Private equity titan Jon Moulton plans to quit the business after becoming a major casualty of the coronavirus crisis

That fund, and a separate one launched in 2009 that has performed rather better, are being de-listed from the stock market.  And, after 40 years in the industry, Moulton thinks it's finally time for him to pack in private equity.  He will certainly not be quitting while he is ahead. In its most recent full-year accounts, the 2012 fund reported a total decline in the value of its net assets of nearly 52 per cent including payouts to shareholders. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, Moulton says he has had enough.  'I won't be launching a new private equity fund – I'm damn near 70,' says the 69-year-old.  He has had a long, roller-coaster of a career, which has won him admirers but also vicious personal criticism.  In 2014 he was excoriated after City Link, a firm owned by Better Capital, collapsed on Christmas Eve. Another famous name, fashion firm Jaeger, also came to grief after five years of ownership by a Moulton fund, collapsing into administration in 2017.  More recently, he had a bit part in the Neil Woodford affair. He points to Airbus supplier Northern Aerospace, which Better Capital eventually sold to a Chinese conglomerate, as another investment where the firm only just scraped its money back. And then there was the car-crash investment in courier firm City Link, which earned Moulton the nickname 'Grinch' when it went under over the festive seasonand a tabloid newspaper ran a picture of him with a set of devil horns on his head. '  Moulton, who is chairman of the stock exchange in Guernsey, where he lives, has also faced criticism over the implosion of Woodford's investment empire last year. Some theorised that Woodford had used his connections with Moulton – the two have worked on several deals together – to gain access to the Guernsey exchange where he listed some of his stakes in unquotedcompanies. This stems from his early days as a 'very sickly child' in Stoke-on-Trent, during which time he was plagued with illnesses including tuberculosis, aplastic anaemia and amoebic dysentery.  It prompted him to set up a charitable foundation which is now helping fund more than 100 clinical trials.  One of them is the Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Imperial College London. Moulton is hopeful that if trials go well, a vaccine could be ready by the end of the year.  He was on holiday in Botswana when the virus struck and only just managed to get back to South Africa, by way of a helicopter and medical aircraft, in time for a flight home.  He feels lucky to have evaded the virus so far.  Before he and his wife Pauline made their way down to Botswana, they were on a cruise of the Nile in Egypt, where they subsequently learned a passenger had tested positive. '  That aside, his outlook for the UK's future is somewhat bleak.  'The whole economy's going to come out of this back where it was 25 years ago,' he says.  He is due to give evidence tomorrow to MPs on the Treasury committee about the economic impact of the virus.  He has mixed views on the Government's response to the pandemic so far.  Over the long term, the piles of debt, which many companies have taken on, will become a problem.  Lenders have already provided £35billion in taxpayer-backed coronavirus loans to 830,000 businesses, and Moulton adds: 'If the Government's not careful we'll see a tremendous wall of insolvencies.