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(Continued from overleaf)
Even less is know about the Al-Fayeds' oil interests. Kleinworts have suggested that the brothers' oil concessions are primarily in the United States. Have the brothers struck oil anywhere? Kleinworts don't know, but they describe the investment as "oil plays."
Research into the brothers' banking interests show they have a five per cent stake in National Bancshares Corporation, based in San Antonio, Texas.
The Al-Fayeds' property interests are more widespread. They include a castle in Scotland, which was purchased for £60,000. They have spent £1 million renovating it, and have developed a game rearing business on the castle's 40,000-acre estate. In addition the brothers own a country house near Oxted in Surrey, which could, Kleinworts suggest, be worth between £1 million and £2 million. They also own a block of flats in Park Lane, and property in the Champs Elysees.
A further key investment is the brothers' share of the Rockefeller
Center in New York. Kleinworts say that the brothers bought this investment before New York rental values boomed and that the property could be worth up to $200 million now.
Other business interests owned by the brothers include a management contract for the Dubai Trade
Center and a management company employing 69 people in London.
Research into the only UK-registered Al-Fayed business interests which have been identified shows that the brothers have been associated with a cluster of companies based at offices at 17 Waterloo Place, London SW1.
The international interests identified above would suggest that the Al-Fayeds are, by any standards, an extremely wealthy family. The wealth is widely spread internationally, which makes identification difficult. It would be reasonable to suppose that there are substantial assets which we have not been able to identify. But the scale of wealth that can be identified, even on the assumptions made by Kleinwort, is of a different order of magnitude from the funds evidently available for the Harrods purchase.
How does Kleinwort explain this? They say that the assets described in the original press release about the brothers are over and above the accumulated family wealth of the Al-Fayeds. Originally Kleinworts said that the Al Fayeds were a long-established wealthy Egyptian family, with wealth accumulated over generations. Later, they explained that the family had had some interests in land and shipping in Alexandria.
Kleinworts has not provided information about the brothers' activities between leaving Alexandria in the 1950s and emerging as 20 per cent stakeholders in Costain 20 years later. But it says that the brothers were introduced by a UK clearing bank which had dealt with them for the previous 10 years, and had provided "impeccable references."
Yet the conundrum remains. Here is a substantial British asset being sold to foreign investors about whom far less information is available than any British public company would be required by law to disclose.
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