In the first in a two-part exclusive report, Rosie Allsopp interviews businessman Tom Scott and finds out about the man, the myth and the money. SINCE he arrived in Guernsey almost 20 years ago, Tom Scott’s empire has grown and grown and, with every business deal, his public image has become more clouded.

At one point islanders felt there was little alternative at the bar, food tills or petrol pumps and boycotted CI Traders stores in protest.

Even the politicians got involved and decided it was time the island had a competition law to prevent companies from gaining a stranglehold on vital goods and services.

But Mr Scott counters that CI Traders has been good for the island. He has taken businesses and made them more profitable, benefiting the company’s thousands of shareholders and employees.

One of the strangest deals Mr Scott ever completed saw him spending £3m. to buy Channel Television shares while wandering around Southampton doing the deal on his mobile.

He was in the city, being checked over after an operation to fix a detached retina, when his broker called asking if he wanted to buy shares in the television company.

He said no, but the broker persuaded him to think again as the company had received profit warnings.

While most would not touch such a deal with a barge pole, it got him interested.

‘I’m a different animal, an entrepreneur who looks at the glass and says it’s half-full.’

The shares were selling for 90p, but he decided if he was going in, it would be for 10% of the company and for no more than 70p each.

Over the phone, Mr Scott concluded a £3m. deal that saw him take on 29.9% of the shares.

‘When you own 30% of the shares of a public company, you have to go private and make a bid for the lot, but I didn’t want to do that.’

The nonchalance over such huge figures is almost inconceivable for ordinary islanders, but Mr Scott said it was just another one. He didn’t even have to consider whether he had sufficient funds.

‘Without being blase, if you were asking a banker, he wouldn’t get the chills doing that. You do treat things in that kind of manner. You have to, or you wouldn’t stay level-headed.

‘I didn’t know what I was worth at that point. I don’t know what I’m worth now, though I have some idea.

‘I knew I was wealthy enough to find the £3m.’

TOM SCOTT arrived in Guernsey in 1987, already a wealthy man.

Originally from Nottingham, he had slived in the UK running a crane-hire business with depots all over the country from Aberdeen to Southampton. The plant included mobiles and crawlers and cherry pickers with the capability of working on North Sea oil rigs with a lifting capacity of 1,000 tons. Mr Scott learned how to operate them, as well as run a business.

‘I had an HGV licence. It’s a very practical business and, to understand it, you’ve got to understand how they operate.’

He gets his nose for business from his father, who had been in the motor trade.

‘He was an entrepreneur and when I left school I got him to go back into the business so I understood the trade.

‘We bought one crane. It took over and became a full-time job employing more than 2,000 people.’

The company was sold to British Electric Traction for a healthy sum. Mr Scott believes success is as much about circumstances as anything else.

‘We were in the correct business at the correct time, which is very important, just as Bill Gates would struggle if he were starting today to make Microsoft as big. We entered it just when telescopic cranes were coming out.

‘We could move from job to job very quickly.’

A popular misconception of Mr Scott is that he arrived in Guernsey looking to retire.

‘The UK law was structured slightly differently in those days. I decided to cleanse my capital gains problem by gaining a contract of employment, which I did with Guernsey Gas.’

He was taken on as property manager but also tasked with looking at various acquisition and purchase opportunities.

One of those opportunities was Jacksons Garage, which had BMW and Mercedes’ franchises in Jersey and Guernsey. Mr Scott was keen on the idea, but Guernsey Gas was unable to take part in the deal because it had the Bougourd Bros Ford business, which wouldn’t allow it.

Mr Scott felt it was too good an opportunity to pass up. ‘I asked for permission from the board to purchase it. They said yes, so I did. I then had my contract of employment with Jacksons.’

The board at Guernsey Gas asked him to stay at the company as a non-executive director, something new for him.

‘I said I didn’t know how long I was going to stay, but if they thought I would do well at it I would take it on because they had been good to me.’

GUERNSEY Gas had an abundance of talented engineers and accountants but Tom Scott brought a flair for recognising business opportunities.

It wasn’t long before one came up.

‘At the second board meeting a proposal came forward whether they should invest in Jersey Gas.

‘I went against the board, who all said yes. When a firm wants to raise money, they have the firm valued. I believed Jersey Gas had shot themselves in the foot and been valued too cheaply. I said we should make a bid for the company.’

The board agreed and Mr Scott, along with Guernsey Gas’s chief executive at that time, Paul Fairclough, were tasked with acquiring Jersey Gas.

‘It was a political coup, a Guernsey utility acquiring a Jersey utility. That was the time I started making a name for myself.’

The business carried on expanding and Mr Scott was asked to take on the role of chairman as the their incumbent, John Morris, was due to retire.

He agreed on three conditions.

‘The first was that if any other board member wanted to run it, I didn’t want to fight.

‘The second was that I wanted to buy a reasonable amount of equity in the company if I was taking on a full-time responsibility. The third was that I wanted to take it for a full flotation on the London stock exchange when I thought the time was correct.

‘That was the only way I could sell some equity if I wanted to. They agreed and we got cracking.’

At the time, the company was valued at £20m. When Guernsey Gas was sold to an Australian investment company last year, its value was more than £200m.

‘I want to emphasise that while I had around 15% of the company, it was mainly local shareholders who had invested in it.’