Barack Obama will give speech in Edinburgh on Friday to an audience of more than 1,000 businesspeople who have paid up to £2,000 a ticket – and nine lucky schoolchildren.



The speech, one of Obama’s first big addresses since leaving office, has been paid for by a charitable trust founded by the Scottish entrepreneur Sir Tom Hunter.

Hunter, who has pledged to give at least £1bn to charity but has so far donated only £51.7m, said it would be a “true honour” to hear about Obama’s “epic, historic journey” from the Chicago to the White House.

The media will be excluded from the Hunter Foundation event at the Edinburgh international conference centre, which will also feature performances by Annie Lennox and the pop-rock band Texas.

Ewan Hunter, the chief executive of the Hunter Foundation, said this was because “the aim is not to raise awareness of the charity but to raise funds for charities across Scotland”.

He said all profits from the event, which is sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland, would be donated to charities supported by the Hunter Foundation, including the STV Children’s Appeal and the Kiltwalk.

Top tables at the dinner cost £20,000 for 10 diners, while tables at the back cost £5,000. One of the 120 tables will be occupied by the winner of a secondary school essay-writing competition, eight of their friends and a teacher.

Further funds will be raised in an auction, with prizes including two walk-on parts in the next JK Rowling Fantastic Beasts film, naming rights to the Gleneagles hotel’s American bar, and a private tennis session with Roger Federer and Andy Murray.

Ewan Hunter, who is not related to Sir Tom, declined to state how much Obama was being paid for the speech, and the Obama Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.

Obama has previously commanded as much as $400,000 (£312,000), for a speech at a healthcare conference organised by the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald. It is possible to directly request a speech from Barack or Michelle Obama by completing a form on the Obama Foundation website.

Hunter did not explain how Obama had been booked for the appearance, but said that for a small charity the Hunter Foundation had a good record of attracting big names. “We’ve had [Bill] Clinton, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Sir Richard Branson,” he said. “Sir Tom has got a very strong network.”

In 2007 Sir Tom Hunter, who had recently become Scotland’s first billionaire, told the BBC’s Robert Peston that he would donate £1bn to charity. The broadcaster described the gift as the “single most generous philanthropic commitment made by any Briton”.

Records at the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator show Hunter’s foundation granted £1.7m to charity last year, £1.3m in 2016 and less than £1m in 2015 and 2014.

Ewan Hunter said total donations so far totalled £51.7m. He acknowledged this was far short of the initial pledge, but said Sir Tom was still committed to donating a full £1bn “in his lifetime, and he’s not dead yet. It is a fantastic challenge, but he intends to meet it.”

Sir Tom Hunter, who began his business life selling trainers out of a garage in Ayrshire, made his initial fortune building the retail chain Sports Division and selling it to JJB Sports for £260m in 1998. He lost more than £250m on property during the 2007/8 financial crisis, and his wealth was estimated at £576m in this year’s Sunday Times rich list. This year he bought a six-bedroom estate in Beverly Hills for $38.5m (£30m).