James Goldsmith

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James Goldsmith (born February 26, 1933 in Paris , † July 18, 1997 in Benahavís , Spain ) was a British - French billionaire who was considered a corporate raider (" grasshopper "). At the end of his life he was active as a politician critical of Europe and from 1994 until his death he was a member of the European Parliament for the Mouvement pour la France .

Life

Goldsmith came from the rich Jewish Goldschmidt family , which has its roots in Germany, mainly Frankfurt am Main . His grandfather Adolph Benedikt Hayum Goldschmidt was co-owner of the Frankfurt bank BH Goldschmidt . In 1895 he emigrated with his son Frank Goldsmith , born as Franck Adolphe Benedict Goldschmidt, from Frankfurt am Main to Paris and then to London . Frank Goldsmith was elected to the British House of Commons in 1910 . His sons were James Goldsmith and the environmentalist Edward Goldsmith .

After leaving Eton College without a degree at age 17, James Goldsmith was a gamer and playboy. He began his business career in the 1950s trading generic drugs . In 1957 he met the banker Selim Zilkha , who lent him money for expansion. With Zilkha he founded the retail chain Mothercare in 1961 . He achieved his breakthrough with the slimming product "Milical".

In the next decades he made many successful investments, such as B. Cavenham Foods , Cavenham Forest Industries and Grand Union . First he bought under his own name, later under that of his company Générale Occidentale .

In 1986, he earned 90 million US dollars in the attempted hostile takeover of Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company .

In 1990 he sold his main business to James Hanson . After he announced his final departure from business life in 1991, he turned to politics. In 1994 he published the book The Trap . He supported Philippe de Villiers in founding his party Mouvement pour la France and founded the Referendum Party in Great Britain in November 1994 . He was elected to the European Parliament in 1994 in France on Villier's Majorité pour l'autre Europe list. There he was chairman of the Eurosceptic Group for Europe of Nations , chairman of the delegation for relations with Canada and a member of the Committee on External Economic Relations.

Goldsmith was married three times and had eight children. His third wife was Lady Annabel Goldsmith (née Vane-Tempest-Stewart, divorced Birley), after whom the exclusive London nightclub Annabel’s is named. The daughter Jemima Goldsmith (* 1974), fashion designer, journalist, film producer and divorced wife of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan came from this marriage ; as well as the sons Zac Goldsmith (* 1975), politician of the Conservative Party , and Ben Goldsmith (* 1980), the financier and environmental activist.

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Individual evidence

  1. Hans Sedlmaier : Companies Hunter: How Raider companies buy, battered, barter . Campus Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3-593-37183-9 , pp. 34-36 .
  2. Stuart Warner: 25 years ago: Driving back the raider at the gates of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. In: cleveland.com. November 27, 2011, accessed July 7, 2015 .
  3. Mark Wegierski: Book Review of “The Trap” by Sir James Goldsmith . The Social Contract Press, Volume 5, Issue 4 (Summer 1995), accessed May 7, 2016.
  4. ^ Sally Bedell Smith: Billionaire with a Cause. In: vanityfair.com. May 1997, accessed July 12, 2015 .
  5. Sadiq Khan is London's new mayor. In: tagesschau.de. Retrieved May 7, 2016 .