When Guy Hands announced he was stepping down as chair of Terra Firma last year, one of the UK’s most tenacious dealmakers indicated he was starting a new, more-benevolent chapter. “Guy wants to change the focus of his life,” the private equity firm said of its founder’s plans to devote himself to philanthropy. While still controlling Terra Firma-backed businesses, such as property group Annington and McDonald’s restaurants in the Nordics, Hands identified diversity, inclusion and mental health initiatives as his charitable aims.
In the mid-1990s, Hands kick-started the UK private equity boom, becoming a billionaire and one of the country’s most influential financiers. But his reputation was later bruised by business failures, costly legal feuds and caustic public recriminations.
Just last week, the UK’s Ministry of Defence paid Annington £6bn to take back thousands of military homes, after years of legal wrangling. For Terra Firma, the deal looks like a win. For the government and taxpayer, it was “one of the worst-ever” deals, according to the UK defence secretary.
Hands’ retirement announcement last year was in line with a renovation of his reputation that had begun several years earlier. In his 2021 memoir, The Dealmaker: Lessons from a Life in Private Equity, Hands vowed to reform both his personal habits and “philosophy of business”. His purpose, he wrote, would become “to leave the world a better place”.
One example was Mansfield College at Oxford university, to which he and his wife donated millions of pounds over the years. This largesse provided the funds for The Hands Building, a glass and stone structure combining student housing and the university’s human rights institute. The annual Hands Lecture, which takes place there, welcomed speakers including Sir Bob Geldof and Lord William Hague, a close friend of Hands, who is now Oxford’s chancellor.
