David Rowland (property developer)

Property career

Rowland took over other groups, issuing shares in his own company to pay for acquisitions. Eventually he sold his stake in Fordham for £2.4m in 1970, and moved to France.

In 1988, Rowland helped fund a lawyer, David Duff, in a takeover of Edinburgh Hibernian, parent company of Scottish Premier Division football club Hibernian. Eventually the company went into receivership.

In 1991, Rowland sold his controlling interest to Nycal Corporation. Over the following years, Gulf resorted to the American courts to recover company monies they alleged were spent by David Rowland, firstly via the courts and then via their insurance company. One case was settled (though no financial settlement was deemed necessary), while Gulf lost another.

In 2009, Kaupthing Bank, affected by the global liquidity squeeze was divided into two entities, a ‘good, healthy’ bank and a ‘bad’ bank. David Rowland and his son Jonathan, via their investment company Blackfish Capital, acquired and recapitalized the former and now manage the assets, on behalf of the interbank creditors, of the latter.

Conservative Party

In the year before the 2010 United Kingdom general election, Rowland donated £2.8m to the Conservative Party, making him the party’s major donor. In 2010 he was announced as being the next Treasurer of the Conservative Party. After this announcement, the Daily Mail published a series of articles that were critical of him. After public criticism of his former status as a tax exile, Rowland resigned before taking the position. Rowland had lived in Guernsey, but returned to full United Kingdom residency in order to make donations to the Conservatives. Electoral law in the United Kingdom prohibits foreign donations to political parties. In August 2010, Rowland made another donation of £1 million to the Conservative Party.