♥ TYCOON ~ THE LIFE OF JAMES GOLDSMITH ~ G. Wansell...♥

TYCOON

Geoffrey  Wansell

THE LIFE OF JAMES GOLDSMITH

Sir James Goldsmith, a flamboyant British-French financier who maintained three families, homes in four countries and used his billions to fight the European Union. Sir James, who had battled pancreatic cancer for four years, died of a heart attack at his house in Spain. Sir James made his fortune as a highly successful corporate raider before turning to politics. He formed his own Referendum Party in Britain with the single mission of combatting further European integration while maintaining a seat from France in the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Although his party polled over 800,000 votes in the British elections in May, it did not win a single seat in the House of Commons. Born into a prosperous banking family, Sir James went on to amass a personal fortune estimated at up to $2.5 billion. Having frequented luxurious hotels in his youth, he briefly flirted with the idea of working in one, but soon turned to finance, excelling in the art of taking over troubled companies. He was a brilliant investor of his profits too and accurately forecast the American stock market crash of 1987, turning his assets into cash just before the market plunged. ''I am, if you like, a Cassandra,'' he once said. ''I have always looked at the downside because the upside looks after itself.'' His personal life was no less eventful. He had children by several women, and openly maintained three families. He had homes in London, Paris, Bordeaux, France, Spain and an 18,000-acre estate on the Pacific coast of Mexico. In a typical week, he might spend the weekend with his former wife, Ginette, a French woman who lives with the couple's two children in Paris. During the week he might be found with his British spouse, Lady Annabel Birley, who was at his bedside when he died and who bore him three children, in London. A third companion, Laura Bouley de la Meurthe, a French journalist, has two children by Sir James. James Michael Goldsmith was born on Feb. 26, 1933 in Paris to a Catholic French mother and a German Jewish father who moved to Britain and served as a Conservative Member of Parliament. He attended Eton, but left to start his business career in his late teens as a salesman of electrical plugs and pharmaceutical products in France. A tall man with striking blue eyes, Sir James, who had duel British-French nationality, eloped at 20 with Isabel Patino, daughter of a Bolivian tin mining magnate and married her despite fierce opposition from her family. The episode ended tragically when she died in childbirth months later, though the baby was saved. During his second marriage, to Ginette Lery, Sir James openly kept an aristocratic mistress in London, Lady Annabel Vane Tempest Stewart, marrying her after his marriage to Ms. Lery was dissolved. But by the 1990's, there was already a third woman in his life, Ms. de la Meurthe, with whom he shared his estate in Mexico and his home in Paris. In the 1960's, he branched into food products and acquired companies like Bovril, and his Cavenham Food group, which included cookies, chocolate and jams, eventually became the third-largest in the world. By the start of the 1970's he had the put together a war chest of money to start the beginning of his take-overs, identifying weak firms and dismembering them into more saleable assets. He was known for buying into companies, then selling the stock quickly and reaping the profits. He once said his motto was, ''If you see a bandwagon, it's too late.'' In the United States, he was best known for his 1986 raid on the Goodyear Tyre and Rubber Company, which became an issue in Congressional hearings on takeovers. As Sir James's fame rose, he became a frequent target of Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, which referred to him as ''' Sir Jams.'' He filed 63 suits against the publication. But his attempts to occupy a position in the world of newspaper publishing never panned out. Although he built up a big stake in Britain's Express Newspapers in the 1970's, he could not take control. His ventures into British politics were no more successful. In the British elections in May, Sir James took only 1,500 votes in the London constituency of Putney. But his determination was such he spent some $37 million to put up more than 500 candidates in the election with the sole aim of forcing a referendum on Britain's future in the European Union, which he viewed as a German-dominated threat to Britain's sovereignty. Britons will remember him in his last public appearance on election night when he broke into a chant of ''Out! Out!'' against the defeated Conservative candidate after the election result was announced. He was knighted by Britain in 1976 and made a knight of the Legion of Honor by France in 1978. c&d

 

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