A former City trader who bet a record £900,000 on Scotland voting no to independence has insisted it was a rational decision based on scores of opinion polls that showed the yes campaign would lose.
The trader won £193,333 after increasing his original stake of £400,000 with William Hill for the third and final time on the eve of Thursday’s referendum to a final total of £900,000. The vote was won by the no campaign by 55% to 45%.
Bookmakers reported a record number of bets on the referendum, which thousands of smaller sums staked in Scotland on a yes vote as the polls tightened in the final stages of the campaign; none came close to the £900,000 stake made with William Hill.
Partially breaking cover in an interview with Jeremy Vine on BBC2 on Monday, the unnamed businessman, who lives in the London area, said he had applied 30 years of experience as a market analyst and trader to work out how plausible a yes vote would be.
There were comments in the papers calling him a “feckless gambler”, he said, but his decision to so much of his wealth was purely rational and had been supported by his wife.
Describing himself as a committed unionist of Pakistani-German heritage, he said he had been partly motivated to gamble that much money – the largest political bet in British history and believed to be one of the largest worldwide – because it was good publicity for the pro-UK campaign.
But he added: “The first thing I should say is: don’t try this at home. Perhaps I have a bit of a unique background given what I do given I have been involved in markets and as my daughters tell me, I’m a bit of a data geek and information nerd.”
Nicknamed “Peter” by Vine after he insisted on remaining anonymous, he said he had studied more than 80 polls on the academic referendum website whatscotlandthinks.org, overseen by the Strathclyde University polling expert Professor John Curtice.
He had also studied the Quebec referendum in 1995, when the yes vote spiked sharply close to polling day. He decided the Scottish referendum was following the same cycle – except in Scotland, very few polls gave the yes vote a lead.
He admitted that the final polls showing a brief yes lead and then a very tight advantage to no had made him nervous. But as in Quebec, the no campaign made a stronger offer of new powers at the last stage, enough to cement their lead and too late to allow the yes campaign to respond.
Yes policy pledges and tactics, such the allegations that Scotland’s NHS was under threat, used by Alex Salmond, the first minister and Scottish National party leader, were “a momentum of vapours”, Peter said.
“Then they [the pro-union campaign] released the kraken, this Norse mythic god called Gordon Brown, who came with exactly the presence” the no campaign needed.
Denying charges from Radio 2 listeners that he was both feckless, “super-rich” and superficial by gambling so much money, Peter said he had already written out “a significant cheque to charity.” He added: “I’m trying to warn people this isn’t something we should do lightly.