Tiny Rowland

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

Roland Walter (Tiny) Rowland, capitalism's outsider, died on July 24th, aged 80

HUNTING around for something not too brutal to say about Tiny Rowland now that he is dead, those who knew him have remarked on his charm. The English language is helpful with the evasive word. So, he was charming, if you like, but was he not ruthless? Yes, comes the response, he could be. What about his private life? A long and happy marriage and a liking for Siamese cats. Was he a crook? Some have said he was. But much that has been written about his life is based on hearsay, has the feeling of myth and is uncheckable. Undoubtedly he cut corners, pushed to the limits of the law, but was not, probably, a crook.

Charming and ruthless men are a theme in British business: not enough of them, some would say. What was it about Mr Rowland that made him loathed by many in the community of commerce, that made him say, defensively, “You can never have enough enemies”?

In a sense he was a born outsider. His father was German, a trader working in British India. In 1917, when the first world war, and British patriotism, was at its height, father and mother were in a fairly disgusting detention camp in Simla. That was the birthplace of Tiny, the affectionate nickname given to the strapping baby and which he kept all his life: “Tiny” was the simple signature on his business letters.

After the war the family settled in Hamburg. Tiny was enrolled, like most German boys, as a member of the Hitler Youth. Although the tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed Tiny looked the perfect example of the master race, it seems unlikely that he had Nazi sympathies. Rather the opposite: in 1939 he was jailed for two months for befriending critics of Hitler. The family was allowed into Britain as refugees, but when war broke out Tiny's parents were again detained, this time in the Isle of Man.

Tiny changed his name from Fuhrhop to Rowland and joined the British army as a medical orderly. He was discharged after disclosing that a brother was in the German army. He got a job first as a porter then as a waiter. When peace came, he worked for a time, as far as is known, as a door to door salesman. This was his rock-bottom start as a businessman.

Into Africa

HFor a young man seeking his fortune after the war, Africa was the place to be. Much of it was still British, and pre-war British at that. Mr Rowland seems to have been welcomed in what was Southern Rhodesia as a fellow white who spoke with a decent upper-class accent. He did well, acquiring a farm, mining interests and the Mercedes dealership (helped by his fluent German). In 1963 he became head of Lonrho, short for the London and Rhodesian Gold Mining Company, a moribund firm he built into a major corporation with annual sales of around $8 billion. At its peak, by the late 1980s, Lonrho was running some 600 companies in 50 countries. It was Africa's largest food producer. Tiny Rowland got on well with Africans. His own humble beginnings may even have given him a rapport with the dispossessed.

It also has to be said that, in furtherance of business, he dispensed generous bribes to leaders of newly independent black countries. Money, he believed, probably correctly, could buy almost anything. Donald Trelford, a former editor of the Observer, a venerable Sunday newspaper that Mr Rowland bought and used as his publicity sheet, wrote this week that he introduced the tycoon to Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess champion. Mr Rowland told him, “If you can introduce me to the man who makes all the decisions about plutonium in Russia, I'll transfer £1m to any bank you nominate.”

Did he mean it? Was there such a plutonium king in Russia? It does not matter. There was a vulgar streak in Tiny Rowland that upset other charming and ruthless tycoons who feared that he was giving money-making a bad name. He had an awesome temper and a waspish way with words. Calling non-executive directors “Christmas tree decorations” was impolite, even if true. His efforts to prise Harrods store from another less-than-popular tycoon, Mohamed al-Fayed, gave entertainment to millions but in the financial establishment was seen as an unseemly public brawl.

The City of London cheered in 1973 when eight directors of Lonrho tried to get rid of Tiny Rowland, saying he was unfit to run a public company. Mr Rowland survived but suffered a body blow when the then Conservative prime minister, Edward Heath, said that his activities were “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. It was Mr Rowland's bad luck that he was the target of one of Sir Edward's few memorable phrases, and one that was continually used against him. Still, it was not personal attacks that scuppered Tiny Rowland, but the judgment of the market. In 1991 Lonrho hit a bad patch. A loan from Colonel Qaddafi of Libya was not much help (and did Tiny much personal harm). In 1995 he was removed from the company by his fellow directors. Had he been younger he might have outwitted the rebels, but at 78 some of the old fire had gone. He went home to play with his cats.