A successful but aggressive tycoon

His is the classic story of rags-to-riches. From the street-hawker of fizzy drinks on the streets of Alexandria in Egypt he went to own the iconic Harrods departmental store in London in 1985 for $669 million at the time – and sold in 2010 to Qatar Holding for $1.8 billion – and he bought Fulham Football Club in 1997 and sold it in 2013 to businessman Shahid Khan for $300 million. Earlier in 1979 he got the Ritz Hotel in Paris.

In 1990 he sought a British passport but governmental inquiries found irregularities in his dealings. He ranted, “Why won’t grant they grant me a British passport? I won Harrods and employ thousands of people in this country.” Not the one to give in without a fight, he got two Conservative Members of Parliaments (MPs) and a Conservative Minister in trouble when he revealed that he paid cash to the MPs to ask questions on issues concerning him, and he told that the Minister stayed for free in the Ritz in Paris.

There was a time when his son “Dodi” Fayed became close to Princess Diana, and they got killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel in 1997. That ended Fayed’s efforts to get a toehold in the British establishment. He then began to flaunt the conspiracy theory that his son and Diana were killed by the establishment in the British royal family, a claim that the coroner in his inquest had denied as being without basis.

There has been a social revolution in Britain in the 1970s when businessmen from the former British colonies made huge strides in the British business scene. Fayed from Egypt was one of them, but he was aggressive compared to others. While the other Asian tycoons slipped quietly into their roles as pillars of the British establishment, Fayed was loud and assertive. But he remained a prominent businessman in Britain for more than a quarter century before he moved to Switzerland. He invested in Scotland and would say that if Scotland became independent he would become a citizen of Scotland. He did try to cultivate the British royal family by sponsoring the Windsor Horse Show but it did not go further. His son’s friendship with Diana ended tragically.

Fayed remained an insider-outsider of British business. He made his riches in Britain when he moved there in the 1970s. It is a fact that his fortune turned when he married the sister of billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer. But he made good use of the opportunity and made his millions. And he thumbed his nose at the British establishment as he captured Harrods. He was one businessman who had carried out a running battle with the British political establishment and the royal family. After 1997, when the royal family withdrew the privileges it had granted Harrods, Fayed too withdrew the special concessions that the royal family had enjoyed at Harrods.

The irony will remain that it was a love-hate relationship between Fayed and the British establishment. They did not stop him from doing business in Britain and make his millions but they did not accept him as one of them and did not grant him a British passport. Fayed on his part stayed on in Britain and carried on with his lucrative business while continuing to quarrel with the British establishment. It is said that the British are interested only in business and they did not mind Fayed the businessman. Fayed too realised that Britain is the best place to do business. He did not leave Britain and go to another country in anger. His business sense told him to stay on in Britain and he did. But it was a quarrelsome relationship.