Mannerisms

Instead of the arrogant, prickly, toff you would expect to have amassed a fortune in a shadowy City business, Buffini turned out to be a black kid, brought up on a council estate by a single mother, who went to state schools.

Although he's thought to be worth over a hundred million quid, he sounded normal.

"Travelodge built 1000 new hotels during our ownership, and took on thousands of more people. That's not asset-stripping", said Buffini, "look at the UK car industry. If you don't take steps to put companies on a firm footing you can go badly wrong."

On employee welfare, Buffini, said: "We believe, by creating good strong competitive businesses, that is good for employees."

Nothing was said about the 4,000 staff sacked at the AA out of a total of 10,000, under Permira's ownership.

Buffini denied being a short-term investor. "On average we invest in companies for five years", he said.

And he denied being secretive. "The AA last year produced a detailed annual report containing more data than was ever released when it was owned by Centric."

Asked about union demands that the money raised by private equity funs to buy companies should not be tax deductible, Buffini replied: "Our companies have no special rules. If you change that you will affect the productivity of the UK. The financial services industry is good for the UK. Targeting private equity would not be a good thing."

Buffini conceded that: "I believe we have to be more open", and added, "We have a good story to tell."

If so, it's strange than that it's taken an unparalleled chorus of attacks by the trade unions to get a private equity boss to defend his industry.