James Caan

Multimillionaire James Caan has run dozens of businesses. What he doesn’t know about business and building them from the ground up isn’t worth knowing.

Caan is no stranger to challenges. He left school at 16 with no qualifications, shunning working in his dad’s established leather goods manufacturing business to prove he could go it alone. He sold Alexander Mann in 2002 for £95m and it is now one of the most successful human resource companies in the world. 

After going back to “school” and gaining an MBA from Harvard Business School, Caan set up recruitment investment firm Hamilton Bradshaw in 2003, which he has run remotely from his home in Monaco since 2015.