Lifting the lid on Beecroft

The word displacement springs inevitably to mind.

However, we wouldn't dream of suggesting anything of the sort about Adrian Beecroft, despite his sports car collection.

Mr Beecroft, of course, is the Tory donor and top speculator who has had the wizard wheeze of suggesting that the law be amended to allow companies to sack staff without explanation or justification.

This, says Beecroft, would take rather a lot of strain off businesses which are terrified of dismissing unproductive staff for fear of tribunal claims and would allow the economy to develop without the inhibiting factor of companies' responsibility for their staff - although he didn't put it in quite those terms, of course.

So let's have a look at this man who feels entitled to sit in judgement on an entire class and annul several hundred years of effort by working people to establish fairness in their employment conditions.

Mr Beecroft amassed his not inconsiderable fortune - about £100 million - by shoving other people's money around, which must by any estimation make him one of the best-paid casino croupiers of all time.

He is described in the annals of the City as a venture capitalist - a founder of private equity firm Apax Partners and now chairman of private equity set-up Dawn Capital.

In 25 years at Apax he served as chief investment officer and senior managing partner before retiring in 2008.

He then joined the Tories' "independent challenge group," with a brief to "think innovatively about the options for reducing public expenditure."

The other business people on this dodgy group were, incidentally, HSBC finance director Douglas Flint, former head of the Goldman Sachs European private equity arm Richard Sharp and John Nash, a founder of the Sovereign Capital buy-out group.

He must have done the dirty work the Tories required rather well because, earlier this year, Mr Beecroft was tasked by them with drawing up recommendations for David Cameron on what changes can be made to employment law within EU parameters.

And look what he's come up with - a vicious attack on workers' rights.

His knighthood can't be long in coming, at this rate.

Now, Mr Beecroft isn't a stupid man and he certainly knows which side his bread's buttered.

He graduated from Queen's College Oxford in 1968 with a degree in physics but, after five years working in the computer industry, jumped ship, went off to Harvard Business School and emerged in 1976 as a fully fledged speculator.

But his brain didn't atrophy, it's clear. He just swapped a productive and useful job for a parasitic and much more profitable one.

On his watch, Apax conducted the acquisition of publisher Emap in collaboration with the Guardian Media Group.

Apax conducted its side of the deal via a complex network of Cayman Islands companies.

Apax Nominees owned Eden Acquisition One which owned Eden Acquisition Two which in turn wholly owned Eden Bidco.

The rate of corporation tax in the Cayman Islands is zero and this has made them a favoured haven for tax-avoiding companies.

At last count, Apax owned 28 Cayman-registered companies.

Now there's no suggestion that either Mr Beecroft or his company did anything illegal, but it's interesting that the Tories consider him a fit person to pontificate on what's in the national interest.

And it's odd that his pontifications just hurt working people.

Isn't it?