Tiny Rowland
| Tiny Rowland | |
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| Born | 27 November 1917 Calcutta, Bengal, India |
| Died | 25 July 1998 London, England |
| Residence | Mainly London, England |
| Occupation | Businessman, takeover specialist |
| Known for | Corporate raider |
| Relatives | Plum Sykes |
Roland "Tiny" Rowland (1917-1998) was a controversial high-profile British businessman, corporate raider and Chief Executive of the Lonrho conglomerate from 1962 to 1994. He gained fame from a number of high-profile takeover bids, in particular his bid to take control of Harrods. He was known for his complex business interests in Africa, his closeness to a number of African leaders and for his rumoured cooperation with MI6 as it pertained to post-colonial British foreign policy in Africa.
Roland was born Roland Walter Fuhrhop on 27 November 1917 during World War I in a British internment camp for aliens outside Calcutta, India. His mother was Anglo-Dutch and his father Wilhelm Fuhrhop was a German export-import trader in Calcutta. Having been born in British India, Roland acquired automatic British citizenship by the custom of jus soli. But his parents remained "enemy aliens" for the duration of the First World War, and after the war the Fuhrhops were refused entry in to the United Kingdom. They settled in Hamburg, Germany. He was said to have been nicknamed "Tiny" by his mother because of his large size. In the 1930s, he was briefly sucked into the Hitler Youth, though his father was firmly opposed to Hitler, and would move his family to Britain in 1937 to escape Nazi Germany. Roland himself had been sent away to Britain earlier where he attended a minor public school in Hampshire, where he acquired an upper-class British accent and mannerisms.
His father moved the family to the United Kingdom in 1937, where his son had already been sent earlier to attend Churcher's College, Hampshire.
Rowland then worked for his uncle's shipping business in the City of London. He took his uncle's surname, Rowland, on his 22nd birthday. On the outbreak of World War II, he was conscripted into the British Army, where he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps. As enemy aliens, his parents were interned on the Isle of Man, where his mother died. He himself was interned as an enemy alien after trying to arrange for the release of his father.
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