He partially floated it on the stock market a year ago as a FTSE 100 company and sold the rest of the Hicks, Muse stake last month.But don’t think that Mr Lea and his Hicks, Muse fund are simply absentee landlords Quite the opposite. Yell, the Yellow Pages company, is one of the most famous things that has passed through his hands. He has just sold Hicks, Muse’s remaining shares in the former BT Group’s directories business, which he bought in 2001 for £2.14bn. He’s got two big ones put together.”Take the reference to being poor with a pinch of salt. His dogged pursuit of companies, which he buys, runs and then sells will have made him a very wealthy young man.

Private equity partners like Mr Lea rely less on salaries for their wealth and more on so-called “carry”. This is a percentage of the profits from any deal, which is reserved as an incentive payment for the private equity financiers.Anyway, his home in Kensington could have proved useful because Hicks, Muse was one of the first private equity funds in the race to buy the Telegraph Group, put up for sale after the dramatic demise of Lord Black of Crossharbour.But in the end, after a close look at the deal with Apax Partners, another private equity firm, Mr Lea decided not to proceed; so the closest he got to Lord Black was the view from his west London sitting room.However, despite the Telegraph, he has not been short of things to buy. When I was six we moved to Africa and I spent seven to eight years in Botswana and South Africa. My dad was an engineer who just had an itch to see the world.”So where has this peripatetic Lancastrian ended up settling? “I live in Kensington, [west London] across the street from the infamous Conrad Black It’s the same street but not nearly such a nice house I’m the poor guy in the street with the little house. My family has already accused me of systematically going around and buying up all the brands I was brought up on Weetabix, Wagon Wheels, whatever.

But whatever you do, don’t call me an American,” pleads Mr Lea.”It’s complicated. I lived here in Lancashire [the occasional flat vowel emerges as he talks about his childhood] My parents are English and my whole family is English Everybody has an English accent except me. Morecambe Bay? What about the accent, the Wall Street background and the plush offices near Hyde Park Corner that house the biggest boardroom I have ever seen?”Yes, well. Lyndon Lea seems the epitome of a Wall Street rainmaker He’s got the accent and he’s got the youth. He’s also got billions of dollars at his disposal to buy companies, ruthlessly strip them down, shake them up, then sell them on for huge profits

Lyndon Lea seems the epitome of a Wall Street rainmaker He’s got the accent and he’s got the youth.