Loaded questions

7:02pm Tuesday 7th October 2008

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AS a self-made multi-millionaire in a tough business, James Benamor will be striding about and swearing like a trooper, right?

Wrong. He seems almost shy. As he sits eating with his staff he looks more like a schoolboy - albeit one worth an estimated £77m.

James is the founder of the Bournemouth-based Richmond Group, which arranges loans for people refused credit by banks.

He is also a ferocious competitor.

"It kills me not to be the best," said the 31-year-old. "I don't know why. I'd probably need to see a psychologist about that!

"If I set out to be good at something and I'm not, no matter how small it is, I'll be awake at 3am thinking about it. It cuts me up."

He became famous on TV's The Secret Millionaire when he lived incognito in Manchester's notorious Moss Side to see who deserved his donations.

The Daily Echo caught up with him in his Richmond Hill offices, a stone's throw from our Bournemouth newsroom.

Most of the 400 staff appear under 30. They get a range of bonuses and benefits, and are split into teams with fun names. But this seems a tough environment. Large screens display exactly how well each person is doing.

James said: "The right people are those who act like they own the company.

"I'm here to have a good time, to enjoy myself. We're not here to waste time, lose money or be anything other than the best at what we do."

Before the Channel 4 show he had spent years raising and donating money for Poole-based children's hospice, Julia's House. Two of his sons were wrongly diagnosed with a fatal form of muscular dystrophy. When it was found they only had a mild form James couldn't just walk away.

To critics of his loans business he replies: "We only loan to people who can afford the repayments. There's no benefit lending money to someone who can't afford to repay it."

He started the business from a bedroom in his mother's house spending £100 on 5,000 black and white A5 leaflets, which he hand delivered to 5,000 homes.

The first office in Lower Parkstone has grown to two offices in Richmond Hill and another in Morton House, behind the Nationwide building.

James said he avoids lending to homeowners - a lesson he learned from the 1990s recession and his parents' bankruptcy. He is confident of his firm's future, despite the tough market.

"We don't sell off our bad debts," he said. "The money we loan is primarily my money. And we don't borrow a lot from the banks in relation to how much we lend."

Despite his wealth he said he wanted what everyone wants - a car, his own place, money for holidays. "I never set out to be a millionaire. In fact every stage the company has grown in response to a problem."

The word "problem" turns out to mean "competitor".

When the firm had five staff, and was making £30,000 a year profit, James said he was happy. But rivals sprang up and his competitive side came to the fore.

"Competitiveness and desperation are similar really," he said. "I saw my livelihood being taken away and I saw companies destroying everything I've worked for. By the time I'd finished with them, we'd turned around and we were employing 20 people and making £1m a year."

He competes in a more physical way, too. Most mornings he is in the gym boxing and earlier this year had his first "white collar" bout, a defeat over three rounds at the Opera House in Boscombe.

He said he is not flashy with his money, adding: "I get off on the idea of being the best. "I feel the same when I hear about the amount of money we've raised for Julia's House as I do when sales targets have been broken."

• Crunch time - "SECRET Millionaire" James Benamor has painted a depressing picture of the economic outlook.

"I know businessmen are supposed to be optimistic and drive consumer confidence," said the 31-year-old owner of Bournemouth-based Richmond Group. "But I'm an honest kind of person. I'm not hopeful."

Mr Benamor - worth an estimated £77m - featured on the TV series, The Secret Millionaire, where he lived anonymously in a tough part of Manchester before donating money to worthy causes.

He said until now the main effect of the credit crunch had been on the banking sector.

But he said: "Companies like ours have found it more difficult to borrow.

"Therefore a lot of companies aren't able to loan and therefore customers can't spend in the way they used to."

While confident about his own firm, other companies were having problems not just making profits, but even paying their staff, and redundancies are going up.

"These figures aren't really coming up in the government statistics yet. It will take a few months to wash through."

His company arranges loans for people refused credit by traditional banks - but he said their style of lending was not to blame for the credit crunch.

"What you're viewing was created by the big investment banks, by the hedge fund managers, by the people trading in London," he said.

He said he steered clear of loans to homeowners because he thought house prices were inflated.

"I just saw it coming. That's why I never had anything to do with secured lending to homeowners - because you were withdrawing money from a bank account that was already overdrawn."

Does he think Gordon Brown can be blamed?

"I'm not a hugely political person. I think that decisions that were made were short-sighted. No one really worried about the consequences of what was going to happen when house prices went down.

"They all kidded themselves they were going to go up forever."