Rowland, Roland Walter

▪ 1999

      British business tycoon (b. Nov. 27, 1917, Belgaum, India—d. July 24, 1998, London, Eng.), was labeled "the unacceptable face of capitalism" by British Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1972, owing to his flamboyance and aggressive business practices. To other observers it seemed that in his 33 years as head of the Lonrho international conglomerate, the charming but contentious Rowland enjoyed making enemies as much as making money. Roland Fuhrhop was born to a German father and Dutch-Anglo mother in a British internment camp in India during World War I and was thus guaranteed British citizenship. The family moved to England from Hamburg, Ger., in 1934, and during World War II Rowland (who by then had taken his uncle's surname) joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. He refused an officer's commission, reportedly out of reluctance to fight against his brother, who had enlisted in the German Army. Rowland later joined his parents in a British internment camp. After the war Rowland, disillusioned with Britain, moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and in 1961 took control of the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company (Lonrho). Although Rowland led Lonrho to its greatest strength in the 1960s, not all his financial dreams for Africa were realized, and in the early '70s he faced a series of boardroom battles to have him ousted from the company. In 1981 he bought the British newspaper The Observer, often using it as a bully pulpit in his long feud with his Egyptian-born rival, Mohammed al-Fayed, over ownership of Harrods department store, which Fayed purchased in 1985. Meanwhile, Lonrho spun increasingly out of Rowland's control, and in 1995 he retired after he was removed as its head.

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