People: Big game for Raggett

Fresh from bringing in tycoon’s son Robert Hanson as chairman and shareholder, Simon Raggett, boss of the renamed niche investment bank Strand Hanson, is working on another coup for the firm, previously Strand Partners, which he and colleagues bought out from its founders five months ago. ‘We are watching Africa very closely,’ as well as Asia, said Raggett, speaking from a Nile cruise boat recently, as Strand plots to extend its reach in emerging markets.

Hanson, son of the late industrialist and merger king Lord Hanson, sold his 19.6 per cent stake in Hanson Westhouse, the AIM-quoted investment group run by Bill Staple (which is dropping the Hanson name), and left its advisory panel to chair Strand and take a 10 per cent stake. An investment specialist since leaving his father’s conglomerate 12 years ago, Hanson has unparalleled connections in Asia and elsewhere that, says Raggett, ‘bring us to the next step up’ and pave the way for the new push he plans.

‘We have the buy side from China and the sell side from Africa’, opines Raggett. With Hanson in the chair, ‘we can do business with the people we choose to’.