Every time Mohammed Hanif finds himself in Heathrow Terminal 3, he steadies his eyes on the floor outside WH Smith. Nearly four decades ago, the high-risk investor, who now heads a company managing $200m on the “frontier” of emerging markets, spent the night there together with his three young siblings and mother, after they found themselves penniless and abandoned on arrival from Pakistan.
“That night we grew up pretty quickly,” says the 47-year-old, describing his mother as a “very brave woman”, who wanted to secure a better education for her children.
It worked. After that difficult episode and then frequently going hungry on London council estates, today Mr Hanif owns a house in the south of France, an F-type Jaguar and a half-share of a Spitfire.