It’s always heartwarming to hear of a person who starts from humble origins and, through sheer entrepreneurial vim, makes something spectacular of himself, isn’t it? Such as story appears to be that of Graham King, founder and boss of Clearspring Ready Homes. It was reported yesterday that Mr King has this year crossed that all-important threshold from multi-, multi- millionaire to billionaire from his company’s contracts with the government to house asylum-seekers. He is known as the ‘Asylum King’ – and we can think of him, maybe, as a monarch among the wretched of the earth.
Mr King’s fortune is reported to have jumped by 35 per cent in the last year alone. Here is a man who parlayed the family caravan park in Essex into a vast property empire – and whose contracts to house asylum seekers (he spotted a gap in the market in the late 1990s and, as they say, pivoted) have gone up sevenfold in value.
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