City tycoon Buffini takes stake in asset manager Gresham House

One of the City's most influential figures is building a substantial stake in Gresham House (LSE: GHE.L - news) , a listed asset management group.

Sky News can reveal that Sir Damon Buffini, who ran the buyout firm Permira for more than a decade, has bought 5% of Gresham House, which oversees assets worth nearly £400m.

Sir Damon has acquired the stake through Saffie Investments, a privately held vehicle, and is understood to be open to increasing his shareholding.

The private equity tycoon worked with Anthony Dalwood, Gresham House's chief executive, during his tenure at Permira, which bought and sold prominent British companies including Birds Eye and Homebase.

Gresham House has several divisions, focused on managing assets including commercial forestry and block stakes in quoted companies.

Since leaving the private equity group in 2014, Sir Damon has become chairman of the National Theatre and the Social Business Trust, and joined the board of the PGA European golf tour.

He is also a governor of the Wellcome Trust, the medical research institute.

For years, Sir Damon was among the best-known figures in the City, earning a reputation as a formidable dealmaker.

He found himself at the centre of controversy in 2006, a time when private equity firms were under intense scrutiny for their approach to the balance sheets of many of the companies it owned, and the fabulous wealth accumulated by those at the top of the industry.

A group of trade unionists protesting about job cuts at the AA - which Permira owned - paraded a camel outside Sir Damon's church, in a reminder of the biblical parable that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter heaven.

Friends of Sir Damon, who was brought up in a council flat in Leicester, point to his portfolio of largely unpaid philanthropic roles.

Sir Damon declined to comment on Saffie's shareholding in Gresham House.