He walked away from Goldman Sachs with a reported £110m. But now the stakes are even higher for Paul Deighton, the former investment banker whose task is to deliver a flawless London Olympics. Says Deighton: it's the "biggest postcard the capital will ever send"

With talk about the 2012 London Olympics budget spinning out of control and the Games draining public resources, I'd half expected to find Paul Deighton in a massive Canary Wharf office with sweeping views across the capital. But sceptics will be pleased to learn that his base is a modest cubbyhole, with views only stretching across an atrium. Branded "the most powerful broker in British sport", Deighton is responsible for organising and staging the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

The former investment banker took the reins as chief executive of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) in 2006. But the sports nut needed little encouragement to apply for the job. "I was ready to have one final job where I could throw everything into it and what better opportunity than being involved in the Olympics?" he asks.

So Deighton left Goldman Sachs after 22 years. When I suggest that he must be pleased about his timing, given the ensuing banking crisis, he laughs out loud. "No, I let other people think that," he jokes. "The thing that was lucky for me was that we happened to win the Games when my experience was such that I could do this job."

Then, by his own admission, Deighton says a curious thing. "I would have liked to have been at Goldman during the credit crunch. Although it would have been scary and stressful, it would have been a brilliant experience." That's easy to say when you quit while banking was still a reasonably respected profession and with more than £100m in the bank—he was a Goldman partner when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 1999. "I am not actually that delighted to have got out because I think it would have been interesting. But that is irrelevant because I am so delighted to be where I am."

Deighton heads an enterprise that will grow massively over the next three years. "What other business opportunity do you have where you can build your own organisation over seven years from more or less zero to 5,500 people?" he asks. "It is a great opportunity to build an organisation with a vision and a mission."

By 2012, there will be more than 70,000 volunteers and 100,000 contractors working on the project. "Recruiting, training and mobilising that workforce, so you can deliver the Games in a flawless manner, is one of the biggest challenges," he says. There are nine million tickets to sell and in 2012 15,000 athletes and a wider Olympic family of 70,000 will come to town alongside 20,000 press people.

"The brief is to stage an absolutely fantastic Olympic Games and one that will make the whole country proud," he says. "We need to ensure that we use the opportunity, of both preparing for the event and staging it, to leave a range of legacies and opportunities—whether that is inspiring young people to get involved in sports, transforming parts of east London, helping businesses to capitalise on the Olympics or getting people excited about visiting London."

Part of the job will be to get the rest of Britain enthusiastic. Still unsure whether the Games is an indulgent sporting binge to drain the public purse or a boost to the country and the economy, is it fair to say that the public is not quite there yet in the excitement stakes? "It's a very British thing to assume things will go wrong. I'd love for us to get over that. There was this exhilaration when we first won, but then the doubt started and people started asking 'how expensive will it be? Is it going to be embarrassing?' but that has been seen in all cities that have hosted the Games."

With around 1,000 days to go until the opening ceremony, on July 27, 2012, he has reason to feel pleased. Everything is going according to plan, and the International Olympic Committee's Coordination Commission for the London Games was impressed with progress on its last visit to the capital in April.

"The transformation that has taken place in the Lower Lea Valley is nothing short of astounding," said commission chairman Denis
Oswald. "This area will be a great legacy for London and Great Britain. The ability of the different partners involved in the 2012 project to work as a team, plan ahead and solve issues together is ensuring the Games and legacy planning remain on track."

LOCOG works alongside the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), which is in charge of building venues and acts as the regeneration body for the Olympic Park. While Deighton's side is entirely privately funded, the ODA's £9.3bn budget comes from public funds through a combination of central taxation, council tax and lottery funds. Of his £2bn LOCOG budget, Deighton has targeted between £650m and £700m to come from private sponsorship. The rest is made up of a share of broadcasting rights and worldwide sponsors' revenues from the IOC and merchandising, including ticket sales.

He has already secured around £550m in domestic sponsorship from 22 partners, including BA, Lloyds TSB, Adidas, BP and BT, which have pledged between £20m and £80m. The model, which has three tiers of sponsorship with different levels of financial commitment, is a success, with sponsors providing services and products in kind as well as cash.

Moving early on funding has proved crucial. "When we were awarded the Games in 2005 the economy was still relatively strong, but then it quickly softened," says Deighton. "We went aggressively very early because we could see the sun was shining. When the market is there, you move. And it was no coincidence that the first deal we did was in banking because it was a particularly hot sector then. Had we left it a year or so it would have been a different story."

He is now focused on securing backers for the third and second tiers. "If I wrote a list of the biggest achievements so far, getting so much sponsorship secured has got to be number one," he explains. Number two is the progress of the building project, which is bang on schedule. From the reception area of his offices, Deighton can survey progress at the park, where the bowl of the Olympic stadium is complete and work on other venues is advancing.

Since he is in charge of drumming up funding himself, he is not accused of plundering scarce public resources. The budget for construction and regeneration has been the source of much debate having started at £2.4bn in the winning bid and then rising to £9.3bn. The Olympic village and the media centre have both since been nationalised because private funding was not available.

But Deighton is adamant that it is money well spent. "What has characterised the project out on the park is the legacy. Sure, the venues will be brilliant and the party is going to be great at Games time, but the most impressive thing is how much thought has gone into how it is going to be afterwards. Some of the things we are doing on the sustainability side have been absolutely standard-setting." He says the Games are seen as precisely the sort of project that the government should support.

"There are 5,000 people working in the Olympic park and these are jobs that the country needs. The ODA has placed orders totalling £5bn on that project and 98 per cent of the contracts have gone to UK companies, 68 per cent of them SMEs, and they have generated jobs around the country."

There are still plenty of opportunities for UK businesses, with many contracts still untendered. LOCOG expects to tender around £700m of goods and services between now and 2012. "Taking part in this will position companies very well internationally. Once you have got that experience it really puts you in an incredible position to bid for the next thing going," says Deighton.

Other countries are using London's expertise. All bid cities for the 2016 Olympics and football's World Cup in 2018 have used input from the London team—Mike Lee, former director of communications and public affairs, was part of Rio de Janeiro's winning bid. "Our aim is to achieve precisely that same kind of reputation and opportunity post-2012. We can go around the world and say, 'this is what we did, London was brilliantly successful. How can you afford not to take our advice?' That is the opportunity for business."

Equally, he has taken inspiration from previous host cities. The London team worked with Sydney Olympics organisers. "Australians have been successful doing what I am hoping we will do in taking expertise and exporting it." The whole team, Deighton points out, learned a lot in Beijing from how to cope with 11,000 athletes coming down for breakfast at the same time and managing the seating arrangements down to the nitty gritty of venue lighting.

So how does the challenge compare to life as an investment banker? "I am accustomed to working in a highly intense atmosphere where there are lots of decisions to be made, where it is pressured and where you have to resolve issues quickly and move on," he says. Beyond that there are key differences between the two worlds, especially the amount of public attention and pressure. "When you are an investment banker you think you are at the centre of the world, but what I found when I stepped out of it is that it is a small bubble by comparison and everybody is interested in themselves, but the rest of the world is not that engaged with what you are doing. With the Olympics, it is different because we are engaged in something that everybody is interested in, and I love that."

The downside is that the focus sharpens quickly when things go awry. "If anything goes wrong everybody hears about it at almost the same time as I do and the whole world watches you trying to resolve it whereas in most businesses you get to deal with your issues and resolve them before anybody knows about them," he says.

Deighton doesn't expect an easy ride. There is £100m still to be raised in sponsorship and uncertainty over two venues, but he welcomes the scrutiny. "There will be criticism and that is fine. This is a big thing for the country and people should see what we are doing and we should have the chance to discuss things that people have different views on. There will be debate around transport and ticketing."

But the LOCOG chief has been unfaltering in his belief that London 2012 will be a success and that the Games will invigorate the country and the economy. "Some TV people came to visit and we took them to Greenwich, where the equestrian events are being held, and they were raving about the shots they would get. This is the biggest postcard London is ever going to send to the rest of the world to say 'come here and see what you can enjoy'."