Page 217 - James Caan - The Real Deal

20 · Investing in People

realised that Humana would soon be more profitable than
Alexander Mann.
I had been so busy with Humana that it had given Jonathan the
chance to make his mark on Alexander Mann, and he was growing
the business at a phenomenal rate. We were starting to burst at the
seams in Tottenham Court Road, and if the company was going
to expand, as Jonathan predicted, we would need new offices, so
I started looking for new premises. After several years living with
flaking paint and a doorway you could miss even if you were
standing right outside it, I was ready for the Alexander Mann
Group to have a proper HQ.
I had always been nervous of paying high rents – one of the
reasons we’d survived the recession was because I’d kept our
overheads low – but the business was doing well and there was
over a million in the bank. The business could afford an entire
freehold building in Lincoln’s Inn, near Holborn: we would have
a permanent base but without rent or a mortgage undermining our
performance. Buying property doesn’t normally feel like risk, but
in 1995 the fallout from the recession meant that the phrase
‘negative equity’ was still something you heard regularly. Never-
theless, I took a bit of a gamble and wiped out Alexander Mann’s
reserves to pay £1 million for the building, which was renamed
Alexander House. Now I really felt that I had delivered on my
childhood dreams of starting a business: I had two companies that
were turning over tens of thousands of pounds a month and a
freehold building in central London that was so big we turned one
floor into an indoor football pitch.
By 1995, Jemma was eight and Hanah was seven. I could have
afforded to buy them anything they wanted, but I didn’t want to
be one of those dads who just buys presents for his kids to say
sorry for not being there. I rearranged my working day to make
sure I always saw them in the evenings before starting work again
after they’d gone to bed. I loved just the four of us spending time

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