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LONDON - Most people who spend $230,000 on a car tend to be rather precious about its whereabouts and safe keeping.
But not if you are Bertrand Des Pallieres.
Yesterday it emerged that the 39 year-old hedge fund tycoon took three months to collect his Maserati Cambiocorsa after it was towed away for not having a valid tax disc.
Despite repeated calls from the DVLA to reach him Mr Des Pallieres said that he was "too busy" setting up a new business to fetch his car.
When workers from the DVLA towed Mr Des Pallieres vehicle from Lowndes Square in Knightsbridge, London, to a pound in White City the Parisian millionaire's car had already accrued 65 congestion charge penalties and dozens of parking fines.
Transport for London then spent three months tracking the owner sending him several letters asking him to collect the vehicle.
"We usually expect owners of expensive cars to come forward within a couple of days", said Tim Cowan, spokesman for the DVLA.
"It's only because it took us 3 months to find an auctioneer appropriate for such a fine vehicle that the owner was able to reclaim it."
Mr Cowan added: "We tend not to receive too many Maserati's, presumably because their owners tend not to let them go this easily."
Car-owners are usually given 14 days to claim their vehicle, before they are either sent to the scrapheap or auctioned.
Mr Des Pallieres left Deutsche Bank with two colleagues in April to set up his own company, the SPQR hedge fund.
Now worth £170m, his fund manages investments in debt markets.
Yesterday he claimed that the stress and workload involved in setting up his own firm were to blame for his forgetfulness.
"I can understand how people might find this quite strange but it was always my intention to pick it up," he said.
"I only ever use the car in the summer and this summer I have hardly been in London."
"I have been setting up a new business and running round the world raising money for my fund", he said.
Asked whether he was likely to be so forgetful in the future, Mr Des Pallieres added "I can be too focused, which has its plusses and minuses. I am quite obsessive about work. I think here is a clear example where I have perhaps focused on work to the exclusion of everything else."
TfL said yesterday that the Frenchman had been their "number one target".
He is thought to owe over £5,000.
Mr Des Pallieres said he didn't know cars taken to a pound could be auctioned off.
"Obviously I would be quite upset if it was sold off. It is a lovely car and I do like it, even if I do not use it very often", he said.
"In my defence, I would say that parking in the TfL car pound is not that expensive relative to the cost of parking in central London."
Mr Des Pallieres fines increased at the rate of £25 a day.
The multi-millionaire did, however, have a rather traditional solution to his memory trouble.
"When I lost my previous job at Deutsche Bank, I lost my PA", he said.
"She had always organised these domestic things for me. Now I have a PA [again], this will get sorted out."
- INDEPENDENT
