Ivan Massow - Business Career

Business Career

In 1990 and with less than £5,000 Massow started Bowater Massow, later to become Massow Financial Services Ltd, running it initially from a squat in Kentish Town, London, using just a mobile phone. Massow specialised in offering financial services to gay people, in particular sourcing competitively priced insurance and mortgages for customers whose sexuality previously resulted in their being charged much higher premiums. Massow claims he was dismayed to see the prejudicial attitude within the insurance industry towards gay men and people with HIV and AIDS, hence "what I decided to do was set up this company to try and help these people." Accompanied by imaginative advertising that included a poster campaign depicting Massow embracing his then boyfriend, Massow's company soon attracted customers and expanded; the success and high profile of the business resulted in Massow being voted Man of the Year by the Pink Paper in 1996, and by 1997 Massow had become a multi-millionaire. At the end of the decade his company had several offices, including branches in Edinburgh, Manchester and Liverpool, and was at the forefront of the 'gay finance' sector.

At the turn of the century Massow merged his company with another gay-orientated finance company, Rainbow Finance of Oxford, thereby creating Rainbow Massow, one of the largest independent financial advice firms in the UK. Massow took the role of Chairman and was superseded as Managing Director by Louis Letourneau, who had owned Rainbow Finance. The market value of the new company was £20M, and Massow claimed that turnover would rise from £2M per annum to over £3.5M. However within one year the firm ran out of money and went out of business. Shortly afterwards Massow described the decision to stop trading as "the most terrible thing that has happened in my entire business life". Both parties blamed the other for the new firm's demise. Letourneau claimed that the merger had happened after Massow had endured two years of heavy losses (£700,000 in 1998-99 and £465,777 in 1999-2000), and that he (Letourneau) had been made a scapegoat for Massow's failures. He claimed that Massow's accounts had not been properly maintained and that Massow didn't fulfill promises of extra finance for expansion. He said "the basic problem was that we were suffering from falling sales in a falling market and fundamentally we needed more funding. In my opinion was quite happy to see it go into receivership and then buy it back cheaply." Massow claimed that Letourneau had incurred excessive costs on staff and offices. Massow eventually bought the company back from the receiver for about £1.5M and subsequently restabilised it.

In 2001 Massow set up Jake, an online social networking site for gay professionals.

Between 2003 and 2004 Massow was Director of another financial adviser firm, this time a tied agent of the Zurich Advice Network (previously Allied Dunbar). Massow had previously campaigned against what he saw as Allied Dunbar's anti-gay underwriting practices, but he claimed that "they've moved on and, for the sake of my customers, so must I if other gay financial advisers think they're doing the best for their customers by blackballing all the companies that were once out of line (there were about eight of them) when it came to gay issues - then their priorities are very strange. Financial advice is about getting the best product - not petty grudge bearing." Massow accepted a transitional loan of £330,000 to enable office relocation and staff training. However the arrangement was short-lived and ironically ended after dispute between Massow and Zurich over Zurich's approach to insuring the gay clients in which the firm specialised. A long £13m legal case followed which, ultimately, Massow lost.

Other Massow businesses include Halos and Horns, Massows Angels and Pay Me My Commission.