THE investment banker Jitesh Gadhia, who was given a peerage in David Cameron’s resignation honours list in 2016, has tried to use his privileged position to be a voice for moderation and common sense on key issues.
Still only 51, his is often the hidden hand behind numerous initiatives. Lord Gadhia will circulate his ideas on crucial issues – such as how to reopen the economy after the pandemic – to key thinkers in the British establishment. Occasionally, he will get in touch with influential figures in government and mentor those he considers talented for faster promotion.
In February 2022, he was selected as the new chair of the British Asian Trust, a charity close to Prince Charles’s heart. Founded in 2007 by the Prince of Wales and a group of visionary British Asian business leaders, it tackles development challenges and inequalities in education, mental health, anti-trafficking and conservation, benefiting 6.6 million people in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Gadhia was chosen by the charity’s trustees, “together with HRH”.
He said becoming chair was “a huge honour”, adding, “The charity is one of the pre-eminent organisations in its field, using innovative approaches such as social finance. The outgoing chair, Manoj Badale, has done an incredible job over the past 14 years. I would like to thank him for his service; he has expertly navigated the charity from inception. His shoes will be large ones to fill, but I am looking forward to the challenge.”
He said the trust “is important for three distinct reasons.
Firstly, it harnesses the power of the south Asian diaspora. This was clearly demonstrated during the Oxygen Crisis in India in 2021. Its oxygen appeal received tremendous support raising over £8m from over 30,000 supporters and has subsequently converted into an India Recovery Fund to accelerate vaccinations, rebuild livelihoods and protect mental health, especially of children. Secondly, our pioneering use of social finance, such as Development Impact Bonds, to create measurable impact at scale. Thirdly, the passion and commitment of His Royal Highness to both the region and connecting with the south Asian diaspora across the UK.”
Gadhia went on: “As someone who has been fortunate to benefit from many positive life chances – whether educational or professional – I feel it is important to open doors of opportunity for others, especially to those most in need.
I would therefore like the trust to continue to be bold and ambitious in delivering positive impact in the most creative ways, especially through using social finance to advance development across South Asia.”
Gadhia, who has high regard for Charles, quipped: “The more I see of him, the more I think he was an Indian in a past life.”
Among his many activities, he has encouraged Asians to think more constructively about organ donation. Historically, Asians like to accept but not give. But he tries to get round
age-old cultural and religious inhibitions by reassuring Hindus, for example, that organ donation – seva or daan (giving) – “is part of our heritage”.
Gadhia is also the person who came up with the idea of the Royal British Legion distributing red poppies made from khadi – Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite cloth – on Remembrance Day on November 11 to commemorate the contribution of Indian soldiers in the two world wars. Having initially been doubtful about the concept, “the British Legion is now very much in love with this concept”.
He is also very pleased that this idea is featured in a book, We Are The Legion: The Royal British Legion at 100, by Julie Summers, to mark the organisation’s centenary. “It has a piece on the khadi poppy and the wider contribution of Indian and Commonwealth soldiers,” reveals Gadhia. “It’s important that the Indian contribution is recognised in such publications.”
“Obviously, Black Lives Matter triggered a whole discussion about colonial history,” he says. “My view is that you can’t cancel history, but you’re better off learning from it.”
He has a conciliatory take on how the ethnic minorities could respond to the heated debate about the history of the Empire. “Instead of rage, I would rather see it used positively. I do feel passionately about global Britain. As a country, we’ve got the ability to punch above our weight partly because of the legacy of Empire. I think the Empire is gifted to us – and we’d be mad not to fully capitalise on it.”
One area where Gadhia has to be especially discreet because of market sensitivities is his work as a board member of UK Government Investments, the centre of excellence for corporate finance and corporate governance. It manages major assets for the government. For example, “we own 52 per cent of shares in the Natwest Group, and took on all the mortgage assets of Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock”. This is one reason why he sits in the House of Lords, not as a Tory or a crossbencher, but as someone who is “non-affiliated” and can provide impartial advice.
He is a man who likes to collaborate with like-minded people in public life. He has formed a close alliance with Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, whose articles on such subjects on the UK’s role as a global power appear under a joint byline in The Daily Telegraph.
“He has created the China research group,” says Gadhia.
“He’s very pro-India and thinks that India should be playing a pivotal role in global affairs in relationship with Britain. The way I look at this is China is well and truly establishing itself as a great power. We have to live with China becoming more assertive. The question is whether it will be aggressive. I actually think that it’s to be played out as to whether we’re talking about a situation that will get more dangerous or not.”
Jitesh Kishorekumar Gadhia was born in Kampala, Uganda, the son of Kishore and Hansa Gadhia, on May 27, 1970, and arrived in Britain at the age of two. After reading economics at Cambridge, he interned in journalism briefly before settling on becoming an investment banker.
He has been a senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, a US private equity firm, and also worked for Barclays, ABN AMRO, and Barings Bank.
His CV says he is a board member of FTSE 100 homebuilder Taylor Wimpey plc and also Compare The Market Limited, the UK’s largest digital price comparison website for financial and household services.
He is also a director of Accord Healthcare, a leading supplier of generic pharmaceuticals in the UK and internationally. In the early days of the pandemic, he and Sir Jonathan Symonds, chair of GlaxoSmithKline, wrote a discussion paper, Re-opening Strategy: A graduated, phased and risk-based approach, which merited attention in the Sun and the Sunday imes.
The paper was written before the UK’s third lockdown brought about by the new variant of the virus but it made the point: “We must plan for ‘living with Covid’.”
Gadhia explained to GG2 what the paper was trying to say: “What can we do that has the highest multiplier effects for the economy but the lowest risk from a health perspective? The nub of it is, if we can’t mix in society as much as we did, we’re going to have to choose the mix of activities that maintains ‘R’ (the infection rate) below one. So in extremis, we could shut down schools, but open up all pubs, bars, restaurants and nightclubs. Or we could do the opposite.”
Talking about how British Asian businesses are being affected, he says: “We are very weighted towards things like hospitality, property and care homes. Food and drink businesses and the cash & carries of this world have, by and large, fared fine. Bestway is doing fine. But hoteliers like Surinder Arora and Jasminder Singh were sadly impacted. But they are entrepreneurial enough to find ways to address some of this. I’ve every confidence that they will ride it through.”
His discussion paper states: “The current Covid-19 pandemic is a health and economic tragedy of a scale we have not witnessed before in our lifetime.”
His paper suggests: “The initial focus for reopening the economy should be on sectors that have the greatest multiplier effects with minimum risks. Release of the younger generation back into the economy and re-opening schools to release key workers should be prioritised. Reconfigured business models will be necessary and the public safety protocols should be developed now.
“The decision to shut down the economy may prove to have been considerably easier than the decisions required to open it up again. Even with better epidemiological data, and added healthcare capacity, the decisions are complicated by difficult trade-offs.”
The paper compares the 2008 financial crisis with the one caused by the pandemic: “Economic shocks of this speed and severity shake the very foundations upon which a secure and stable economy is built. History has not always treated massive expansions of the money supply and central bank balance sheets kindly – and with good justification. Nonetheless, extreme situations require extreme measures and it’s hard to criticise the co-ordinated policy response so far.
“Although many of the financial tools have come from the 2008 financial crisis ‘playbook’, this situation is very different. In 2008 the problem then, while large, was highly concentrated in the financial system. Then the transfer of financial resources to the private sector was delivered through a relatively small number of financial institutions. This time the problem is widely dispersed and highly fragmented – literally hundreds of thousands of small, medium and large businesses. There is only one transmission mechanism available to the government at the scale required: the banking system. We should plan on the assumption that we are likely to be ‘living with Covid’ for some time to come.”
It recommends: “Release the younger generation back into the economy as soon as the health risks are lower. Reopen schools as soon as practicable as they release key workers back into the economy. At the same time, continue to provide confidence to those returning to work and maximum shielding to the most vulnerable groups in society.
“Focus on reopening sectors of the economy that have the greatest multiplier effects with minimum risks – such as coffee shops and restaurants, which support agriculture, other retail units such as garden centres, which can easily observe social distancing or home maintenance services which can be carried out with limited physical contact. The property market is another that has wide multiplier effects.
“This will require reconfigured business models, observing healthcare protocols, such as the use of PPE, and even measures to stagger and/or rotate how many persons are able to move around in society, or on public transport, at any one time.”
Some of the observations about the mutation of the virus are prescient: “As antibody tests and vaccines become available, we can open the economy with more confidence. We also need to recognise that the virus will come back, in the same or a mutated form….Supplies of protective equipment, diagnostic and testing capacity at scale and, above all, investment in dedicated capability to deliver vaccines and therapeutics needs to be planned immediately to secure the level of pandemic preparedness and resilience which we now wished we had to begin with.” This is only a discussion paper but British Asian businesses could study it as a way of planning for a post-pandemic future.
Gadhia, who lives in Northwood, Middlesex, with his wife Angeli and their two children, Priyana and Dev, has reflected on the long-term consequences of the pandemic.
“The legacy of this will last across many different areas of our lives, not just in business and commerce. What choices do we actually have? Are we victims almost trapped by our own rules of the game? We can change the rules of the game, particularly with technology and the way we work.”
Incidentally, when he moved to his present residence 16 years ago, he happened to put in a properly furnished office. I hardly used it for 14 years and now I spend all my time in it. Technology wise, it’s worked very well.”
Gadhia acknowledges: “I spend a lot more time with my kids. I feel particularly blessed in that sense because they are 10 and seven. I would never have done that had it not been for this (pandemic). “One of our elderly relatives came up with a phrase that has stuck in my mind – it’s relevant if you understand Indic languages – ‘Karuna (corona) has brought out compassion in people’. It’s sort of a boon if I can put it that way.”
