They’ve been removed now, but there used to be the ironic words from Ozymandias – a poem about a man who thought he was very powerful, but whose empire crumbled away to nothing – painted on the ceiling of Harrods, just over the tasteful ancient Egypt-themed escalator shaft.
“Look on my works ye mighty, and despair,” it said, and I used to imagine it was a joke by the interior designer at the expense of the store’s owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, who probably thought the words had a ring to them, unaware they are literature’s most famous rebuttal of human ego, pomposity and financial wealth. Anyway, someone must have told him what they mean, because they weren’t there last time I visited, although the stunning statue built to commemorate the death of Dodi Al Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales, complete with Dodi releasing a dove, still stands.
Al Fayed is loathed by the British establishment – the government refuses to give him a passport, despite owning the most famous British shop in the world, and a Premiership football team – and it is highly likely he is not much more popular in the Gulf these days, not in Kuwait, not in Saudi, and certainly not in Qatar. He says he not only rejected bids from all three states to buy his shop, but he did so in the most abrupt manner possible.
“People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Fair enough, but I put two fingers up to them all. It is not for sale. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca,” he said.
The rejection of Qatar Holding’s bid, believed to be in the vicinity of $3bn, will be particularly galling for the Qatar government. It is the third time in the last two years the natural gas-rich state has tried to swoop for a high-profile acquisition in the United Kingdom, only to come away from the negotiating table with nothing but frustration. First there was the Thames Water saga, then the scuppered Sainsbury’s plan, and now this Harrods’ fiasco.
By the sounds of it, Al Fayed, who has a reputation for considerable eccentricity, at the eleventh hour surpassed himself for strange behaviour in the boardroom, allowing his pen to hover above the contract’s dotted line before whimsically raising the asking price by a cool $150m, a move he must have known would signal the end of negotiations.
Qatar Holding says that it was approached by Al Fayed, and not the other way around, but one suspects that Al Fayed never had any intention of actually selling. In the aftermath of the deal collapsing, his public pronouncements gave the impression the only thing that could separate the man from his shop would be death, and possibly not even that. Al Fayed says he wants to be mummified after death, and his remains buried in a mausoleum on the roof of the store. “Harrods is a pyramid for me, a monument,” he said. Ozymandias would have approved.
EXPAT TAX
A rumour doing the rounds ahead of the British election on May 6th is that whichever party wins will immediately start taxing British expatriates, the way America does. Americans, wherever they are, have to render unto Uncle Sam what is Uncle Sam’s, and the only way to stop doing so is to renounce their citizenship. Certainly, you could understand the attraction to a new British government of doing exactly this: it would be an effective way of raising a large amount of cash without too much political damage.
Contacted by Arabian Business, a lady at Conservative Central office says the rumour is baseless – the Tories have no plans to tax expatriates. A spokesman at the Labour headquarters, on the other hand, sounds decidedly furtive on the issue, and promises to call me back with the facts. He doesn’t. Could this be the end of the tax-free dream for Gulf expats? Vote Labour to find out.
Damian Reilly is the editor of Arabian Business English.
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