Goldsmith, Sir James Michael

▪ 1998

      British-French financier (b. Feb. 26, 1933, Paris, France—d. July 18, 1997, Benahavis, Spain), amassed a fortune by buying and selling companies. Goldsmith's father, Maj. Frank Goldsmith, owned luxury hotels in France and the U.K. and served as a Conservative member of Parliament. Goldsmith was educated at Eton College but left at age 16 after winning a sizable amount of money by betting on horse races. This penchant for gambling became his trademark in later business ventures. After building up a small pharmaceutical company, he acquired food companies in the 1960s to create the conglomerate Cavenham Foods. He was also the founder and chairman of the French company Générale Occidentale from 1969 until he sold out in 1987. Goldsmith was often the target of journalists and filed numerous libel suits against the satirical magazine Private Eye, yet he sought to be a press magnate himself. In the 1970s he briefly owned the news magazine L'Express in France and launched the British magazine NOW!, which failed in less than two years. In the 1980s he was a corporate raider in the U.S., where his bid to control the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in 1986 (deflected by Goodyear, which paid Goldsmith millions of dollars for his shares) was an issue in U.S. congressional hearings on corporate takeovers. He also pulled off the difficult feat of anticipating the October 1987 stock market crash and liquidating most of his assets in time. Although Goldsmith was elected to represent France in the European Parliament in 1994, he had become convinced that federalism in Europe would prove disastrous. In 1995 he established the Referendum Party, with the sole mission of granting the British people the right to vote on their country's relationship with the European Union, but his party failed to win even one seat in the 1997 British election. Goldsmith was knighted by Britain in 1976, and two years later he was made a knight of the French Legion of Honour.

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