Care homes

After the war, Banks served with the Parachute Field Ambulance service before becoming an insurance and pensions salesman for Financial Planning Services.

Having achieved success in the sales industry and seeing how the private sector dealt with the country’s ageing population,^[2] Banks decided to move back to Scotland to build a family-run care home business.^[7]

Banks incorporated Balhousie Care Group and bought his first care home in 1991, Balhousie Lisden in Kirriemuir, Angus. After 12 years, the group consisted of three care homes with £1.5m turnover.^[7]

The group is Scotland’s largest private care home provider with 27 care facilities, employs more than 900 people and as of 2019 had a turnover of just under £40m.^[8]

Tayside Aviation

In December 2021 Tayside Aviation was bought by ARB Aviation, a company set up by Banks. The company was placed into administration on 21 April 2023. ARB Aviation have claimed that at the time of purchase the company value was misrepresented and overvalued. They have also claimed that the maintenance records of aircraft had been falsified. Student pilots suffered significant financial loss when their training abruptly ended on the collapse of the company. ^{[9] [10]}

Awards and recognition

In 2011, Banks was one of 12 recipients in Scotland of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and was announced a finalist for Fundraiser of the Year 2011 at the Daily Record Hero Annual Awards.^[11][12] In 2012, Banks was named as one of the entrepreneurs chosen for Richard Branson’s panel which sought to select the world’s best business ideas.^[13]

Other awards Banks has received include Tayside Regional Director of the Year^[14] and Businessman of the Year at the Scottish SME Business Awards.^[15] He was also runner-up at the 2018 Institute of Scotland Director of the Year Awards.^[16]

Other business ventures

Banks’ other business interests include property development^[17] and the pharmacy sector.^[1] In July 2018, he revealed his plans to invest in the medicinal marijuana industry in the USA.^[18][19]

The Secret Millionaire

In 2009, Banks appeared on the sixth series of Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire in which he spent time living and getting to know residents on a low-income estate in Whitfield, Dundee. During the programme he donated to people he had met and has subsequently given more than £70,000 to organisations^[20] that he got to know during filming, including Daisy UK, a Liverpool-based organisation headed up by Dave Kelly.^[21][22][23]

From War to Peace

In 2010, the BBC filmed a documentary entitled 'From War to Peace', in which a film crew followed Banks on a journey to Argentina. Banks had left the Falklands with a war trophy which he had kept for 28 years – a trumpet taken from an Argentinean prisoner of war named Omar Tabarez.^[24] With the help of a journalist who tracked down Tabarez, Banks visited him at his home in Argentina to hand back the trumpet.^[25]

Political activity

Scottish independence

In May 2013, Banks joined the pro-independence Business for Scotland network^[26] where he remains chairman.^[27] He is a strong proponent for Scottish Independence and is an SNP donor.^[28]

Response to COVID-19

Banks has been widely published for his strong views on Scottish government support for care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. He made the decision to lock down the group’s 26 care facilities on 11 March, 12 days before the nationwide lockdown.^[29] Banks insisted the care homes would not relax visiting rules until safer practices were in place to minimise risk of transmission of the virus.^[30][31]

In September 2020, Banks called on the government to review its mass staff testing policy for care home workers, noting slow test results for his 900+ staff.^[32][33] In December 2020, the first COVID-19 Pfizer vaccinations were distributed to care home residents in Balhousie North Inch care home in Perth, Tayside.^[34]

Writing career

In March 2012, 30 years after the Falklands War, Banks released Storming the Falklands: My War and After^[35]. The book charts his experiences in war, how he struggled for years with combat-related stress, and how he has just recently managed to come to terms with his experiences.^[36]