midlands commercial offices. He was mainly interested in the residential, anyway. It was a good move. We didn’t want the whole business,” he explains.
But by the time Jafari-Fini had bought the business, Bassi was less keen on the deal. “It wasn’t a market I wanted to be in at the time.”
Estate agency, however, is closer to Bassi’s roots than investment, which he fell into by accident (see right). The accident, however, has been a happy one. “We’re now sitting on £60m worth of property, which comprises mainly shops and offices within a 15-mile radius of West Bromwich,” he says.
The smart investments have turned Bassi into a man of means. He wears hand-made suits and designer ties and drives a Bentley – an image out of kilter with the gritty, bargain-basement world of West Bromwich.
But when asked about his private wealth, the softly spoken father of three shifts uncomfortably on his boardroom chair, fiddles with his gold cufflinks and changes the subject.
The bulk of Bassi’s fortune has been built up by specialising in buying unloved, orphan stock worth between £50,000 and £500,000 in secondary and tertiary areas and keeping it.
Bassi’s first such deal was the purchase of a three-storey office block in West Bromwich High Street in 1983, bought in conjunction with his long-time friend and business partner Rory Daly. This started a portfolio which rapidly grew to include most of the street’s shops. Targeting run-down properties in tertiary areas, the pair refurbished and let them at a much higher rent, enabling them to get good capital growth over a short period.
Bond Wolfe recognised that these properties would have potential when the market turned. “They were unloved buildings and no one wanted them,” says Bassi. “I never sold anything. I didn’t have to. We realised that it was better to own property, rather than sell it.”
Selling the fag ends of the empire
Only in the past couple of years has he weakened and sold what he calls the “fag-ends” of Bond Wolfe’s empire, clearing out assets of £1m and below to tidy up the portfolio.
But property is not Bassi’s only investment. After all, you don’t become entrepreneur of the year by simply buying run-down buildings.
He also has a 3.59% share in the Bank Restaurant Group, a controlling interest in sweet maker Herbert J Roberts and even a Midlands farm. He also acts as regional chairman for bank Coutts, rounding up his wealthy contacts to be the bank’s clients.
But he remains determined to expand the Bond Wolfe group, which now comprises up to 12 companies with an annual turnover of around £35m. The main assets are income- producing shops and offices within a 50-mile radius of the West Bromwich office. The group includes Bond Wolfe Estates, which has assets of around £10m including the company’s West Plaza headquarters, and Bond Wolfe Assets, which has up to £8m in assets and cash.
“The assets are privately owned either by Rory and I, or via companies trading under the Bond Wolfe umbrella,” he says. “I am the majority shareholder across the companies.”
The auctions and property management operation, run by Daly, produces annual turnover of up to £1m. The income is used to pay operating costs for the whole business.
Meanwhile, Bassi heads the property development and investment side of the business.
His latest project is the redevelopment of a former BT building next door to Bond Wolfe’s headquarters on West Bromwich’s High Street. After buying it for £3.5m, the plan was to spend £2m turning it into a £6m, 35,000 sq ft office scheme, renamed Metro Court, which would have been the first and largest speculative office scheme in the town centre for more than 20 years. Now the building is let, generating £740,000 pa, and is under offer to a Scottish property company at £9.1m.
Growing sophistication
The move shows a growing sophistication in the way Bassi does his deals. When he started building the portfolio Bassi would use only his money, along with Daly’s and bank loans. Now, while he still uses mainly his own money, he can draw on cash-rich private individuals to boost his buying power.
A source close to Bassi says: “He has huge borrowing potential via the Black Country’s private money and the Asian community. He can raise well over £100m if necessary.
“Depending on the deal, Paul is likely to put in around 60% of his own money and borrow the rest.”
The network has allowed Bassi to avoid getting into bed with funds, despite a number of approaches. As Bassi says: “Why would I want to give profits to anyone else?” But he is looking at a number of joint ventures with quoted companies.
And despite his claim that “the Chesterton opportunity was a tiny moment in the life of Bond Wolfe” and that he would “like to move on”, Bassi is still keen to move into Birmingham estate agency.
“We want to buy a brand to service our own requirements. We’d like to buy the right practice, which in turn could trigger more opportunities in Birmingham for us.”
Bond Wolfe has also cast its eye over local agency Fletcher King, but no deal has been struck yet.
Bassi is banking on finding a business that wants to sell, so he can buy the commercial agency practice that has so far eluded him: “If anyone wants to sell, tell them to ring me!”
But investments remain the core of his business. “We’ll continue to invest in and retain local stock and look for value-enhancing opportunities. We have no shareholders to satisfy and are a family business effectively. We will remain private; we won’t sell out.”
Last month, Bassi was given the Asian Jewel Midlands Lifetime Achievement Award. He plays down the accolade. “It sounds like I am going to retire,” he says.
More to achieve
But retirement is the last thing on Bassi’s mind. This year he wants to spend £50m to expand the portfolio. “We have bought Carillion-Tarmac’s international headquarters for £5.2m,” says Bassi. “And another £8m of deals are in solicitors’ hands.
“We are also in advanced talks to buy a large retail portfolio and a small quoted company. If the climate doesn’t change I will easily spend £50m, if not more.”
He has also received an offer to sell West Plaza, which will boost the amount he can afford to spend.
But the speech he gave when he accepted his award might show even loftier ambitions. “All of us are from families who arrived in Britain full of hope and fear,” he said. “We still have much to achieve. We still haven’t had an Asian cabinet minister, an Asian chairman of a FTSE 100 company or an international-level Asian football player or manager.”
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1962 Born Hayes, Middlesex. Educated at Harlington Comprehensive, Hayes 1980 Takes business studies at Wednesbury Business College 1983 Joins investment manager Queensway Brokers and meets Rory Daly 1985 Headhunted by Bond Wolfe. Buys firm with Daly 1987 Opens first estate agency office 1989 Starts buying commercial property 1992 Becomes vice-president of the Sandwell & Dudley Chamber of Commerce — the first Asian to take a senior position in a chamber of commerce 1996 Bond Wolfe launches auctions business 1997 Sells estate agency business 1998 Appointed executive chairman of Bond Wolfe 2000 Appointed local director of Coutts Bank 2002 Appointed regional chairman of Coutts Bank (Birmingham) 2003 Bassi talks to Jafari-Fini about buying Chesterton’s commercial business. He is appointed regional chairman of Coutts Bank (West Midlands) 2005 Attempts to buy Chesterton’s Birmingham office Lifestyle Lives in Hagley, West Midlands, with partner Priya and three children, one boy and two girls. Hobbies include racquetball, five-a-side football, reading and watching his son play rugby |
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● In 2001, Bassi succeeded CBI head Digby Jones as regional chairman for Coutts & Co, banker to the Queen and gentry. His main role is to promote the 313-year-old bank and introduce it to the Midlands’ wealthy private investors and entrepreneurs. He is both the youngest and the first Asian regional chairman the bank has had. ● Bassi acquired the medieval title of Lord of the Manor of West Bromwich from the Earl of Dartmouth in 1999. The notional title is bestowed on individuals who have distinguished themselves in the area. ● Bassi was awarded the Asian Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2003. |
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In 1983, Bassi started working at Queensway Brokers, an investment manager based in Elizabeth House in Birmingham, which is now a block of flats. It was there that he met Irishman Rory Daly. Daly and Bassi have worked together for 22 years. “It’s a bit like a marriage really — it feels like I’ve got two wives,” laughs Daly. “Paul is very driven and always has his eye on the next deal; he’s a workaholic,” he adds. “He needs to step back and take time out to enjoy what he’s got.” In 1985, later the pair were headhunted by Clive Nicholas, the head of a small investment company called Bond Wolfe. From the outset Daly’s and Bassi’s relationship with Nicholas was strained. Months after he recruited Daly and Bassi, Nicholas said he wanted out and put a £100,000 pricetag on the company. Bassi and Daly negotiated a 98% cut in the asking price and paid just £1,750 for Bond Wolfe, using a bank overdraft. Bond Wolfe was only worth what it was producing, and, Bassi says, he and Daly were the ones making the money, hence the dramatic price cut. The buyout was perfectly timed to catch the 1980s property boom, and Bond Wolfe morphed to suit the times, shifting from financial investments to mortgages, and then on to estate agency. They set up a chain of offices across the Midlands, and by 1987 were running an estate agency business, buying and selling a range of properties and taking advantage of staggeringly high 14-15% interest rates. “We had cash in the bank and started buying high-street parades at 15% yields using our money and bank debt. The market changed and we did very well after refurbishing them.” Timing was crucial. They started building their new property empire in the early 1990s when the UK market was reeling from its latest recession. The estate agency business gradually became peripheral to the pair’s main business of property ownership and management. |
