Jerome Booth: The millionaire musician making a difference in emerging nations with New Sparta

Given the turbulent month the Exaro investigative journalism website has had, I half expect its owner, Dr Jerome Booth, to be showing the strain when I meet him at his office in Covent Garden.

Under attack for the credibility of sources used in sensational investigations of VIP child sex abuse cases, it has been dubbed a “discredited news outlet” and a “rogue outfit”. But he meets me with an affable grin.

It is perhaps what I should have expected from the 53-year-old millionaire. Exaro is just one of about 20 companies in which his private office New Sparta has investments — and one of the smallest despite its current noisy profile. Stablemates include Icon Film Distribution, New Call Telecom and one of its latest acquisitions Nimbuzz, an Indian version of WhatsApp doing extremely well in its home market.

Booth is characteristically unsentimental when he talks about Exaro, which has garnered awards for stories on Whitehall and media practices.

He says he set it up to have total editorial independence and has no control over its editorial content.

Exaro has sent ripples through the media with its treatment of high-profile figures including Lord Bramall, Leon Brittan and Harvey Proctor.

Booth claims he has already addressed concerns over these stories, claiming “the credibility or otherwise of sources is rightly a matter for the journalists at Exaro, and above all, its editor”, the former Telegraph journalist Mark Watts.

In an age in which the influence of media owners’ agendas on their titles is in the spotlight, he adds: “I have no influence over the subject of their investigations whatsoever, and nor should I.

“The first I know of any Exaro story is when I read it online just like everyone else. It’s a worthwhile entity, as simple as that.

“You either have independent journalism editorially or you don’t. You can’t be a little bit pregnant.

“What I think is interesting is the enormous number of stories that have come to Exaro because of the stated objective that there really is no control by the owner on the editorial side of things.”

Like his other larger journalistic organisation, the website and monthly magazine BNEintelliNews (BNE stands for Business News Europe), Booth sees Exaro’s role in the context of a much bigger idea he’s been passionate about since childhood — emerging markets.

He explains: “I think we’re very lucky in this country generally that we do have very strong journalism but I would say that investigative journalism needs a bit of support, and that’s the general principle in which I’m operating, particularly with Exaro.

“But in a lot of emerging markets, particularly in Eastern Europe, there’s a complete lack of information and analysis, so that’s what BNE is providing.” Exaro is a small asset, he adds, but he does see ways to make money in the long term.

Booth grew up in Tavistock, Devon, and went to school at Keeley College, to where his father Jolyon — once an actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company and a former Doctor Who cast member — had relocated to work as a teacher.

As Jerome himself, a father of four and resident of Saffron Walden in Essex, observes, it’s “a sensible way to raise a family”.

His mother worked for Oxfam and he developed his interest in emerging markets from her.

He tells how, aged 18, he was dispatched to India before university: “I remember getting to Calcutta, looking down the one paved street and thinking goodness me, if I calculate correctly, there are 100,000 people I can now see.

“I went to the Oxfam office and said ‘what can I do to help?’ and they all burst out laughing. That was my first lesson in development — hubris.”

He thinks that remains the problem with our aid programme: “It’s a form of existential guilt, rather than trying to do anything based on past empirical evidence of what works and what doesn’t.”

Travelling on the back of a motorcycle with the Oxfam team, he visited places where they had never seen a white man before, villages flattened by cyclones, where all the cattle had been killed, and leprosy hospitals.

Finally, he spent a couple of weeks in Delhi realising how different the cities and rural areas of India are.

“To this day, most middle-class Indians haven’t been to a village, and that’s where 70% of Indians live.”

Booth went on to study geography at Bristol, winning a prize for his work in north-east Brazil, and then joined the Department of Trade and Industry.

He realised there that he needed to learn about economics so he went to Oxford to study for a master of philosophy degree and then a doctorate at Christ Church.

His academic career continues today; he is a visiting professor at the Cass Business School and chairman of the board of Anglia Ruskin University.

He did a stint with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington before returning to the UK for a job at ANZ Grindlays.

In 1999, he was part of the management buyout of ANZ Investment Bank to create Ashmore, an investment fund specialising in emerging markets. He was Ashmore’s second-largest shareholder, and its stock-market listing in 2006 propelled him on to the Sunday Times Rich List, where he has remained ever since, with an estimated wealth of £112 million.