Duncan Bannatyne - Riding the storm: my journey to the brink and back

Contents

Can money buy you happiness?

A few years ago Duncan Bannatyne might have said so. He was happily married and his businesses were thriving. Life was good. He couldnt have known that a storm was brewing on the horizon and that he would soon face immense personal and professional struggles, including the strain of a divorce and the impact of the recession on his business empire. Riding the Storm is the inspirational account of how Duncan overcame these setbacks. Its a survival story, full of insights into how he adapted his businesses and his life to new financial realities.

In it, Duncan explains exactly how a working-class boy from Clydebank built himself a multimillion-pound business empire, and talks with incredible frankness about the current strategies, goals and finances of his companies. He reveals the true nature of his feuds and friendships with the other Dragons and uses his experiences from Dragons Den to offer advice to start-up entrepreneurs in todays market. He speaks openly about the terrible pain of his divorce and how his childrens love gave him the strength to get through it. He discusses the opportunities that success has given him, from learning to dance for Sport Relief to trekking up Kilimanjaro with his daughter. And finally he explains why, in spite of having just gone through the toughest years of his life, he feels positive about the future and why you should too.

Born in Clydebank, Scotland, Duncan Bannatyne is best known as one of the stars of BBC entrepreneurship programme Dragons Den. His own business career began in his twenties, when he bought an ice cream van for 450. He soon expanded by buying more vans and eventually sold the business for 28,000, founding a chain of care homes instead. Quality Care Homes subsequently sold for 26 million in 1997 and another business, childrens nursery chain Just Learning, sold for 22 million. He has since built the well-known Bannatynes Health Clubs chain, as well as investing in bars, hotels and property.

He has been honoured with the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to charity and is heavily involved with Comic Relief and UNICEF.

TO MY CHILDREN

Abigail, Hollie, Jennifer, Eve, Emily and Tom

Remember I love you more

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those people who have helped me to survive the most tumultuous two years of my life. In particular I want to thank the directors of my company, Nigel Armstrong, Justin Musgrove, Steve Hancock and Chris Watson, who have continued to direct the Bannatyne Group. My fantastic PA Kim Crowther also deserves a special mention. I would like to thank my six wonderful children and, of course, my uber-cool son-in-law, whose help has been invaluable. I am very grateful to Lyndon Longhorne and his family, Ben Parkinson and his family, Noel and Liz Edmonds, Andy Reid and his family, Ron and Lesley Perry and children, Mark and Helen Burdon, Kim and Ian Wilson, Richard and Sandra Kimes, and Peter and Faye Jinks. My first wife Gail has always ensured my relationship with our children has stayed firm, and I am indebted to her for that.

I also want to thank my fellow dragons Peter Jones, Theo Paphitis, Deborah Meaden, Kelly Hoppen and Piers Linney, for putting up with my mood swings during that period. Finally I would like to thank Jo Monroe for working with me a seventh time; it has been an absolute pleasure. Thanks also to Harry Scoble and the team at Random House, and Jonny Geller, my agent at Curtis Brown, who has now sold seven of my titles.

Thank you to you all.

When I was asked to write my autobiography in 2005, it seemed like the right time in my life to take stock and look back. Dragons Den was starting to take off and a lot of people were asking me how I made my fortune. Anyone Can Do It explained how I had started out with an ice-cream van and gone on to build businesses worth 400 million. At the end of that book, I felt I was in a good place. A secure place. My businesses were growing steadily, I had enough money to do whatever I wanted, I had a beautiful villa in France where I spent quality time with my family and I was about to marry the woman I was deeply in love with.

I had no idea what was about to happen. We didnt know it then but the financial crisis was already rumbling towards us like an out-of-control freight train; and while I was thinking about the happy ever after, I think my wife was probably already considering divorce. Meteorologists talk about perfect storms where a coincidence of climatic conditions produce devastating hurricanes. For me, the credit crunch and the divorce have created my own perfect storm. Though, of course, perfect isnt the word I would use. Far from it.

The Sunday Times Rich List makes for very interesting reading, and like a lot of people, I cant wait to get my hands on it when its published every April. For the past 25 years it has listed the thousand richest people living in the United Kingdom and if you compare this years list with the first edition, it gives you a very useful snapshot of how the British economy has changed. It used to be dominated by barons and earls with all their inherited wealth, but each year the number of self-made entrepreneurs has steadily increased (as well as the number of footballers and pop stars, of course). To me, its a really simple illustration of how Britain has become an entrepreneurial nation.

I sometimes wonder what Id have thought of the Rich List if it had been around when I was a kid (of course, our family would never have bought the Sunday Times we were a Daily Record household). I was born in Clydebank in 1949, the son of a factory worker. My dad always managed to earn enough to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table but there was hardly ever anything left over. I can imagine him a tough, hard-working WWII veteran flicking through the Rich List and fuming at the ridiculousness of it all. His comments would all be about people like that: I dont think he would ever have believed his son would become one of those people. My wealth would have been beyond his imagination.

Every year, as youd expect, the first thing I do when I get hold of the Rich List is look myself up (you would too, wouldnt you?). Have I gone up in the rankings? Down? Is the photo a good one? Then as youd also expect I look up the other dragons. It used to be Theo first, then Peter. Now its Peter first, followed by Deborah. Are they above me, or below me? Has their wealth gone up? Is it an unflattering photo?

The Rich List doesnt just tell us about rich individuals, it also illustrates a bigger picture, showing how the UK has become home to numerous overseas billionaires. Sometimes I realise that while Im reading it Im shaking my head in disbelief at how Britain has changed. You only have to walk round places in London like Kensington and Belgravia to see this: there are shops selling handbags worth more than the average house, let alone the average salary, and if you look in estate agents windows you see gold-plated swimming pools and heated garages as part of the luxury spec. Indian steel magnates, Nigerian oil producers, Russian mining oligarchs: their wealth Alisher Usmanov, who topped the 2013 list, is worth over 13 billion is many hundred times my own, and their conspicuous spending highlights the massive disparity that has opened up between the poorest and the wealthiest in Britain in the past decade.