When Bill Lynch, CEO of South Africa's Imperial Holdings, received the 2006 Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in Monte Carlo last week, he was almost lost for words, choking with emotion. Understandable, for two reasons.

One, for Lynch, it was as much a recognition of his achievements as it was of his early days of struggle from the days when he began work in a garage in rural Ireland with just a village school education.

Second, it was a close finish with Lynch just about making it to the top slot. Others in the reckoning reportedly included India's Kumar Mangalam Birla and Germany's C Anton Milner and Reiner Lemoine of Q-Cells AG.

It is a classical story of an entrepreneur who started small and built the business inch by inch.

Lynch built Imperial into South Africa's largest transport and mobility conglomerate after arriving there in 1971 with almost nothing.

Today, Imperial Holdings has annual revenues of �6.5 billion across seven synergistic divisions (integrated logistics solutions; fleet management; vehicle and forklift leasing; aviation operations, sales and leasing; car rental and tourism; motor vehicle importation, sales and after-sales services; and related financial services) and employs 36,000 people on three continents.

No wonder Ernst & Young Chairman and CEO James S Turley said, "Bill's story is a classic one: he started from humble origins and through hard work and smart diversification built a multi-billion dollar international business."

Quite. At age 27, Lynch came to South Africa with his wife Ann, �2,000, no job and few prospects during a worsening recession.

He joined Imperial Motors, a car dealership which was losing euro12,345 a year. Lynch led a turnaround, applying disciplines of a manager raised in poverty.

In 1973, opportunity knocked on his door, and his entrepreneurial spirit came to the fore.

In a dramatic move, Lynch gathered the nerve to acquire 10 per cent of Imperial - preferring to take a risk and buy a higher 10 per cent stake rather than accept 5 per cent free. He then led a diversification strategy for the group - into truck hire, logistics, car rental and leasing. It was a bold strategy by any reckoning.

Along the way, he also helped build value for the company. Imperial listed in 1987 at 9 cents a share versus euro21 today.

Through the years, he transformed the core Toyota dealership into a multibrand network. In 1990, Lynch became Imperial's executive chairman. It's been a story of continued growth since then.

Chairman of the nine-member independent judging panel, Sunil Bharti Mittal said, "Bill is the epitome of an entrepreneur - he started with nothing, but he grew an amazing business over 30 years, and today makes a huge positive impact in South Africa. He does that not only through the jobs he creates but also through the training, education and other community support Imperial provides."

Mittal also added that choosing the winner this year was a "very tough decision". A close contender was 39-year old Kumar Mangalam Birla of India's own Aditya Birla group.

His strong points were the scale of operations that he was managing (group turnover: $8 billion) and that he transformed the group in the last 10 years at a relatively young age into a global scale conglomerate under trying circumstances.