Read Sir Tom Hunter's profile in The Sunday Times Rich List

From the gardens of his £50m mansion in the Côte d’Azur Sir Tom Hunter pledged on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News to give away more than a £1 billion to philanthropic causes during his lifetime.

Sporting a crisp white shirt and white shorts, Scotland’s richest man cut a relaxed and confident figure in the July sunshine as he revealed his extraordinary plan to the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston.

“My material goals have been settled,” he said. “I don’t want to burden my kids with great wealth . . . my wife Marion and myself are going to leave this world pretty much as we came into it, with nothing.”

The £1 billion pledge was the single biggest philanthropic commitment of any Briton, earning Hunter flattering comparisons with Bill Gates, John Rockefeller and fellow Scot – and his own personal favourite – Andrew Carnegie.

That was July 2007 – the economy was in the last throes of the boom and Hunter, who had made his fortune selling shell suits and trainers, was at the peak of his game. He had Bill Clinton’s number on speed-dial, a £10m Learjet on standby and £1 billion in the bank.

His London home was a lavish penthouse suite in the Metropolitan hotel, his car fleet included a Bentley Sport and a Bugatti Veyron and his French home came replete with a £2m Mangusta motor yacht. His wealth bought him influence with an exclusive club of fellow billionaires including Bono and Bob Geldof.

However, just 18 months after that appearance on the 10 O’Clock News the dream has turned sour and the credit crunch has savaged the value of Hunter’s investments, wiping hundreds of millions of pounds from his bank balance. The Cap Ferrat mansion has been sold off to a Russian billionaire and his £2m Mangusta is in new hands.

Crucially his main financial backer – HBOS – could shrink its commitments following its imminent takeover by Lloyds TSB, and Hunter now faces a potentially difficult set of conversations with Truett Tate, the head of corporate lending at the combined bank.

Hunter’s philanthropic ambitions – which were always linked to the profitability of his business ventures – have been curtailed.

Hunter retains a certain gallows humour. “I did want to give my money away – I just didn’t expect it to be in quite this way,” he told The Sunday Times.

“Have we made mistakes? Absolutely. Certain things happen to you – like the credit crunch and, no, we didn’t see it coming. But that’s the life of an entrepreneur.”

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