David and Frederick Barclay - Biography

Biography

The Barclay brothers were born (within ten minutes of each other) in Hammersmith, London to Scottish parents Frederick Hugh Barclay, a travelling salesman, and his wife Beatrice Cecilia Taylor (died 1989), who had a total of ten children. Their father died when they were twelve, and they left school four years later (1950) to work in the accounts department at General Electric before setting up as painters and decorators.

In 1955 David married Zoe Newton, a grammar school girl who trained as a ballet dancer. The couple married at St John the Baptist Church, Holland Road, in Kensington. In spite of being only 4'11" (1.5 metres), Zoe pursued a modelling career and became the most photographed and highly paid model of the time, appearing on the front of popular magazines such as Picturegoer. She appeared on television and in the Dairy Council advertisements as the “drinka pinta milka day“ girl.

At the end of the 1950s Frederick and his younger brother, Douglas, were running Candy Corner, a tobacconists and confectioners on the edge of Kensington. However, in November 1960 the business folded when Frederick and Douglas were made bankrupt at the High Court after their landlord seized the shop because they were in breach of the terms of the lease. A notice in the London Gazette at that time announced the bankruptcies, listing a former business interest of Frederick, then aged 26, and Douglas, two years his junior, as a builders and decorators called Barclay Brothers based at the Barclay family home.

Meanwhile David was registered as a director of Hillgate Estate Agents in 1962, with his wife Zoe as a co-director (she had given up her modelling career to concentrate on her young sons, Aidan, Howard and Duncan). By 1968, however, Frederick was running the family businesses, replacing Zoe on the Hillgate board. He had obtained the discharge of his bankruptcy after David stepped in and paid the creditors. During this time they redeveloped old boarding houses in London and making them into hotels.

Between 1968 and 1974, the twins received increasingly large loans from the Crown Agents, a government agency designed to help the colonies and developing countries do business in Britain. In 1970 they bought Gestplan Hotels — which operated the exclusive Londonderry House Hotel in Park Lane — from a group of Lebanese bankers. The property crash in late 1973 brought an end to the Crown Agents, and their debts were sold on at a fraction of the original price.

In the mid-1970s Frederick met and married Hiroko Asada, née Kuzusaka, who was a familiar figure among Japanese society in London (she brought a son from her previous marriage, Ko Asada).

From the late 1960s onwards the Barclay brothers continued to build up stakes in a variety of businesses, including breweries and casinos. In 1975, they bought the Howard Hotel, overlooking the Thames at Temple Place. In 1983 they bought Ellerman, the brewing and shipping group for £45m. They later sold its brewing division for £240m. They used the proceeds to buy the Ritz Hotel in London's Piccadilly in 1995. They spent £370 million on Gotaas-Larsen, a Bermuda-based shipping company, and £200 million on the Automotive Financial Group, a motor retail chain in 1994.

The Barclays are involved in philanthropy and were knighted in 2000 for their support to medical research, to which they have donated an estimated forty million pounds between 1987 and 2000.

In 2004, they were listed in 42nd place with an estimate of £750m on the Sunday Times Rich List, and in 2006, they were ranked 24th with a value of £1,800m. The Barclay brothers' fortune has shot up from £1bn in 2009 to £1.8bn in 2010. In 2012, they topped the Media Rich List with £2.25bn.