Douglas Alan Barrowmanis a Scottish businessman. He founded the Knox Group of Companies and has invested in Ve Interactive, Aston Ventures, and Equi Capital. He is married to Michelle Mone.
In 2022, in a series of investigative pieces, The Guardian reported that Barrowman, Mone and their children had secretly received £45.8 million in payments to offshore accounts from government PPE contracts, which they had lobbied for during the COVID-19 pandemic. The police launched an investigation into Barrowman's activities in January 2022.
Career
Early career
After graduating, Barrowman completed his professional examinations and qualified as a chartered accountant. He worked for 3i, a private equity fund. Barrowman resigned from 3i in 1992, to set up his own corporate finance practice during the 1990s. He exited from the practice in 1999.
Aston Ventures
In 1999, Barrowman founded Aston Ventures, a private investment vehicle. Over the next ten years, Aston Ventures made 13 acquisitions of "old economy" businesses, including the third largest cable making company in the world B3 Cables, with a total turnover of about £400 million over that period.
The Knox Group
In 2008, Barrowman moved to the Isle of Man and founded The Knox Group of Companies which owned several businesses, including Aston Ventures. Barrowman was also a director of Aston Management Ltd (AML), which provided tax advice and offshore loan schemes to freelance workers including social workers, locum doctors, nurses and engineers. AML's services came under scrutiny after the UK government announced in 2017 that it would be claiming back tax from 50,000 scheme users through the Loan Charge measure, leading to criticism in the House of Commons. AML ceased trading in 2010 before the tax rules changed. In October 2020, a BBC report highlighted how thousands of AML customers were left facing a retrospective Loan Charge by HMRC.
In 2011 Barrowman co-founded the KHG Private Equity Fund.
Financial Provisions Solutions
Knox Group owned Financial Provisions Solutions, which went into voluntary liquidation in January 2019. In December 2022, the Daily Record reported that Army veterans lost tens of thousands of pounds when they transferred out of the final salary Army scheme to Financial Provisions Solutions.
Other business activities
In 2017, Barrowman became the interim chairman of Ve Interactive, after an emergency cash injection and investment into the firm. In the same year, Aston Plaza and Residences, a residential and commercial property development in Dubai priced in bitcoin, was launched.
PPE Medpro
The Guardian released a set of articles, first in 2020 but then again in November 2022, detailing Barrowman and Mone's implication in lobbying for government PPE contracts, and the financial rewards they saw from these government contracts. Barrowman received £45.8 million in payments to his private offshore accounts from £200 million government contracts with the money earmarked for PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
