Ian Cameron (Stockbroker)

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Ian Cameron (1932-2010) was a British stockbroker, and father of Prime Minister David Cameron.[1]

Background

Cameron's father Donald Cameron, and grandfather Ewen Alan Cameron were partners in stockbroker Panmure Gordon. His Great-grandfather Ewen Cameron was a director of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank.[2]

Education

Cameron was educated at Betterhanger School in Kent and at Eton. On leaving Eton, he decided to train as an accountant rather than go to university.[3]

Career

Cameron spent two years as a banker at Robert Fleming before joining Panmure Gordon where he became a partner in 1957.[4]

Cameron has been estimated to have made some £2 million as a result of deregulation, during the City "Big Bang", after which Panmure Gordon was taken over by North Carolina National Bank.[1]

Francis Elliot and James Hanning record an embarrassing episode for Cameron in the 1990s:

Jeremy Gray, the son of a Wiltshire doctor, was Ian Cameron's personal assistant at stockbroking firm Panmure Gordon. In 1994 Gray was arrested for stealing £3million in US investments from the British Heart Foundation charity, one of Ian Cameron's clients. The profits had been siphoned off to Swiss bank accounts.
Snaresbrook Crown Court heard that Gray's father, Dr Michael Gray, had written to the Home Office passing on his son's claims that he was an 'unwanted leftover of British intelligence'.
He added that Jeremy had become embroiled in a drug-running and money-laundering ring after he had looked after a briefcase of drugs as a 'favour' for a friend with Mafia links.[5]

Hanning and Elliot add:

Whatever the truth, the case was an embarrassment to Ian Cameron. Dr Gray says Ian Cameron was entirely blameless, but the fact that such money had been moved about on his watch did not reflect well on him. Panmure Gordon was fined by financial regulators.[5]

Cameron left Panmure Gordon it was taken over in the mid-1990s by Westdeutsche Landesbank. He then became a consultant at NCL Investments, taking much of his Panmure Gordon team with him.[1]

Offshore assets

In 2015 Channel 4 News revealed Ian's offshore wealth through a legal document filed with courts of tax haven, Jersey. The amount stored overseas does not have to be publicly disclosed but the existence of the documents show it to be more than £10,000. The will states any Jersey assets will go to Ian's wife, Mary Cameron, and that David and his sisters Clare and Tania are next in line. There is no suggestion of any illegality or wrongdoing by Ian or his family, that David has benefited from any of the offshore assets or that he was aware the assets were being held in a tax haven.

Channel 4 News also obtained documents showing Ian owned shares in a jersey fund he helped to manage, known for a time as Close International Equity Fund. Filings from before Ian resigned in 2009 showed he held at least 6,000 shares and these shares are understood to be included in his Jersey estate. He also set up Blairmore Holdings Inc in Panama, another tax haven, in 1982 and in 2006 a prospectus for the fund said: 'The directors intend that the affairs of the Fund should be managed and conducted so that it does not become resident in the United Kingdom for United Kingdom taxation purposes.'[6]

Affiliations

Connections

External Resources

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Ian Cameron, The Telegraph, 8 September 2010.
  2. Francis Elliott & James Hanning, Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, Harper Perennial, 2009, p.2.
  3. Francis Elliott & James Hanning, Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, Harper Perennial, 2009, pp.3-5.
  4. 4.0 4.1 Francis Elliott & James Hanning, Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, Harper Perennial, 2009, p.5. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; name "Elliot&Hanning4" defined multiple times with different content
  5. 5.0 5.1 Francis Elliott and James Hanning, The many faces of Mr. Cameron, MailOnline, 17 March 2007.
  6. Guy Basnett and Paul McNamara David Cameron's father left assets in tax haven Channel 4, 30 April 2015, accessed 4 May 2015.
  7. Francis Elliott & James Hanning, Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative, Harper Perennial, 2009, p.5.

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