Owner of Fulham FC
Mohammed Fayed (the Al comes later) was born to an Arabic professor in Alexandria, Egypt. After selling drinks on the street, working as a sewing machine salesman and trying to follow in his father’s footsteps teaching, his lucky break came with his marriage to Samira Khashoggi, who’s brother happened to be an international arms dealer.
Adnan Khashoggi, his brother-in-law, gave him a job in Saudi Arabia at one of his import companies. Fayed worked his way up to setting up shipping company Genavco, before becoming mates with Sheikh Rashid Al Makhtoum, the ruler of Dubai. He helped Makhtoum turn Dubai from a dusty backwater to the trade centre it is today, bringing in finance from abroad.
He then spruced up the Ritz Hotel in Paris spending around £250k on every suite and was thanked for it by the French government. Then President François Mitterand made him a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur. In 1984 he bought a 30% stake in the House of Fraser group, which owned swanky London department store Harrods. The shareholding had been built up by R.W. Tiny Rowlands. A year after buying their stake Fayed and his brothers put an offer on the table for the remaining 70% expecting Tiny to reply. But no reply came and Fayed walked off with the House of Fraser and began a bitter, public feud with Rowland – placing a shark with the name Tiny above the fish counter in Harrods (this was symbolically lowered when the two made peace). Rowland accused Fayed of stealing jewels from a Harrods safe deposit box and took Fayed to a Department of Trade inquiry over the affair.
After paying various MPs to defend his side of the case, Fayed provided evidence in the Cash for Questions affair leading to the sacking of Neil Hamilton and imprisonment of Jonathan Aitken – and he wonders why that government didn’t give him a British passport.
He has made himself notorious by being outspoken about the death of Princess Diana and his son Dodi, which he feels was murder - a move that has caused Harrods to lose its royal warrants.
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