Paul Bassi
Paul Bassi, the Chief Executive of property group Real Estate Investors Plc and Chairman of Bond Wolfe, is a leading businessman and philanthropist whose story has been described as “truly inspirational”.
From his origins as the child of impoverished Indian immigrants to his interests in a £300m plus property and business portfolio (including care homes, restaurants, and a distribution business), not to mention receiving a CBE for his services to business, Paul Bassi has come a long way – and done much to redistribute his good fortune en route.
True to form, all the profits of his new book Brick by Brick: Success in Business and Life, which charts his family’s journey, will go to Bond Wolfe Charitable Trust, which he co-founded in 1983. While no less a personage than the deputy Labour leader Tom Watson has referred to his “generous spirit”, and reiterated Bassi’s own belief that “everyone – no matter where they come – should be able to succeed as far as their individual talent and hard work can take them”. Success, he says, “is like going on a journey – but you sat nav addressed it first. Otherwise, if you don't, you could easily be driving in the wrong direction for a while.”
As related in Brick by Brick, his story properly starts with his grandfather, Bhagat, who couldn't read or write. And like many Indians, came to England from the Punjab in the late 1950s with his son Santokh, Bassi’s father (who had just £2 in his pocket), to try and make a better living for themselves. Initially, they worked in factories in the Midlands, before moving to London.
As a young boy, Bassi had no knowledge that he was an immigrant or working class, “I was just a happy boy playing football in the park”. Well, relatively happy. He’d face racism on a daily basis too. “I think we're in a far better place than the society I grew up in,” he says, citing education as the answer. “I’m proud of the youngsters coming through who value people for who they are, not for the colour of their skin or their religion.”
His parents had a very strong work ethic, which eventually translated into buying property and a corner shop. “It was absolutely a given that you worked in the corner shop,” he says. However, although he was brought up in a very devout Sikh family, Bassi chose not to wear a turban, because he played sports. Nevertheless, his Sikh values – “honesty, respect, and a hard work ethic” – would inform his whole life.
He would go on to be the Regional Chairman to Coutts Bank (West Midlands), former Director of the Birmingham Hippodrome and President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, while weathering a Recession or two. “The recession of the early 90s taught me to always manage the downside,” he says. “When everything was depressed, I went shopping.” It’s been a practice he’s adopted ever since; whether it was the financial crisis, the.com bubble, the Scottish referendum, or Brexit. “Why waste the crisis?”
In 2009, he was appointed High Sheriff for the County of West Midlands, received Honorary Doctorates from Birmingham City and Aston University, and went to Buckingham Palace to pick up his CBE in the 2010 New Year’s Honours List.
“All the high-net-worth people I know are very keen on getting into philanthropy” he says, on a highly fashionable practice right now. He partly subscribes his own habit to his religious and cultural background. “One of the key components of the Sikh faith is community and family. It’s the same when I'm running the business. We support lots of local worthy causes, and help send parents to foreign countries to be by the side of their children when they're ill.”
To new property investors, he advises “Stay local, to start with. Find your patch, and then build on that. And always be quite conservative in your borrowings – you're more likely to be in control. If you don't adopt that policy, you'll find somebody else will be running your business.”
Ultimately, he thinks you don't need any particular talent to be good at business. “I think what you need is a vision and a big picture of what you want to achieve, way down to the finest detail,” he says. “Also, work hard. Network. Understand that overnight success takes about 15 years. And the real key ingredient is to surround yourself with great people. That makes it very, very easy.”
Brick by Brick: Success in Business and Life is published by Bloomsbury