Multi-millionaire investor Jim Mellon has reiterated his belief that the UK should consider leaving the EU.
The Isle of Man resident has made no secret of his view that the UK would fare better if it left Brussels.
He also has a house in Brussels and has seen the ‘Brussels bureaucracy up close.’
He told an interviewer last year that ‘I don’t believe it would be a disaster if we left the EU.’
Now Mr Mellon has taken part in a video interview with Proactive Investors, an internet based international news wire providing in-depth coverage of the world’s growth companies.
Mellon, who was reported in the last Sunday Times Rich List to be worth £850 million, repeats that the UK would be better off leaving the EU.
He said: ‘My point is reinforced by the fact that 15 years ago our noble politicians [in the UK], almost to the man and woman, said we should join the euro.
‘Now if we had done so we would be in a much worse situation.
‘We’d have been dragged down with an overvalued currency. Our flexibility with currency has helped us.
‘I think we would benefit from not having to subsidise Europe. We would benefit from being able to bring in people from India, from China, from the United States who are not allowed to come into the country because of the limits on immigration.
‘Those limits have to be better balanced. We would benefit by not having this enormous burden of red tape for businesses.
‘So I think the case for leaving Europe is a good one.
‘And although it is a big leap to make. I don’t think it would be a bad decision.’
Mr Mellon believes there will be a modest recovery in Europe, helped by the fall in the price of oil. Talking about Greece and the current debate on whether the country should have to leave the euro he pointed out the country has been in default for many years and he thinks Greece will eventually leave the euro.
Mr Mellon is understood to employ hundreds of Isle of Man residents through a number of businesses including the Claremont Hotel and Conister Bank. He also referred in his interview with Proactive Investors to his recent book called Fast Forward in which readers are shown eight different themes for the future where people might be minded to invest in. Mr Mellon said his favourite area in the book is robotics where robot technology is ‘moving out of the factory’ into other areas such as service industries.
He referred to a company that produced a special spoon for people with Parkinson’s Disease. This was highlighted in his book and a fortnight after the book came out the company was snapped up by Gooogle he said.
‘I thought it would be a standalone technology company but within two weeks of the book being published Google snapped it up.’
Mr Mellon said investors would also do well to look at ‘old’ companies that are reinventing themselves technologically. ‘I like Hewlett Packard in this respect. They have a new product calledMemristor’