'If I retired and put my feet up I'd be dead in a year'

JOHN Duffield, one of the best known characters in the tough world of fund management, insists he cannot imagine a life without work. He is 62 - an age when most people are relishing the thought of retirement. His wealth runs not just into millions of pounds, or tens of millions, but hundreds of millions.

So, after a successful and lucrative career, what drives him to get up at seven o'clock every morning five days a week?

Duffield leans back in his chair, his hands behind his head and mutters: 'Why do I do it? Because if I retired, went home and put my feet up in front of the television, I'd be dead within a year. In any case, what I do is the greatest possible fun.'

Yes, one suspects that Duffield does have fun. But is it simply because he enjoys the day-to-day role of managing funds? Or because he delights in playing the maverick and living up to his nickname of Big Bad John?

Being a rebel is a role he clearly relishes. He is, after all, the man who spectacularly fell out with Commerzbank after the German group paid £679 million for Jupiter, the asset management group he founded in 1985.

He recalls cheerfully that he subsequently called people at Commerzbank 'a bunch of Nazis'. Furthermore, adds Duffield, 'I'm as pleased as Punch that I said it.' And he intimates that if he had the opportunity, he'd say it again.

He makes a point of having set up his new company, New Star Asset Management, close to the Albert Hall in west London, miles from the City. And Duffield shuffles around his office wearing the sort of sweater many people would save for weekends spent digging the garden. Mr Pinstripe he is not, and staff can't remember the last time he wore a tie to work.

As for his office, it is functional at best, hardly the empire of a multi-millionaire. The walls are bare, apart from a few framed New Star adverts, while the only other noticeable adornments are a jelly bean dispenser and a cabinet lined with cards which have pictures of cats on them. 'I love cats,' he says.

The irony, despite Duffield's insistence that fund management is fun, is that he is not really a fund manager at all. He leaves that to people running individual funds.

'We don't have company investment policies,' says Duffield. 'I take no interest in the individual stocks the fund managers buy, but I do take an interest in the fund managers. My job is to manage the managers, not manage the funds.'

To underline the point, he insists that his fund managers have far greater freedom than their rivals in most other firms. 'There is no money to be made from following the crowd,' he says.

Hence, his managers are allowed to make far more extreme bets on a sector or a company doing well or badly than is the norm in the industry. It is a laissez-faire style of management that served him well at Jupiter and turned the company into one of the country's top three investment houses.

In the process it made household names of some of the fund managers such as income guru William Littlewood. And though it is still early days - New Star is less than a year old - it seems to be working again with assets of £1.8 billion already under management.

Duffield may insist that fund management is the 'greatest possible fun', but there are two ironies. First, responsibility for investment decisions is devolved to those down the chain.

And second, despite his insistence that employees should be free to act, there is undeniably something of the school bully in Duffield's manner.

'Everybody in a company like this should do their own thing,' he says. Then he adds with just a touch of menace: 'But I wouldn't expect fund managers to tell me how to run the company. After all, if I'm going to make secretaries £1 million, as I did at Jupiter, I expect them to do what they are told.'

So is he dictatorial? 'Dictatorial would be a bit unfair,' he grumbles. Then a few moments later, he reconsiders. 'I don't like the term much, but perhaps yes, I am a bit dictatorial.' He smiles as he says it.

He admits he is not the easiest person to be with. He was married to Vivien Clore, whose father Charles built up the Sears business empire that included department store Selfridges and jewellery chain Mappin & Webb. They had two children, Arabella and George.

Unfortunately, the marriage did not last and Vivien later described Duffield as a 'lousy husband, but an excellent fund manager'.

Duffield now twists the famous Groucho Marx phrase about not wanting to join a club that would have him as a member. 'I wouldn't want to be married to anyone who would put up with me as a husband,' he says.

And frankly, this is easy to believe. Our interview takes place on February 14. We remind Duffield that there is some significance to the date.

He looks slightly perplexed. 'Oh, I'm going out for a dinner tonight with some people to do with the Royal & SunAlliance deal.' (Duffield has been toying with the idea of bidding for the insurer's fund management business).

So Suzy McDonald - the woman he describes as his 'very long-term girlfriend' - will not be wined, dined and otherwise treated to mark St Valentine's Day? Without blushing or a flicker of guilt, Duffield admits that he had not bought her a card.

In fact, life with Duffield - at least during the week, after he has returned from one of the two farms where he spends most weekends - doesn't sound like a bundle of fun.

On the day we meet, he is due to discuss the suggested RSA deal - a marriage that looks unlikely to be consummated as the two sides cannot agree a price.

The evening before was spent dining with a fund manager. And the evening before that, he was out with colleagues from New Star. It is fortunate that Suzy works with him at New Star, otherwise they might never see one another.

It doesn't seem to trouble Duffield one jot. He clearly loves work. 'I'll do it as long as I'm physically capable,' he says.

And he would love to expand New Star - hence the abortive attempt last year to buy Artemis, and the amount of time he spends looking at businesses auctioned by Royal & SunAlliance and AIB Govett.

But Duffield insists that, though there are far more takeover opportunities now than a year ago, his best option for the time being is to try to grow organically rather than by acquisition.

It is a task he relishes. After all, what else would he do?