James Derrick Slater (13 March 1929 – 18 November 2015) was a British accountant, investor and business writer. Slater rose to prominence in the 1970s as a businessman and financier, who was the founding Chairman of
Slater Walker Slater Walker was a British industrial conglomerate turned bank that got into financial difficulties in the 1970s. It specialised in corporate raids. Its fall shook the British banking system at the time, and it had to be bailed out by the Bank of ...
, an investment bank and conglomerate which collapsed in the
secondary banking crisis of 1973–75
Secondary may refer to: Science and nature
* Secondary emission, of particles
** Secondary electrons, electrons generated as ionization products
* The secondary winding, or the electrical or electronic circuit connected to the secondary winding ...
.
Career
Early career
Born in 1929 in
Heswall
Heswall is a town on the Wirral, Merseyside, England. At the 2001 Census, the population was 16,012, including the nearby villages of Barnston and Gayton.
Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974 it was part of the administr ...
– at that time in
Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
– Slater qualified as a
chartered accountant aged 24, and joined the Dohm Group. Quickly promoted, he became a general manager, reorganising all the company's small industrial holdings into one company within the group. After leaving Dohm, he was appointed secretary and chief accountant of
Park Royal Vehicles
Park Royal Vehicles was one of Britain's leading coachbuilders and bus manufacturers, based at Park Royal, Abbey Road, in west London. With origins dating back to 1889, the company also had a Leeds-based subsidiary, Charles H. Roe.
Labour p ...
, a wholly owned subsidiary of
ACV Group. He was then made commercial director of its subsidiary
AEC. After
Leyland Motors
Leyland Motors Limited (later known as the Leyland Motor Corporation) was a British vehicle manufacturer of lorries, buses and trolleybuses. The company diversified into car manufacturing with its acquisitions of Triumph and Rover in 1960 and 1 ...
took over ACV, Slater was later promoted to deputy sales director under
Donald Stokes.
Initial investments
Whilst working for AEC as a director, Slater fell ill and during his recovery became interested in investing, and developed a system for picking stocks which would much later form the basis of his book ''
The Zulu Principle'' (1992). He then approached his friend
Nigel Lawson
Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, (born 11 March 1932) is a British Conservative Party politician and journalist. He was a Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Blaby from 1974 to 1992, and served in the cabinet of Margaret ...
, at that time the City Editor of ''
The Sunday Telegraph
''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings.
It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...
'', and was hired to write an investment column under the pseudonym 'Capitalist'. Over the following two years, Capitalist's ghost portfolio appreciated by 68.9%, against the London Stock Market's average of 3.6%.
Slater Walker
In 1964, Slater acquired control of H Lotery & Co Ltd, a £1.5m public company; he and his business partner
Peter Walker – a
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
MP – renamed it
Slater Walker Securities. The company performed what became known as
corporate raid
In business, a corporate raid is the process of buying a large stake in a corporation and then using shareholder voting rights to require the company to undertake novel measures designed to increase the share value, generally in opposition to t ...
s on public, mainly industrial, companies, in which Slater would sell off under-performing assets to improve efficiency. Slater commented, "we are money makers, not thing makers".
This saw the company growing into a group capitalized at over £200 million, through which Slater became a friend and business associate of
James Goldsmith
Sir James Michael Goldsmith (26 February 1933 – 18 July 1997) was a French-British financier, tycoon''Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith'' by Ivan Fallon and politician who was a member of the Goldsmith family.
His contr ...
. Slater Walker then changed strategy, from a corporate-conglomerate into what eventually was recognised as an unauthorised and unlicensed international investment bank, through gradual disposal of its industrial interests.
This has led to Slater being revered in some circles as a "merger lord", but criticised in others as an "
asset stripper".
During the
secondary banking crisis in 1975, Slater Walker faced financial difficulties and received support from the
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...
. Slater resigned as chairman in October 1975, because the government of Singapore began to try to extradite him from the UK for alleged offences by the company in Singapore referring to the alleged misuse of more than £4 million of company funds in share deals. The Singapore government's attempt to extradite Slater (in which it was represented by Derry Irvine, assisted by Tony Blair and Cherie Booth) was dismissed by the
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate The Chief Metropolitan Stipendiary Magistrate, known as Chief Metropolitan Police Magistrate until 1949, and also known as the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and Chief Magistrate of the Police Courts of the Metropolis, was a senior British magistrate ...
at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court in 1977.
In separate proceedings, following the takeover of the company by the Bank of England, a prosecution was brought against Slater by the
Department of Trade alleging 15 counts of offences under the
Companies Act
Companies Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in Botswana, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom in relation to company law. The Bill for an Act with this short title ...
.
Slater was found guilty of the Companies Act offences and fined £15 per count.
However, the court accepted that the offences were purely technical, that Slater had not acted dishonestly and that there was no question of him having made any personal gain through committing them.
Finding himself, after the collapse of Slater Walker, technically but not legally bankrupt, Slater invested his residual funds and repaid all of his personal creditors within a few years, with interest.
In 1976, Slater had formed a 50:50 venture with
Tiny Rowland
Roland Walter "Tiny" Rowland (; 27 November 1917 – 25 July 1998) was a British businessman, corporate raider and the chief executive of the Lonrho conglomerate from 1962 to 1993. He gained fame from a number of high-profile takeover bids, in p ...
's
Lonrho Group
Lonmin plc, formerly Lonrho plc, was a British producer of platinum group metals operating in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its registered office was in London, and its operational headquarters ...
, to buy-up undervalued blocks of
flats
Flat or flats may refer to:
Architecture
* Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries
Arts and entertainment
* Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch
* Flat (soldier), ...
in London. At its peak, the company owned and managed over 1,500 flats. This business model led Slater to form Salar Properties, which through
time share
A timeshare (sometimes called vacation ownership) is a property with a divided form of ownership or use rights. These properties are typically resort condominium units, in which multiple parties hold rights to use the property, and each own ...
leasing of
salmon fishing
Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhync ...
rights on seven of Scotland's rivers, including the Lower Redgorton beat on the
River Tay
The River Tay ( gd, Tatha, ; probably from the conjectured Brythonic ''Tausa'', possibly meaning 'silent one' or 'strong one' or, simply, 'flowing') is the longest river in Scotland and the seventh-longest in Great Britain. The Tay originates ...
, by the 1980s had become the largest Scottish fishing venture.
Slater then acted as mentor to business partner Ian Watson, through which Watson founded Centennial Minerals in 1982. It owned a major share in the Montana Tunnels gold mine, and was sold to Pegasus Gold at a substantial profit three years later. The pair formed Galahad Gold in 2002, successfully timing the commodities boom to make annualised 66% profits from gold exploration before winding the company down in 2007 and starting a new joint-venture, Agrifirma, this time investing in Brazilian agricultural farmland.
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
Agrifirma scraps hedge fund-style fees
9 March 2009
By 2009, Slater was chairman of BioProjects International PLC, deputy chairman and finance director of Galahad Gold, and investment director of Agrifirma.
Author
Slater's autobiography sets out his early plans and visions regarding company acquisitions, and describes the processes he employed to bring them about. Once companies came under his control his strategy was to maximise the return on those of their assets that he judged disposable—be they property, plant or workforce. These tactics proved to be highly successful and profitable in the short-term, such that "Slater Walker" became a byword for a particularly forceful and financially rewarding form of capitalism.
The acquisition and disposal of company assets in this manner became known as "
asset stripping
Asset stripping is a term used to refer to the practice of selling off a company's assets in order to improve returns for equity investors. In many cases where the term is used, a financial investor, referred to as a 'corporate raider', takes cont ...
", a phrase term that carries with it connotations of hardship and distress associated with the human costs of unemployment. Some years later, Slater acknowledged the drawbacks that were inherent in the practices he adopted, towards the end of an interview with
Hunter Davies
Edward Hunter Davies (born 7 January 1936) is a British author, journalist and broadcaster. His books include the only authorised biography of the Beatles.
Early life
Davies was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, to Scottish parents. For four ...
in ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' published on 15 December 1992.
Slater was also the author of a book on investment, ''The Zulu Principle'', which focuses on simple techniques for identifying small dynamic growth companies whose shares are at a low price compared to their future prospects. With Hemmington Scott, he devised a monthly company statistical guide, Company REFS,
also available as a daily online service, to make the identification of such shares easier for the private investor. Slater authored several other investment books, and had a side career as a children's author, writing the ''
A. Mazing Monsters'' series.
Media
He was featured in the second episode of ''
The Mayfair Set
''The Mayfair Set'', subtitled ''Four Stories about the Rise of Business and the Decline of Political Power'', is a BBC television documentary series by filmmaker Adam Curtis. It explores the decline of Britain as a world power, the proliferatio ...
'', a series of documentaries by
Adam Curtis
Adam Curtis (born 26 May 1955) is an English documentary filmmaker.
Curtis began his career as a conventional documentary producer for the BBC throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s. The release of ''Pandora's Box (British TV series), ...
.
Personal life
Slater married his wife Helen in 1965. They lived in
Surrey
Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...
and had four children and ten grandchildren.
Slater's hobby was
chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
. Amongst other sponsorships, he donated $125,000 to help fund the
1972 World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship 1972 was a match for the World Chess Championship between challenger Bobby Fischer of the United States and defending champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union. The match took place in the Laugardalshöll arena in ...
between
Bobby Fischer
Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Championships at the age of 14. In 1964, he won with an 11 ...
and
Boris Spassky
Boris Vasilievich Spassky ( rus, Бори́с Васи́льевич Спа́сский, Borís Vasíl'yevich Spásskiy; born January 30, 1937) is a Russian chess grandmaster who was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 ...
in
Reykjavík
Reykjavík ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói bay. Its latitude is 64°08' N, making it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. With a po ...
, Iceland, doubling the total prize fund.
Slater died on 18 November 2015 at the age of 86.
Bibliography
*''
A. Mazing Monsters''
*''How to Become a Millionaire: Make Money While You Sleep''
*''Beyond the Zulu Principle: Extraordinary Profits from Growth Shares''
*''The Zulu Principle: Making Extraordinary Profits from Ordinary Shares''
*''The Armchair Investor: A Do-it-yourself Guide for Amateur Investors''
References
External links
UK Fast Buck Fraternity: article from 1996 edition of Management Today*
ttp://www.bioprojects.com/comP_Info/directors/james.html Biographyfrom Bioprojects International plc, of which he is Executive chairman
Global Investorinvestment advice site
A.mazing Monsterschildren's books written by Slater
Times article on Slater WalkerDocuments relating to HM Treasury's intervention in Slater WalkerJim Slater: what I would buy nowfrom Investors Chronicle, March 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Slater, Jim
1929 births
2015 deaths
People from Heswall
English accountants
English investors
English columnists
Chess patrons
20th-century philanthropists
20th-century English businesspeople