Lord of the manor

Mar 3 2009 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

He couldn’t skipper a yacht, but care home boss Matt Matharu admits that in business sometimes you have to sail close to the wind. SUE SCOTT met him

FOR A man who says he has no home, Matt Matharu sure owns a lot of them - seven at the last count including his own– not that figures matter much.

He resents being defined by money: “If I was bankrupt in six months, I’d still be the same Matt – I’d still like McDonald’s and KFCs.”

The head of Four Winds Care Homes – the name taken from a reckless decision to invest some of his fortune in a Hartlepool-moored yacht he couldn’t sail and only ever got as far as Whitby – fell into the care business almost by accident eight years ago.

His then girlfriend and still business partner Jean Kennedy, who ran her own home in Surrey, saw an opportunity to get into the market just when everyone else was getting out.

The Care Standards Act of 2001, along with a raft of other regulations that hit the industry around the same time - when average profit per bed in the private sector had plummeted to an all-time low of just 50p a day - presented an opportunity for Matt and Jean to combine their business talents to mutual advantage.

And for the man now described as one of the most eligible batchelors in the North-east, it paid off handsomely.

“I was an estate agent in the last recession in 1987. I’ve always bought and sold property,” says Matt.

And, despite a near financial miss with Robert Maxwell, with whom he was working when the tycoon’s empire went into spectacular freefall in the Nineties, his progress has been sure-footed.

“We’ve never lost focus of who we are. We have taken calculated risks, but we don’t get flippant.”

The “we” refers to Matt and his brother, a builder, who “turns the ideas into reality; he does the 3D stuff”.

They bought their first care home in the North-east the year the Act was introduced, brought it up to scratch and sold it on. Seven more followed in Durham and Hartlepool.

They now own and operate six homes with no plans to purchase more.

“We’re big enough as we are. What we are going to do now is improve on the quality and service we provide.”

And that’s getting more demanding as the need for specialist care grows.

Citing the film Cocoon in which a bunch of ocotgenarians regain their youth after stumbling on extra-terrestial pods, he says: “I would love to have people in my homes going around planting trees or whatever, but it’s not going to happen.

“The reality is there are no retirement homes any more - it’s all intensive care.”

He’s learned a lot over the past eight years - becoming a trained carer, qualified to work beside his own staff if needed. But it’s been a slow, frustrating, albeit profitable chapter in his business career.

Is he impatient? “It has been said,” he smiles. “I have the ideas and somebody else tends to see them through. I wish I could do things quicker, because ideas come very quickly in my head and it takes so long to get things done.”

Originally from India, he arrived in England as a baby in his mother’s arms and says he has no roots. “I’ve no hankering to go back anywhere, nowhere to go home to - and that’s not a sad thing.”

His father, a carpenter, died when Matt was six and there were no role models for a self-made tycoon in his close-knit family.

He started out with a fistful of O Levels. “At one point I was expelled from school because I didn’t like being told what to do.”

He’s learned to compromise - but not much. “If you do anything the right way it will take you 25 years, whereas if you take a few risks... that’s probably an aggressive business attitude, which you have to have.”

An almost allergic reaction to bureaucracy, the unequal treatment by banks of business partnerships - which he favours - against limited companies, along with the constant niggle of having to sort the recyclables - drove him to the rich man’s bolthole of Dubai... for all of two weeks.

Life in England, he says, was just too good to leave - even now.

“I think the care sector is going to be last to suffer (in a recession).

“I’ve always bought businesses at their lowest situation, probably at the point of closing - that’s where we have seen an opportunity to develop this business, then leave on a high and find something else more rewarding.”

And that’s exactly what he plans to do.

At 45 - he celebrated with a party in October - he says it’s time to relax. He recently joined Rotary and enjoys the idea of fund-raising. “I’m actually having some fun now.”

That includes the substantial and costly renovation of a beautifully proportioned turn of the century house, built, he believes, by one of Hartlepool’s shipping magnates on what was then mansion row, now a graceful enclave tagged on to the end of the town’s urban sprawl.

“It’s crying out to be restored and treated like a proper mansion once again, but it’s far too big for me,” he admits. “I’d like a cosy cottage somewhere with some land and animals - somewhere I can chill out.”

He didn’t have a pet until he was 19 - now five rescue hounds pad around obediently after him. His other passion is for fast cars, for which he makes no apologies.

“I enjoy driving and I enjoy cars. When I was first employed my colleagues were spending £200 a month on cigarettes and drink; my pay was going on finance.”

He’s built a highly profitable business, amassed not inconsiderable private wealth and brought dignity to hundreds of elderly people.

So what’s the personal achievement he’s most proud of?

A wide grin spreads across his face as he recalls the moment he was presented recently with his certificate for completing 25m breaststroke. It’s just a shame he sold the yacht.