James Benamor: Britain’s billionaire subprime lender

James Benamor escaped a troubled childhood and survived the 2008 financial crisis. Now he has carved out a profitable niche in a controversial industry. Jane Lewis reports.

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(Image credit: ©DAILY ECHO BOURNEMOUTH)

A "self-confessed former petty criminal became a billionaire" last month, says The Times. The lucky man is James Benamor, whose subprime lender, Amigo Holdings, has listed in London. The float gave the "guarantor lender" a market capitalisation of £1.3bn, leaving Benamor, 41, "sitting on a paper and cash fortune worth about £1.1bn" nearly triple the previous £380m estimate of his wealth.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.