Jon Moulton on being no-platformed, helping fund Covid-19 vaccine research, and the perilous state of the economy

Jon Moulton has been no-platformed, on the island of Guernsey of all places. He was due to talk about the “Tyranny of Minorities” to the Chamber of Commerce next month but LGBT activists got wind of the title and complained.

The leader of the chamber didn’t even phone him directly to say the talk was off, he says. “I was phoned by an official a few days ago and told there was a hiccup, and that they didn’t want me to talk. What was odd is that no one even asked what I was going to talk about.”

If the Chamber – or indeed the local protestors – had bothered to ask, Moulton was going to discuss why he believes the island suffers from the absence of political parties – deputies are independents – and why new discrimination rules are so gold-plated they could easily be distorted.

Rest assured though, word has whizzed around the island’s 60,000 inhabitants and his no- platforming has “caused a bit of controversy. This is a pretty severe case of being cancelled.”

Anyone who has come across Moulton will know he is not someone easily cancelled or indeed, pigeon-holed. As one of Britain’s most successful if not controversial venture capitalists, he is much sought after precisely because of his contrarian views, often breaking with the orthodoxy whether it be challenging public debt levels or the ignominy of pre-packs. (More of that later.)

Equally, he is used to being in the firing line, having been billed by the tabloids as the “balding Bond baddie lookalike” or the “Grinch who killed Christmas” after one of his investments went sour.

Yet if his Guernsey neighbours had bothered to dig a little deeper, they might also have discovered that Moulton does more than his bit for both minorities and the majority.

Over the last decade or so, his charitable trusts have given nearly £50 million towards non-commercial bio-medical research in Britain, making him probably the country’s most generous philanthropist. Funding cutting-edge research is what drives him, as “I like to be involved in trials where you can see a result.” He has funded more than 150 sets of clinical trials for research into respiratory problems, women’s health, oncology, cardiovascular, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, several rare diseases, COPD and paediatrics.

As well as the charitable work, Moulton invests in life science companies and has sat on the boards of several projects from stem cell to anti-microbial research. One fellow director says: “He’s astonishing to watch, devours board papers and information at the most rapid rate.”

Since the virus outbreak, he has given several million pounds to various Covid-19-related research projects, including Imperial College’s vaccine programme. “ We gave half a million to Imperial within 24 hours of being asked to fund the programme.”

On the vexed topic of vaccines, he accepts there are risks involved with new Covid vaccines because of a lack of long-term safety data.

Yet he is equally clear that, despite the latest controversy being whipped up by the anti-vaxxers, there is little evidence to suggest the risks involved with vaccination are large. Indeed, not being vaccinated is the real risk, and “could be a very selfish act as other people will catch diseases from you if you are not vaccinated.”

“As far as I can see the only other risk of releasing a vaccine too early is that using a not-very-good vaccine could slow down the use of a later and better vaccine.”

Far greater, he says, are the risks of delay which may cost up to 100,000 each month as health services are so overwhelmed that they cannot treat people with other diseases.

Having given generously over the years to the Conservative party, he is critical of the government’s Covid strategy, particularly the way that care homes were treated early on in the crisis. “It’s inexcusable what happened in care homes. There is no easy answer but there has to be a more effective and aggressive way of looking after the elderly.”

And the test and trace system? Well, that’s just a “shambles, lacking leadership.” He is not convinced that lockdowns work in suppressing the disease and is coming to the view that policy needs to be more age-targetted and for the vulnerable to opt for self-isolation. “Let the young get on with their lives.”

“As far as we can understand no more than half a dozen young people – under 25 – have died as a result of Covid. People between 25 and 60, as long as they are well, the chance of death from Covid is also low. It’s only when you get to 80 and then people with other ailments, which are common amongst that age group, that Covid is dangerous.”

As normal these days, we are talking via a video Zoom link. Moulton is at his Guernsey home, where he lives with his wife, Pauline, whom he first met when he was 13. And yes, he lives there for tax purposes as well as the island, which – despite his recent no-platforming – is “very nice, quiet and a good climate.” Plus, they are out of lockdown, although he says people are still zooming each other even though the capital is only ten minutes away.

On the wall behind him are two paintings of the streets around the Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent where he grew up. They are by his father, a master engraver who worked for the local potteries making engravings for the most basic of tableware to Royal Doulton china.

He shows me one of the more of his father’s intricate engravings etched on a copper plate, and you sense Moulton’s pride. Yet he is no romantic, says he remembers the pollution from the potteries and his own sickly childhood which meant he spent hours on end at home, often alone, or at his grandfather’s engineering works.

He jokes: “It wasn’t until I was about 25 that I realised I’d been living in a valley because you could never see across the bloody thing.” But those years of ill-health (TB, sinus problems, and later amoebic dysentery and aplastic anaemia) meant he read everything he could get hold off. “Books on how to play chess and bridge, the Readers’ Digest books, textbooks on anything.” (He later bought Readers’ Digest) In fact, he attributes his knack for devouring documents at speed to this early home schooling. And maybe for his relentless drive? “I’m not going to try and work out cause and effect,” he laughs.

After studying chemistry at the University of Lancaster, Moulton joined Coopers Lybrand to train as an accountant – “there weren’t many jobs for young chemists then.” He moved on to working on insolvencies and sorting out troubled companies, before turning his hand to turning them around himself.

For more than 40 years, he has dived into the deep end of what he calls the “violent end of investment”, earning the reputation as a ruthless cost-cutter and “Grinch” for letting the courier firm, City Link, pack up on Christmas Eve.

What he rejects, though, is that he is a predator who asset-strips companies for his own benefit. Quite the reverse, he prefers putting them together and building.

Now, he too has been hit by the virus, de-listing his two Better Capital funds and is winding down his other businesses. He’s been left with Everest, the double-glazing company which he placed into a pre-pack administration after disastrous trading during the lockdown.

“As you know, I have never liked pre-packs as they can be blunt tools and are often misused. But we didn’t have any choice – Everest went into lockdown without any debt but after three months it was piling high.”

By putting Everest into a pre-pack, Moulton was able to rescue the business, preserving around 1,000 jobs and keeping existing orders on track. Everest is now climbing back, he says, as consumers are spending more money on their homes again while output at its Welsh factory is 200% higher than before. “Productivity has improved too. Everyone had a bit of a shock.”

If we were in his London office, Moulton would be sitting under a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, his heroine for rescuing Britain from socialism, in the Thatcher Room. He has two other rooms devoted to his other heroes: Churchill and Mountbatten.

Talk of Thatcher brings us to the state of the nation. He says the Chancellor was right to bring out the big bazookas to help protect jobs but says Rishi Sunak would be ill-advised to start raising taxes, particularly wealth taxes, to pay for the damage.

Contrary to the general opinion, he says there is no shortage of either angel start-up capital or money for small-stage businesses. “We reckon there is about £10 billion of potential venture capital just waiting to be invested – that’s about six times the usual annual amount.”

“Capital is not the problem. The problem is that no one wants to invest in deals or assets in this climate. It’s also why raising capital gains tax would be a bad thing to do, and would stiffle growth.”

What worries him more is that public debt is rocketing so high that there will be a loss of confidence in the country and a sterling collapse. “If we get imported inflation, then you can see sterling fall and interest rates fly up. That would be disastrous, and hurt the young generation with mortgages. I fear that deprivation and the failure of government finances will kill more people than Covid will.”

Moulton is 70 today. He will spend the day walking with Pauline on the nearby island of Alderney – a 12 minute flight away – and have dinner at the Blond Hedgehog where there is no virus and no restrictions. He knows how fortunate he is but fears for the rest of the country: “It’s going to be progressively hard to maintain social cohesion as the pandemic continues. Sadly, civil disobedience must be expected if we continue like this.”