“It’s just like Beirut,” said multi-millionaire Tony Banks in amazement as buildings went up in flames all around him. But it wasn’t Beirut — it was Anfield, just metres from the Liverpool football stadium.

The care-home entrepreneur has been propelled into the limelight by the Channel 4 programme The Secret Millionaire, in which he handed over more than £70,000 to deserving causes after living among the Anfield community for a week.

With 20 care homes, mainly in the east of Scotland, Banks’s Balhousie Care Group is rapidly growing. He plans to create 11 more sites by 2011, double his number of beds to 1,500 within five years, and eventually expand throughout Scotland and into England and Ireland.

Banks bought his first care home 18 years ago, with the conversion of Lisden House in Kirriemuir. The decision came almost by chance, steering the Falklands veteran away from his career in insurance. “My now ex-wife was a nurse,” he explains. “We were looking for something to do together and it made sense. It was at a time when the care-home business was just becoming sexy.”

He is estimated to be worth £50m as the sole shareholder of Balhousie, which grew 80% last year and is on track to almost double its £8m turnover to £15m in the year to April. His appearance on The Secret Millionaire this month was his first TV work but is unlikely to be his last. “I know if I want to raise the profile of the business, I’m going to have to raise my own profile,” he admits.

The experience profoundly affected Banks, who has had tough times himself. He served in the Falklands war aged 20 and his two brothers have died, one through suicide and the other from a brain tumour.

As well as meeting inspirational people, including blind youth group leader Dave Kelly, the crew was attacked, their car windows were smashed and homes were set on fire.

For Banks, the week was a wake-up call. He has agreed to support one of the charities, Daisy UK, for a further two to three years with an extra £50,000 and has been spurred on to continue charity work closer to home. Since the show, he has been inundated by not-for-profit organisations hoping for his help and is slowly working through his responses.

Slowly, because his business takes up so much of his time. Banks, who is also working towards a qualification to train helicopter pilots, sees a major opportunity in this economic climate. “The market is prime for newbuilds — land prices are cheaper than they have been for years and development costs are cheaper,” he says.

Yet, as for many businesses, funding has been a problem for Balhousie in the credit crunch. While he has always banked with Royal Bank of Scotland, and recently took on an RBS man, Graham Ogilvie, as commercial director, it has been unable to find funding for him.

“We’ve told them that we can’t operate with them,” he adds. “We can’t be held up because of their problems.”

Banks is having to look elsewhere and a year ago appointed Deloitte to advise him on his options. While he hopes to avoid private-equity involvement — he prefers to keep his business to himself — he has agreed a series of joint ventures with care-home developers, plus a limited number of sale and leaseback options on some of his planned new properties.

However, he is reticent about leaseback agreements, the model favoured by peers such as Southern Cross and Four Seasons. “When I looked at how the industry has traditionally been financed, I realised it was all a house of cards,” he says. While he has made such agreements, he has ensured he keeps a right-to-buy clause — and wants to buy back as many of his properties as possible. He is also squirrelling away a war chest for acquisitions, but admits that if a deal came up, private-equity financing might be the only option. He admits: “Acquisitions will be made — I can’t resist it.”

Banks has also appointed Marco Truffelli, the former head of VisitScotland.com, as chief operating officer. “We try to do things like come up with the best meals, the most nutritional we can, and Marco in the hotel industry is well aware of how to source that kind of thing,” he says. “It was a very positive appointment and really puts down the marker in terms of the quality of where I want to bring the homes up to.”

Banks runs two specialist care units for people with problems such as learning difficulties and mental health issues, and he has commissioned Dundee University to research where the gaps lie in that particular market.

He has also launched a training school — initially for his own staff — which is to be rolled out as a residential paid-for facility on Tayside for smaller care-home operators.

In keeping with the “share the wealth” spirit of The Secret Millionaire, Banks bought a lottery ticket for each of his 700 staff before the show was aired, saying he wanted one to become a millionaire. So far, the tickets have yielded only a few £10 wins, but he is undaunted. “If someone had won a few grand, how good would that have been?” he says.

jane.bradley@sunday-times.co.uk

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