Most people in their 60s would be thinking of slowing down, particularly if they had millions in the bank plus a brush with cancer. 

But having made a fortune over two decades with one firm, Melrose, Simon Peckham wants to do it all over again.

His new business has a remarkably similar modus operandi to the old one. Even its name, Rosebank, has echoes of its predecessor. Can’t he think of anything better to do?

‘No,’ he laughs, ‘I am sufficiently unimaginative and I like doing this too much.’

By ‘this’, he means scouting out troubled businesses, improving them, then selling at a profit and making shedloads of money for his investors, himself and his colleagues.

His cancer, an experience that often prompts people to change their lives, did not deflect him from his love of dealmaking.

‘I had prostate cancer. I was very fortunate they found it early. I had treatment and no side effects. The problem is often there are no signs until it is too late, so my message is go and get tested. Frankly, any male over the age of 50 who doesn’t is an idiot,’ he says.

And going into the office makes him feel younger, he says, adding: ‘I keep telling my colleagues they’re going to take me out in a box. I have no desire to leave but, unfortunately, I am a human being and, one day I’ll have to. It’s lovely going into the office.’

Peckham, 63, is from Newcastle upon Tyne and trained as a lawyer. At Melrose, he and his team developed a highly effective ‘buy, sell, improve’ formula similar to private equity.

They also enjoyed handsome private equity-style rewards, culminating in a payout of more than £50million apiece for Peckham and two senior colleagues a couple of years ago, provoking a big vote of disapproval from shareholders.

Rosebank is a copycat attempt to do it all again, only faster.

He opted to float the business on the London stock market, despite the Square Mile being out of favour, having being shunned for several listings and hit by a string of high-profile defections. 

Peckham is also turning the tables on American predators buying British firms on the cheap by acquiring US engineering businesses weighed down by debt.

Rosebank is a Marmite company like Melrose before it. Some see Melrose as an asset-stripper, others as a saviour of ailing firms.

Certainly those who invested in it have done well. In the 20 years that followed Melrose’s 2003 flotation, it returned £8billion to investors. Anyone who invested in 2005, when it made its first acquisition, would have seen each pound they put in turn into £31.39 by 2023 when the company split in two.

Peckham and his colleagues were accused of asset-stripping, corporate vandalism and ladling out excessive rewards to themselves.

The antagonism came to a head when Melrose launched a hostile bid for venerable British aerospace company GKN in 2018.

The takeover incited a hailstorm of criticism including the accusation from Tory MP Robert Halfon that Melrose’s behaviour was ‘robber baron capitalism at its worst’.

Peckham is unrepentant, saying: ‘Not everyone is always going to love what we do, and I don’t really care, if we can create value, and we can have fun doing it. Actually, the country benefits from it because we pay a lot of tax.

‘We put big investments into our businesses, I can show you an investment track record. It is the reverse of asset stripping which we are sometimes accused of.’

Following the takeover, part of the GKN empire was spun off into a firm called Dowlais, which was later taken over by American Axle & Manufacturing. 

Melrose itself owns the old GKN aerospace business and is listed on the FTSE 100, valued at £5.7 billion.

Despite the woes of the London market, Rosebank had no trouble raising £3 billion of capital in the City to fund the purchase of three heavily indebted US firms.

The acquisitions were of CPM, which supplies processing equipment, and MW Industries, a maker of precision engineered components, both previously owned by a US private equity firm. Before that, Rosebank bought ECI, a US electrical components manufacturer, also from private equity.

Peckham believes Rosebank can reduce their borrowing burden, cut costs, improve efficiencies, invest back in the businesses then sell them on at a profit once they have been spruced up.

‘With ECI, CPM and MW we saw three assets that had been in private equity hands loaded with debt that was preventing them getting to their potential,’ he says.

Why does he think Rosebank can succeed with these better than the former private equity owners?

‘Some of it is about cutting costs,’ he says, ‘and we don’t make any bones about that, that’s what we do. On the latest acquisition, we spent roughly $3 billion. Roughly $1.7 billion of that was on reducing the debt. We have saved them $150 million every year that we can now invest in those businesses.’

He sees no reason others couldn’t also raise money in London, saying: ‘We don’t think we’re particularly special. There will be plenty of other people with a good idea and credible management team.

‘We’re just an illustration of how, when you have both those, it’s possible to raise money in London.’

He does, however, criticise the increase in costs and red tape. He says: ‘When we set up Melrose, the prospectus was, I forget the number, let’s say ten to 15 pages long.

‘When we set up Rosebank, it was 100 pages long. I don’t think there’s any more value added. The regulatory environment is much, much more difficult. It costs much more to do it now than it used to do then.’

So is that the reason UK business isn’t seeing more investment?

‘Well, some of it,’ he says. ‘It happened partly because of bad government in my view. I’m not trying to pick on any party but if you go back to Gordon Brown, he made changes to pension funds that drove them into bonds and away from shares. 

In the past, we were buying businesses with pension funds with maybe 60 per cent invested in UK assets. That is now down to 3 or 4 per cent.

‘I don’t share many of the views of this Government. But I don’t want to get into politics. I’m not convinced any political party has a good enough grasp of the economic situation. We unfortunately have too many politicians whose only job has ever been politics.’

But Peckham has never regarded himself as an entrepreneur, saying: ‘What we do is take existing businesses and try to make them better. I think to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to create, and we’ve never done that. I haven’t invented anything in my life.

‘If I were in government, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to drive those people out of the country, because they are relatively rare and they provide employment to a lot of people. I have a lot of admiration for people who run businesses because it is very difficult.’

And his role? Peckham says: ‘From time to time, we find businesses that aren’t run properly, or where we think we can make a difference. We’ll try to help... whether they want to be helped or not.’