Vaga Probus Club welcomed Mike Warburton as speaker to their first meeting of the New Year. Mike was tax director at Grant Thornton for many years and he has contributed to a range of media outlets on tax matters including Money Box live (BBC Radio 4) and The Daily Telegraph.

The subject of his talk was Octav Botnar, who arrived in England in 1965, unable to speak English, and went on to build one of Britain’s most successful private companies

Botnar was born in 1913 with Jewish parents in Czernowitz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but later Romania and now in Ukraine. As a young member of the communist party, he upset the ruling powers on a number of occasions and given 5 prison sentences before the age of 24. After a chequered career in Europe, he brought his wife and daughter to the UK and founded Datsun UK Ltd, through which he had the sole distribution rights of Nissan vehicles in the UK. Unfortunately, his enormous success as a businessman was tempered by the death of his twenty-one year old daughter Camelia in a car crash.

Having become a rich man, Botnar gave millions away to various charities including £17 million to Great Ormond Street Hospital and he set up the Camelia Botnar Foundation to support and train young people having a tough time. Sadly, Botnar was to spend his last years fighting the Japanese company whose very fortune in Britain had been built by Botnar himself and defending himself and his company against huge and unjustified demands from the Inland Revenue.

Vaga Probus is a men’s group that meets twice a month in Ross. Visitors are welcome. If you have an interest in visiting or indeed have a talk you would like to deliver, please contact the Secretary on [email protected]. Further details are on the website at www.vaga-probus-ross.org.uk