Mohamed Al Fayed, the Egyptian-born businessman who owned the department store Harrods, has died aged 94.
His death comes almost 26 years to the day after the car crash in Paris that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997.
Fayed was born in Alexandria and was the son of a schoolteacher. In his homeland, he launched his own shipping business, before becoming an adviser to one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan of Brunei, in 1966.
When he arrived in the UK in the 1970s, he joined the board of the mining conglomerate Lonrho in 1975, but left nine months later. In 1979, with his brother Ali, he bought the Paris Ritz Hotel.
The Fayeds’ next target became Harrods and in 1985, the brothers succeeded in clinching a £615m takeover bid of the store in Knightsbridge. » | Nadeem Badshah | Friday, September 1, 2023
Mohamed Al-Fayed, l'énigmatique milliardaire qui s'est brûlé les ailes au contact des Windsor : Le Figaro dresse le portrait d'un homme mystérieux, aux multiples contradictions, décédé à l’âge de 94 ans ce 1er septembre. »
Mohamed Al Fayed: perennial outsider, savvy businessman and grief-broken father: The larger-than-life ex-Harrods owner, who has died aged 94, was never far from the headlines or controversy but was an indomitably bold figure »
