FROM A BEDROOM START-UP TO A BILLIONAIRE

ONE of the country’s most successful self-made businessmen, Peter Hargreaves created an empire from his spare bedroom.

Now worth more than £2bn, the plain-speaking Lancastrian’s road to riches began at the start of the 1980s after he left his job as an accountant.

He spotted a gap in the market for savers and investors. He believed that by using newsletters he could give investment fund recommendations to customers.

Hargreaves roped in Stephen Lansdown, a friend and fellow accountant who was still working at the company he left behind. After putting in £1,000 each they started to produce their first newsletters. The company they created, Hargreaves Lansdown, now has 783,000 customers, is worth almost £6bn and runs £59bn worth of savings, pensions and investments. It also employs more than 950 people, most of them in its Bristol HQ.

Hargreaves, who was awarded a CBE in the 2014 New Year’s Honours for services to business innovation, financial services and the city of Bristol, claims to be the only person to have founded a FTSE 100 company without borrowing a penny.

Hargreaves stepped down as chief executive in 2010, and left the board last year.

He does not have any time for modern politicians – but is a staunch Thatcherite, and once described the Iron Lady as a ‘million times better’ for business than David Cameron. The 69-year-old says he inherited the frugal traits of his father, who ran their small family bakery. But his penny-pinching does not extend to tax. He prides himself on paying full tax on all his earnings in the UK.

This is not to say Hargreaves does not enjoy the trappings of wealth. He owns three race horses – but says he never bets more than a fiver at the races.

His impressive mansion in a village in Somerset is surrounded by four acres of cultivated gardens, where he says he is most happy spending his time digging up vegetables.

Hargreaves and his wife Rosemary have been married for 30 years and have a son and a daughter.