A tale of two assets and their owner

What an interest-ing time to be Moham-med Al Fayed. He has finally divested himself of his flagship asset, the world-famous Harrods store in London's Knightsbridge. All for a handsome price of £1.5 billion (Dh8bn) or so.

On top of that, his "hobby" asset, Fulham Football Club of the English Premier League, has also hit the headlines. Fulham have managed to reach the final of European football's second-tier competition, the Europa League.

The cultural and financial histories of these two pieces of Al Fayed's business empire make for a compelling study in commercial and social contrast.

I was a cub reporter at The Independent in London a quarter of a century ago when Harrods was the subject of a bitter acquisition battle between Al Fayed and Tony Rowlands. Rowlands owned The Observer newspaper at the time, and produced a special edition of the paper after a High Court ruling in his favour. It was, basically, a pamphlet denouncing Al Fayed. An injunction quickly suppressed its further publication – but the special distribution to the newsrooms of major UK papers had done the trick. Rowlands lost the battle for Harrods, which was acquired by his rival for £615 million. But considerable damage had been done to Al Fayed's reputation in the eyes of some commentators.

It is widely reported that Al Fayed has applied several times for British citizenship, and that a UK passport has been refused him by several administrations. That special edition of The Observer at the time of the Harrods acquisition battle (I still have a copy of the original somewhere among my papers) cannot have done anything to help Al Fayed's cause.

Resident in Switzerland for long periods, Al Fayed has distanced himself from a British establishment that appears unwilling to accept him. I have a broadly neutral-to-positive view of the former Harrods owner. His social manner can be abrasive, but that ought not to distract attention from the fact that he has succeeded in driving his businesses forward with considerable vigour and no little skill. The fact that the UK establishment has acted to deny this man, who has generated much wealth and created employment for many UK citizens, reflects badly on the entrenched snobberies of certain elements of British society. To me, at least, the whole sorry episode sends no negative message about Al Fayed, just his detractors.

The story of another cherished asset, Fulham Football Club, is altogether more positive. This was acquired over a decade ago when Fulham was languishing in the lower echelons of the English football leagues. Fulham is renowned for its restaurants, its town houses and its avid love of consumerism rather than football. In short, at the time of Al Fayed's acquisition of the club, if you followed the crowds in Fulham on a Saturday afternoon, you were more likely to end in Sainsbury's supermarket than the Craven Cottage football stadium.

While the club still has a relatively modest fan base (a fraction of the support enjoyed by local rivals and newly crowned Premier League champions, Chelsea) the club has enjoyed unprecedented success on the football field. The achievement of getting Fulham to the final of Europe's second competition, the Europa League, has brought the football manager, Roy Hodgson, the award of manager of the year. The club sold out its 10,000-plus allocation of match tickets in a single day, and there is an attitude of euphoria surrounding the place.

This general happiness extends to Al Fayed himself. The club's owner injected funds into the club, oversaw its rise to the top flight of English domestic competition, and regularly parades in a black and white scarf on the Fulham pitch. He is lauded to the skies and generally regarded with great affection by the Fulham faithful.

There are complex business and social truths underlying this tale of two assets. Al Fayed's purchase of Harrods was seen as a direct assault on the British establishment. Harrods, after all, is where the elite like to shop. By buying the store, Al Fayed forced people to deal with him. They did – but, I would suggest, at a heavy social cost to the owner.

The acquisition of Fulham FC, on the other hand, shows the effectiveness of an indirect route to finding a place in the heart of the average Brit. Fulham represents a charmingly idiosyncratic part of the sporting and socio-cultural landscape of the UK. By buying an underdog and making it powerful, Al Fayed won the hearts of the club's supporters, and slowly progressed towards popularity.

Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch multi-billionaire, seems to have understood this when he purchased Chelsea FC and created today's highly successful team. When Abramovich made his move, the oligarchs were being brought into line by the then Russian president, Putin. The acquisition of the club was, I suspect, a social and political hedge against the risk of being attacked and imprisoned in Russia.

Any attempt to deal with Abramovich in the same way as other oligarchs would cause an outcry. He has spent lots of money, but it may well be that Chelsea will win the domestic league and cup competition double. As the generator of such success, Abramovich is, literally, unimpeachable. If he ever did run into trouble in Russia, you can be sure that a swift and effective campaign would be launched to bring about the thing that Al Fayed allegedly used to crave – British citizenship.

That said, I wonder what all the fuss is about. The fine, democratic societal model that Brits have been so smug about for so long doesn't look so clever after our general election, does it?

- The writer is a journalist, author and commentator on international business affairs

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