Boss of private equity firm Permira gives staff dressing down after overhearing complaints about food at Michelin-starred restaurant

This article is more than 11 years old

This article is more than 11 years old

Damon Buffini, who runs the private equity firm Permira, told partners in the company to be more grateful and made them eat burgers after they complained about the quality of food at a five-star hotel.

Buffini, a key business adviser to the prime minister, Gordon Brown, gave his colleagues a severe dressing down after overhearing complaints about the food at the Pennyhill Park Hotel in Bagshot, Surrey.

Buffini asked the kitchen to prepare burgers the following night and, as the partners tucked in, he told them they did not know "how lucky they were". Thousands of people in the financial industry have been sacked and many survivors will receive lower bonus payments this year.

The Michelin-starred restaurant at the hotel is used as a base for the England rugby union team and normally serves diners pan-fried John Dory fillets, braised shin of veal and buttered gem lettuce, cannon of salt marsh lamb with anchovy beignets, and slow-cooked pork belly, baby onions and tomato vinaigrette.

Buffini became the public face of the private equity industry - and a hate figure for the unions - when several large buyouts followed by job cuts led to a public outcry about "asset strippers".

When Permira was joint owner of the AA motoring organisation, it sacked thousands of staff, and in 2006, Buffini's Sunday prayers at Holy Trinity church in Clapham, south London, were disrupted by a union protest. Members of GMB paraded a camel – a reference to the biblical saying: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Permira's millionaire chairman, a regular churchgoer, was not born into wealth; he was brought up on a council estate in Leicester by his mother.

Like other buyout firms, Permira - Europe's largest private equity group - has been hit by the financial crisis, with one of its biggest investors recently cutting funding.

What credit crunch?

While partners at Permira had to make do with burgers, others in the financial world still enjoy a less frugal lifestyle. A London banker spent £43,067.50 on champagne and vodka at a Soho private members club on Wednesday night at a post Brit Awards party. The man arrived at Maya with two men and two women and spent three hours buying drinks for other guests who gravitated towards his table.

Eight bottles of Cristal and two methuselahs of Dom Perignon, costing £9,000 each, were consumed along with four jeroboams of Belvedere vodka at £750 each and two more jeroboams of Cristal at £4,500 each.

At least the waitress, Anna, received a £5,617.50 tip.