|
(Continued from overleaf)
Some Al-Fayed companies do not quite match up to the grand description. "The loss before taxation," state the 1975 accounts of Tarbat House, Ltd, a property investment company, "has been arrived at after charging interest on bank overdraft of £2 (1974: £26)." Tarbat ceased trading in 1983 after 11 years of losses totalling just £3,415).
More significant is the case of General Navigation and Commerce Company (GN & CC), a principal agency for Al-Fayed shipping interests which the HoF document identifies with five international centres.
GN & CC had a net worth in 1983 of £149,801 and incurred net losses in 1979-83 of £220,130. In addition to being the parent company for a group of "Genavco" subsidiaries, it remains the UK agency for Gilnavia SpA, and Al-Fayed shipping company in Genoa. But Gilvani appears to operate just two vessels owned by the Al-Fayeds -- a third was wrecked in 1982 -- and the brothers' other shipping interests seem to be confined at present to agency work in Piraeus, Alexandria and Dubai.
Above all, however, the offer document hints at the importance of the brothers' family background and their careers in the general world of Middle Eastern money and the oil boom of the 1970s.
Mohamed was born in Egypt on January 27 1933. Nothing is known of his parents and his early life for certain. Mr Leon Carrasso, now a U.S. citizen living in New York, says he sold his three-man shipping agency in Alexandria to him in 1959. "It was a mystery to me what he did," says Mr Carrasso, who claims he met Mohamed's father but that he had no connections with shipping and was "some kind of civil servant."
By then, Mohamed had already worked as a cold drinks company manager for a young Saudi businessman, Adnan Khashoggi. He had lived in Saudi Arabia for a while; but an unfortunate personal clash with the Khashoggi family led to an estrangement and Mohamed went off to find opportunities elsewhere, including Latin America.
In London in 1964, he met Mahdi Al-Tajir, now the UAE ambassador and already then the private adviser of some 10 years standing to Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Rashid. Al-Tajir is understood to have secured a Dubai passport for Mohamed and introduced him to key personalities in the Gulf sheikhdom like Mr Bill Duff, an Englishman in the Ruler's personal office, who first met Mohamed in London in 1966.
With useful contacts of this kind, Mohamed soon won a contract to represent the interests of Costain, the UK construction group, which was naturally eager to participate in Sheikh Rashid's dynamic modernisation of his tiny country.
The Dubai merchants suddenly found a newcomer in smart Western dress in regular attendance at the Ruler's private court. The outcome, for Costain and its representative, was spectacular.
Between 1968 and 1980 -- either alone or in partnership with others Costain received work as the main contractor on projects which the Dubai government values today at Dh 3,845.6m -- equivalent, using a random 1977 exchange rate for simplicity, to about £575m.
What percentage of this Mohamed may have received is unclear. "The amount we paid him was modest," says Mr Terrel Wyatt, Costain's chairman, "and was reasonably geared to the advice he was giving, to his contribution to negotiations and to the specific service he provided."
Informed observers reckon Mohamed could easily have made as much as £20m-£30m from various sources in these years. He bought a castle and a whisky refinery in Scotland and properties in London and Paris. He became a much valued contact in the City -- Lazards and Morgan Grenfell have worked on his behalf as well as Kleinworts, though Lazards broke off one series of discussions with Mohamed last July --and he was widely courted in the international construction industry.
In fact, Mohamed became a stockholder in Costain. Curiously, though, the Costain 1975 report and accounts indicate that he was the beneficial holder of only 1,200 shares. He acted merely as the nominee holder for another 5.02m shares -- representing 20 per cent of Costain and valued on April 30 1976 at just short of £12m -- which were owned by an anonymous beneficiary.
The years since 1967, though, have not all been plain sailing. In the early 1970s he quarrelled with a prominent Dubai merchant and lost a local joint venture. He broke with Al-Tajir around 1978 and was involved in an acrimonious public row with other parties in 1982 when he lost the Dubai agency for the international Barber Blue Sea shipping network.
In the 1980s he business interests have anyway been more conspicuous outside the Gulf. A long and friendly association with Mr "Tiny" Rowland and Lonrho -- since abruptly severed -- led directly to his purchase last October of Lonrho's 29.9 per cent stake in House of Fraser, the basis of the March bid.
Mohamed has extended his circle of associates to include the Sultan of Brunei with his $14 billion of invested reserves -- apparently eclipsing in the process the influence there of his own former employer, Adnan Khashoggi.
There are businessmen in Singapore who believe that Mohamed's influence, too, may be already waning in Brunei. How, if at all, his relations with the Sultan may have been affected by the freshly revealed wealth of the Al-Fayeds is no less of a mystery at present than so much else in the history of this old-established Egyptian family.
|
|
