Lonrho is a

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

-based conglomerate that was established in 1998 as Lonrho Africa plc. It is engaged in multiple business sectors in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, mainly

agribusiness Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit w ...

, infrastructure, transport, hospitality and support services.

History

Lonrho traces its roots to the original Lonrho plc (now

Lonmin 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 ...

), a company which was incorporated in the United Kingdom on 13 May 1909 as the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company Limited. Lonrho plc grew to be one of the world's largest companies, with over 800 subsidiary companies in 80 countries. One previous CEO of Lonrho plc was the controversial

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 ...

(1917–1998), a corporate raider who ran the firm from 1962 to 1993. Scholars have noted that while he may have been the "unacceptable face of capitalism", in the words of

Edward Heath Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conserv ...

, Lonrho plc actually worked in tandem with the British government in protecting British business interests in Africa after independence. The current company named Lonrho was formed on 26 February 1998 as a spin-off of

(at the time called "Lonrho plc"), and it was first known as Lonrho Africa plc. The demerger transferred all non-mining African assets to the separate publicly listed Lonrho Africa plc, while Lonrho plc (now

) retained the mining businesses. Lonrho Africa plc subsequently changed its name to Lonrho plc on 10 May 2007, following the approval of shareholders. Lonrho was one of the funding partners in low-cost airline

Fastjet Fastjet Limited is a UK based holding company of fastjet Zimbabwe, an airline operating in Africa. The airline was initially created following the acquisition of Fly540, an airline operating in East Africa; flights in fastjet's own name commen ...

, operating in Africa. This was after they exchanged their stake in

Fly 540 Five Forty Aviation Ltd, trading as Fly540, is a low-cost airline which commenced operations in 2006 and is based in Nairobi, Kenya, operating both passenger and cargo services. The airline had two subsidiary airlines, Fly540 Ghana (suspended in ...

for shares in Rubicon Diversified Investments plc, which was renamed Fastjet in August 2012. In 2013, Lonrho plc was delisted from the

LSE LSE may refer to: Computing * LSE (programming language), a computer programming language * LSE, Latent sector error, a media assessment measure related to the hard disk drive storage technology * Language-Sensitive Editor, a text editor used ...

, JSE and

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after agreeing to a £174.5 million takeover by FS Africa, a bid vehicle controlled by Swiss billionaire

Thomas Schmidheiny Thomas Schmidheiny (born 17 December 1945) is a Swiss billionaire businessman, and the former chairman of cement manufacturer Holcim. Early life Thomas Schmidheiny was born in 1945, the son of Max Schmidheiny (1908-1991). The family's construc ...

and Rainer-Marc Frey.

References

{{reflist, 30em Conglomerate companies established in 1998 Companies based in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

History

See also

References