Tiny Rowland

Roland T. Rowland (born Roland Walter Fuhrhop , known as Tiny Rowland ; born November 27, 1917 in Belgaum , British India , †  July 25, 1998 in London , Great Britain ) was a British businessman and tycoon of German origin. He made his fortune in the mines of Africa and built up the Lonrho conglomerate , which not only bought up numerous African companies, but also the British newspaper The Observer , and developed under his leadership into one of the largest and most powerful British companies.

An international scandal and years of conflict arose when Tiny Rowland was unable to assert himself against his former friend and business partner Mohamed Al-Fayed at the prestigious London department store Harrods, which was up for sale, and from then on argued with all severity and doggedness about the legality of this business . The feud ruled the rest of his life and devoured vast sums of money; The conflict ended only after Rowland's death when Al-Fayed paid a large sum of money to Rowland's widow.

Origin and youth

Rowland was born Roland Walter Fuhrhop on November 27, 1917 in an Indian internment camp where his family was incarcerated during the First World War . He was the son of the German Wilhelm Friedrich Fuhrhop (1885–1974) and his Dutch wife Muriel Kauenhoven (1883–1945). He had two older siblings, a sister, Phyllis Gretel (1907–1997), and a brother, Raimund Everest (1915–1966).

The mother came from a wealthy Dutch family who had lived in Great Britain for 30 years when she married Hamburg- born Wilhelm Fuhrhop in 1906 , a successful and enterprising trader. The couple moved to India, where Fuhrhop went about its lucrative business until the First World War broke out and the British colonial powers interned them as "enemy aliens". After the war, the family was refused to stay in India and re-entry to Great Britain, so they settled in Fuhrhop's hometown of Hamburg, where Rowland and his siblings grew up. It is probable that he became a member of the Hitler Youth after Hitler came to power in the Third Reich , but it has neither been proven nor confirmed by Rowland.

In 1937, when Rowland was 20 years old, the family managed to regain entry to Britain. Rowland's brother Raimund stayed in Hamburg, where he had meanwhile taken up a job. The rest of the family settled in Hampshire , where Rowland attended Churcher's College near Petersfield .

When Rowland was of legal age, he applied for British citizenship because he did not want to suffer the same difficulties as his parents. Relieved by the fact that he was born in the Indian internment camp on British territory, he received British citizenship in 1939. At the same time he changed his name; According to Richard Hall, "his way of Anglicating himself was strangely half-hearted, downright thoughtless": He took the first letter of his second name and put it in the middle of his first name, which resulted in Roland T. Rowland. His Indian nanny gave him his nickname Tiny - “tiny” - when he was the youngest child, presumably because he was already above average as a child (he was 1.88 m tall as an adult).

In the future he behaved like an Englishman of the upper class, trained the typical accent and dressed accordingly, always emphasized well-groomed, criticized by many as "slick" - a habit that he should keep throughout his life. He did not explicitly deny his German origins, but neither did he cultivate his roots. He also spoke only English to Germans in the future.

After attending college, he was employed by an uncle on his mother's side in his London shipping company. After the outbreak of World War II , he joined the British Army and became a member of the field hospital unit of the Royal Army Medical Corps , where he served three years. He participated in the Allied landings in Norway in 1940. His brother Raimund, however, stayed in Germany and was drafted into the German armed forces. Rowland said he had since broken off contact with him.

During the war, Rowland's parents were interned again as enemy aliens, this time on the Isle of Man . When Rowland got word that his mother was critically ill, he left his unit without permission to visit her. He was then dishonorably released and interned for 27 days himself (“27 days,” he said later, “which felt like 270”). The mother died in the camp shortly before the end of the war in 1945.

Career

Zimbabwe , the former Rhodesia

The location of Rhodesia on the African continent

In the post-war years, Rowland first worked for a private car rental company operated by his Scottish friend Eric Richard Smith in London. It was he who made Rowland go to Rhodesia , now Zimbabwe , in 1948 to work on his ranch, Luton Farm, near Gwelo (now Gweru ). Rowland saw the economic opportunities that Rhodesia had to offer at the time and immediately began to make friends and socialize. The friendship and collaboration with Smith fell apart when the affair between Rowland and his friend's wife, Irene Smith, became known.

Rowland acquired a gold mine near Kanyemba , which he incorporated into a public company and exploited. After four years it had to be shut down, and Rowland, together with a new Hungarian business partner, turned to the import of European motor vehicles, especially Mercedes-Benz . At the same time he developed the idea of ​​building an oil pipeline to Beira , Mozambique's port, in order to alleviate Rhodesia's dependence on South Africa - an idea that he was able to present to many politicians, investors and business people, but which he ultimately realized himself in the 1960s.

By the end of the 1950s, Rowland had a large number of first-class contacts in Africa and the United Kingdom, had amassed a small fortune and acquired a representative farm in Gatooma . It quickly became a local legend when the wife of his former friend, who was the landlady, organized "lavish parties" for him in his feudal house there.

In the course of his business he had also met Angus Ogilvy , who in 1963 became a member of the British royal family through his marriage to Princess Alexandra of Kent , a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II . He had also come into contact with the Rio Tinto Group , which was just about to buy the respectable but now run-down London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company (Lonrho) , founded in 1909 , where he was offered a position. Despite his “unconventional background and his difficulties with the British establishment”, Rowland soon found himself in the position of managing director (executive board member) of a British-controlled company in the highest social circles.

London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company

It was Ogilvy who recruited Rowland for the Lon don and Rho desian Mining and Land Company (Lonrho, now Lonmin ) in 1961 . He was convinced that the 44-year-old would be able to clean up society, and Rowland, for his part, was ready for the great challenge. He freed up as much money as possible and took a 48 percent stake in Lonrho, a then medium-sized, unprofitable cattle ranch and mining company, which he transformed into a multi-million dollar international conglomerate within a few years . The company expanded by leaps and bounds under his leadership and bought a number of troubled companies from all possible industries, such as gold and platinum mines, companies in the textile, agricultural and food industries and other branches of business in more than 20 African countries, but also newspapers, hotels and real estate in Europe and the United States.

At its peak, the Rowlands Conglomerate ran 800 companies in nearly every industry, making profits of £ 270 million annually in the 1980s.

He benefited from his ability to approach people and to make personal contacts quickly, and especially on the African continent he quickly counted among his friends those people who later took on political or entrepreneurial leadership positions. He was just as friendly with right-wing authorities as with socialist revolutionaries; he was a confidante of Malawi's Hastings Banda , Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda , Kenya's Daniel arap Moi and Zaïres Mobutu Sese Seko . These influential alliances, which he used for his business plans, enabled Rowland to quickly establish a tangle of hundreds of individually operating companies under the Lonrho umbrella.

However, Lonrho PLC also enjoyed a dubious reputation among UK companies as an unscrupulous company when it came to pursuing business interests. This company policy was largely attributed to Tiny Rowland. “Rowland mastered the art of deception and intrigue like no other. He knew how to turn the small 'colonial general store' Lonrho into one of the most powerful mining and trading companies in the British Empire. Without question, he was in a position to wipe out valuable mining rights from an African tribal chief for a few glass beads and to make him believe that he had made a good deal. However, I distance myself from calling Rowland a crook because I cannot hide a certain sympathy and respect for this man's achievements (the term rascal would be more appropriate). ”This bad reputation also denied him the recognition of the British establishment that he had always striven for. It was always made more or less clear to him that he was “not one of them”, but “only” an outsider.

As one of his first acts in his new position as managing director of Lonrho, Rowland had bought the rights to an oil pipeline to Beira in the then Portuguese colony of Mozambique . Control of this pipeline was considered invaluable to Rhodesia, which did not have its own access to the sea; but when Ian Smith declared Rhodesia's independence in 1965, British economic sanctions forced Rowland to close the pipeline - which Rowland apparently did.

When a group of Lonrho directors (including his previous friend Sir Angus Ogilvy) tried to oust Rowland in the early 1970s, one of the questions raised by this group was whether Rowland had really complied with British guidelines and sanctions at the time. This sparked a high public interest investigation in the UK, which Rowland in turn responded to by legal action. In 1973 the British government submitted a 600-page investigation report which basically absolved the company and Rowland with regard to the sanctions required, but prompted the then British Prime Minister Edward Heath to make the legendary remark addressed to the company that it was “ the unacceptable face of capitalism ”(“ the unacceptable face of capitalism ”), a description with which Rowland himself was subsequently labeled, which he accepted, he answered the accusation with the fact that he did not want to be an acceptable face of capitalism. In 1976 Rowland was also able to counter the fact that Great Britain itself had violated the sanctions against Rhodesia through its joint ownership of BP . This led to further mutual allegations, but Rowland was now more firmly attached to his post with Lonrho than before.

The Observer

In 1983 Rowland bought one of Britain's largest Sunday newspapers, the Observer , on behalf of Lonrho , and immediately used it as a mouthpiece for himself and his activities at Lonrho. He had always been convinced that newspapers were extremely important - if only to impress politicians with them. He already owned a number of South African newspapers himself. In 1981 he became aware of the Observer , which had been sold six years earlier by David Astor to the Atlantic Richfield Company of the American oil tycoon Robert Anderson.

The Observer purchase was complemented by 23 UK provincial newspapers which further increased the power and influence of the Lonrho.

Rowland had remained an outsider in the British establishment despite his best efforts, even though he always wanted to win their respect. By buying the widely used newspaper, he was able to influence society. Soon, in fact, the Observer was considered to be Rowland's direct mouthpiece, with whom he could represent and sell his own interests and those of Lonrho at will. In particular in the affair of the purchase of the Harrods department store , the paper was accused of tendentious reporting.

Harrods

Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London

As undeterred as buying influential newspapers, Rowland bought House of Fraser PLC in Great Britain , a group of companies that operates around 60 retail stores on the island and whose flagship was the legendary Harrods department store in Knightsbridge , London - at that time still the official purveyor to the British royal family - depicted. His purchase attempts had been repulsed several times in the past by the British government for technical reasons. In the mid-1980s, when he held 29.9 percent of the company's shares, he wanted to try again.

Fearing, rightly, that a renewed confrontation with the British government would reduce the value of his block of shares, he sold it to an Egyptian businessman named Mohamed Al-Fayed , whom he believed would not only interest him but also the financial means were lacking to consider buying the company himself and, even if he did, he would certainly have more difficulties than he would with the approval of the business by the British government. Rowland was mistaken in these assumptions. In March 1985, the British government approved the takeover of House of Fraser by Al-Fayed, who in turn quickly received the required $ 900 million from Hassan al-Bolkiah , Sultan of Brunei , in an unusually quick decision .

Never averse to his own conspiracies and intrigues, Rowland was deeply struck to have fallen victim to one of these himself and to have even helped out by giving Al-Fayed his own block of shares. Rowland tried by all means to sabotage the deal and began a feud with Al-Fayed that would last his life and cost him an estimated £ 20 million.

Feud with Al-Fayed

Rowland used all his strength and connections in this dispute. He used contacts with political leaders to force the Ministry of Economic Affairs to investigate the details of Al-Fayed's takeover. Although the relevant report was never published, Rowland managed to obtain a copy. On a Thursday he brought out a special edition of the Sunday newspaper The Observer with the details: The investigative commission had come to the conclusion in 1990 that the Fayed brothers had lied about their origins and their financial situation and had concealed their financial situation. Nevertheless, nothing changed in terms of ownership.

Rowland made other serious allegations. Now he accused Al-Fayed or his employees of breaking into a deposit box at Harrods and stealing jewels from it. Al-Fayed was arrested on March 2, 1998, interrogated on the allegations, and then conditionally released.

In 1993, a public meeting between the rivals seemed to herald the end of the argument; shortly thereafter, however, new conflicts broke out. The quarrel really ended only after Rowland's death. On the grounds that the theft happened during his time as Harrods chairman, Al-Fayed paid the widow 1.4 million pounds sterling - without admission of guilt.

The dispute between Rowland and Al-Fayed also affected Lonrho, which has now grown to a six billion company with more than 125,000 employees around the globe. The company's position as the world's largest passenger car distributor for Rolls-Royce , VW , Audi , Mercedes-Benz and French , Japanese and American cars in Great Britain, Europe and Africa, third largest platinum producer, major gold producer, Africa’s leading food producer and owner of 1 , 5 million square kilometers of land and 125,000 cattle was in direct danger.

At the same time, the conglomerate - in its function as a mining company - experienced a massive drop in the price of precious metals. Within a single year - 1990/91 - the price of rhodium fell in half, from $ 4,200 to $ 2,100 an ounce . Since 36 percent of the conglomerate's profits came from mining, despite the large number of its other operations, it experienced high losses as a result - combined with an increasing lack of investor confidence due to the endless feud between the two adversaries. The company's revenues fell from £ 273 million in 1990 to £ 79 million in 1992, and liabilities quickly approached the billion mark.

Furthermore, in December 1991 a rumor that Tiny Rowland had had a fatal accident in a plane crash caused Lonrho shares to fall from 2.20 to 1.60 British pounds within three days, from which the company was unable to recover.

Rowland initially tried an alliance with Australian entrepreneur Alan Bond . But when Bond dared to even hint at a takeover, Rowland turned against him. Bond lost 60 million and went bankrupt. Rowland then entered into a highly controversial and ultimately unsuccessful alliance with Muammar al-Gaddafi , the head of state of Libya , to whom he sold hotel shares.

Dieter Bock

At this point Dieter Bock came into play, a trained lawyer and tax advisor who had focused on real estate transactions of all kinds, but was only moderately known and without international experience and who, as he later said, discovered Lonrho "quite by accident" while he researched leading companies in the 1980s. At the end of 1992 it was surprisingly announced that Bock would hold Lonrho's largest block of shares from January 1993 and would share the chairmanship of the board with Rowland.

While Rowland continued undeterred to his campaign against Al-Fayed, Bock quickly became active. He described this Rowland feud as an extremely damaging attack on the company's finances and at the same time called for a rejuvenation of the board of directors, in which several members were well beyond retirement age and received similarly substantial pensions in addition to their considerable salaries. Bock was also not afraid to criticize Rowland's earnings and business expenses. He also openly discussed that Rowland should give up his board membership, which he finally achieved in November 1994. Then in 1997 he sold his share in the company to South Africa in the manner of an early grasshopper for a huge profit and left Lonrho while Rowland was still alive. "I will pursue him until the end of his days," Rowland is said to have vowed.

In 1997 Manager Magazin put Dieter Bock, described by the FAZ (January 8, 1999) as a “modestly dressed, extremely inconspicuous, reserved man” in the list of the richest Germans at 650 million euros. He died on Ascension Day 2010 from a wrongly swallowed bite in the Hotel Atlantic in Hamburg.

Private life

Despite his business success, Rowland was at most tolerated, never really accepted, by the British upper class. He always tried to keep his private life out of the public eye. Only a few photos of him were published throughout his life and none showing him with his lover Irene Smith or later with his wife Josie and the children.

Rowland married in 1968 the twenty years younger Josie (Josephine) Taylor, the daughter of a Rhodesian farmer friend (Lionel Taylor), whose godfather he was and for whom he left Irene Smith. The connection with Smith remained childless, with Taylor he has four children, son Toby (* 1970) and daughters Anda, Louis and Victoria.

Rowland is described as a person who "never forgot a friend and never forgave an enemy". Richard Hall also wrote:

“Rowland sees life as a contest in which opponents may have to be kneed in the groin now and then. [...] He also had a strong devious and manipulative streak. His character was well summed up in a Department of Trade Inquiry which concluded that he had 'vision, negotiating ability, determination and personality in unusual measure with unbounded energy to apply his talents'. But he was also a 'dominating personality, an able negotiator with a record of success, and if he does not want to discuss a particular topic he has an infinite capacity to talk around the subject.' ”

“Rowland sees life as a competition in which competitors should have their knees rammed into their hearts every now and then [...] He could be devious and manipulative. His character was well described in an inquiry from the Department of Commerce that stated that he had 'visionary, mediating qualities, determination and personality to an unusual degree with unbridled energy to use his talents', but also that he was' a dominant personality, a capable negotiator with a high success rate who, if he is unwilling to discuss a particular topic, has unlimited capacity to talk the topic around '. "

Rowland died of skin cancer on July 25, 1998 at the age of 80 in a private clinic in London . His estate was estimated at £ 150 million, which his wife Josie and children inherited.

Awards

The lack of acceptance of his person in British high society meant that Rowland never received an Order of Merit from the United Kingdom.

However, in 1996 he received the Order of Good Hope , the highest honor in the country, from the hand of South African President Nelson Mandela . “He made a huge contribution, not just to South Africa, but to the entire continent. We will remember him as a loyal friend in the fight against apartheid , ”said Mandela on the occasion of his death.

Trivia

In the 1970s, the satirical magazine Private Eye rediscovered Rowland's nickname Tiny and in the future liked to refer to him as tiny but perfect (something like : "small, but oho"), which was not an allusion to Rowland's ultimately rather large stature, but to the fact that he always appeared "as if peeled from the egg".

The documentation The Mayfair Set of Adam Curtis Rowland is portrayed as a ruthless businessman who is jetting across Africa to buy up to British companies in former colonies.

He is said as a model for the role of the British businessman Sir Edward Matherson in the film The Wild Geese ( The Wild Geese ) in 1978 have served.

Remarks

1. ^ Genealogy Christiansen-Fuhrhop
2. ↑ “ […] the way of anglicising himself was oddly half-hearted - almost flippant: he took the initial of his second name, and dropped it into the middle of his first name, emerging as Roland T. Rowland (he had first been called Tiny by his Indian nurse and the nickname stuck although he grew to an impressive 6ft 2in). "( Richard Hall : My Life With Tiny )
3. ↑ “ 'Twenty seven days', he said later, 'it seemed like 270' ” ( The London Independent . Article of July 27, 1998)
4. ^ Eir Investigative Team: Tiny Rowland: The Ugly Face of Neocolonialism in Africa . P. 73.
5. ↑ FundingUniverse.com: Lonmin plc., Company History
6. ↑ Not so dark continent . In: The Spectator . March 31, 2007.
7. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . P. 231.
8. ↑ Alex Vines: Tiny Rowland, Financial Incentives and the Mozambican Settlement . In a translation from Radiobridge.com
9. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . P. 234.
10. ↑ WEEKEND WORLD: LONRHO . A film about the conduct of business of the company and of Tiny Rowland and Gerald Percy and Sir Basil Smallpiece von Cunard, broadcast on April 3, 1973, BFI entry
11. ↑ BBC: Tiny Rowland - African giant . July 26, 1998
12. ↑ FundingUniverse.com: Lonmin plc., Company History
13. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . P. 14
14. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . P. 186.
15. ↑ Tom Bower: Tiny Rowland: A Rebel Tycoon . P. 14.
16. ^ The Economist . December 1991.
17. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny. P. 188.
18. ↑ Der Spiegel 14/2007.
19. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . P. 43
20. ^ Richard Hall: My Life with Tiny . Pp. 43/44
21. ^ Sunday Times Rich List
22. ↑ “ 'He made an enormous contribution, not only to South Africa, but to the whole of Africa,' said South Africa's President Nelson Mandela. 'We will remember him as a long-standing friend in the struggle against apartheid.' ”( BBC : Tiny Rowland - African giant )

literature

• Richard Hall: My Life With Tiny: A Biography of Tiny Rowland . Faber and Faber, 1988, ISBN 0-571-14737-2 (English).
• Tom Bower: Tiny Rowland: A Rebel Tycoon . Mandarin, 1994, ISBN 0-7493-1433-8 (English).
• Eir Investigative Team: Tiny Rowland: The Ugly Face of Neocolonialism in Africa . Executive Intelligence Review, 1993, ISBN 0-943235-08-1 (English).

Literature for background information:

• Suzanne Cronje, Margaret Laing, Gillian Cronje: The Lonrho Connections: A Multinational and Its Politics in Africa . Bellwether Books, 1977, ISBN 0-89475-000-3 (English).
• Suzanne Cronje, Margaret Laing, Gillian Cronje: Lonrho. Portrait of a Multi-National . In: Journal of Peace Research . Vol. 14, No. 4 , 1977, pp. 328-329 (English).
• Charles D. Ellis et al .: Wall Street People . Wiley & Sons, 2001, ISBN 0-471-23809-0 , pp. 128-133 (English).

Web links

• Obituary the BBC of 27 July 1998 (English)
• Answers.com: Lonmin Plc (English)
• Origin, genealogical page of the Christiansen-Fuhrhop family
• Image by Tiny Rowland (book cover)
• Die ZEIT: Tiny's revenge
• Die ZEIT: Tiny’s sad departure
• BBC July 26, 1998: Tiny in name, not in nature BBC: Tiny in name, not in nature (English)
• The London Independent: Obituary: Tiny Rowland (English)

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on July 13, 2007 .