Graham Love has made a fortune as chief executive of QinetiQ, the privatised defence research company. For every £1 that he put into the business he made £200, turning an investment of £110,000 in QinetiQ shares into £21.35 million when the company floated last year.

The windfall has been widely criticised. Last week a National Audit Office report criticised the way that QinetiQ was partly sold by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 2003 to Carlyle, the US private equity group. The incentive scheme devised at the time, which led to the huge payday for senior executives when it was floated last year, was also criticised.

Mr Love is, however, resigned to the controversy that follows the company because of its links with the MoD. He has said that while the personalised coverage surrounding his windfall was unwelcome, he would not do the job if he could not take it.

He remains mildly frustrated that people seem to ignore that the QinetiQ management have turned a publicly owned defence research agency costing the taxpayer £800 million a year into a business worth more than £1 billion.

His windfall and healthy pay package, which last year came to £561,000, allows the married father of two, to indulge in a very expensive weekend pastime.

A motor racing enthusiast, Mr Love, 52, has three vintage Jaguars for racing at weekends. These are a Jaguar XK150, an XKSS and a Mk7. For his drive to work from his Chelsea home he settles for a TVR.

The accountant joined QinetiQ’s predecessor, the Defence Research Agency (Dera) as finance director in 1992 after spells with the financial public relations firm Shandwick and KPMG.

He left Dera briefly in 1996 to lead a management buyout of Comax Secure Business Services from his old employer, only to rejoin in 2001 as finance director.

In 2003 he became chief executive of QinetiQ North America, and over the next two years he led the acquisition of four US companies to create an important platform for QinetiQ in the US defence and security markets.

In 2005 he became chief executive.