Tim Horlick, who has died aged 65, was an investment banker who secured, through the controversial “VIP lane”, a huge supply contract for Covid PPE masks which turned out to be unfit for use by frontline healthcare workers.
Horlick’s company, Ayanda Capital, is a private equity fund (with a parent company in the tax haven of Mauritius) which focuses on “high-growth sectors such as fintech, digital platforms, energy and natural resources”, aiming to generate superior returns “while positively impacting society”. His own career had been spent entirely in the financial sphere until the opportunity arose in April 2020 to source 50 million high-protection “FF2” masks and 150 million looser-fitting “IIR” masks from a Chinese company, Zhende Medical.
The official who approved the order – processed in three weeks, with limited due diligence, amid frantic international competition to secure bulk PPE supplies – noted that “Ayanda was not a business which had any direct experience in the manufacture, supply or distribution of PPE… but that… did not unduly concern me.” The value of the contract was £252.5 million.
When it came to light that the FF2 masks had not been distributed within the NHS because they had ear loops rather than the required straps behind the head, attention focused on how the contract had been pushed through – including the role as intermediary of a former Board of Trade adviser who had pressed for it to be fast-tracked.
A judge later ruled that although the VIP channel for contractors with high-level connections had been unlawful, it was “very likely” that the Ayanda contract would have been awarded anyway — alongside a £342 million order from a similarly inexperienced company, Pestfix, whose main activity was pest control.
Horlick admitted to having made £17 million profit from the deal – but he contended that after it was signed, the FF2 specification had been changed. No formal contract dispute had ensued, he pointed out, and Ayanda’s masks were usable in non-frontline settings.
But more trouble was to follow when Horlick was arrested in December 2025 in an investigation into allegedly unpaid tax related to the PPE profit; he denied wrongdoing. The case was unresolved at the time of his death.
Timothy Piers Horlick was born in Weymouth on June 19 1961, one of four sons of a naval officer, Edwin “Ted” Horlick – later a vice-admiral, director-general of ships and chief naval engineering officer – and his wife Jean, née Covington.
After a childhood on naval bases at home and abroad, Tim was educated at Wellington College and read PPE at Exeter College, Oxford. It was at Oxford that he met Nicola Gayford; they were married in 1984 and, as Nicola Horlick, she rose to fame in her own career as the so-called “Superwoman” of investment management.
Tim Horlick qualified as an accountant with Price Waterhouse before joining the merchant bank Robert Fleming and moving to Kleinwort Benson in 1988. When he moved again in the mid-1990s to head a technology team for the London arm of the US firm Salomon Brothers, Kleinworts brought an injunction against him for removing confidential documents. At the same time as Nicola Horlick resigned from Deutsche Morgan Grenfell after being accused of attempting to poach her former team to create a rival operation for another European bank.
Their escapades prompted the Telegraph to fulminate about the “greed, lack of loyalty and selfishness” of the City’s prevailing “star system”; there was even international coverage, Le Monde beginning a front-page article: “Ah le couple Horlick!” Tim Horlick moved on to create his own private equity business in the early 2000s and to found Ayanda in 2017.
He and Nicola Horlick were divorced in 2005. He is survived by their three daughters – a fourth, the eldest, Georgina, died of leukaemia in 1998 – and their two sons.
Tim Horlick, born June 19 1961, died August 20 2026
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