In Business | Bitter rivalries can goad firms to greatness
Famous feuds in the business world, aside from making good headlines, can drive good corporate outcomes when outsized egos push boundaries
Bitter personal rivalries are hardly unknown in the business world, and they are found at every level, from fiercely competing family stores to massive conglomerates.
Business schools tend not to have this sort of stuff on their curriculums, though their "experts" may solemnly pronounce on the wasteful nature of bitter personal business rivalries. But are they right?
The jewel in the crown was Harrods, and Rowland and al-Fayed were keen to own it
I have to admit that musing on this matter was brought on by a burst of nostalgia when reading about the imminent takeover of the House of Fraser, the British retailer, by Yuan Yafei's mainland-based Sanpower group.
Yet again, a controversial high-profile buyer is seeking to buy this iconic retailer, a former owner of the Harrods department store. It is highly unlikely that Yuan's attempt to buy the British retailer will be anything like as bitter or as lively as Roland Rowland's Lonrho group's battle to acquire the House of Fraser in the early 1980s.
In 1981, Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission blocked Rowland from getting his hands on the retailer, but - much to everyone's surprise - it gave the green light to his purchase of , a newspaper that I joined in the same year, working on the business desk.
The very tall Rowland, better known as "Tiny", was a controversial character. His methods had famously been described in 1973 as "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism" by the then British prime minister Edward Heath. After Tiny's takeover was blocked, he embarked on a remorseless campaign in to blacken the names of his enemies, especially Mohammed al-Fayed, a former ally who snatched the House of Fraser from Lonrho by methods that fell short of the rules of cricket.
