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Bunhill: Can the Lloyd's bad boy return?

Chris Blackhurst
Saturday 03 April 1993 23:02 BST
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CHRISTOPHER MORAN, the first broker in Lloyd's 300-year history to be expelled, is hinting at a comeback.

He joined Lloyd's in 1965 as a 17-year-old broker's assistant and within five years had a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur. But in 1982 he was expelled for 'discreditable conduct' - an action he said was taken because he was not liked by the great and the good. They found his capacity for money-making hard to stomach, he said, adding that he might have fought the expulsion but decided to take his skills elsewhere, most notably into property and shares.

'I'm worth pounds 200m with no borrowings, no deferred taxation,' he said. His current pet project is Chelsea Cloisters, the biggest residential block in London. He is also spending pounds 25m to turn the medieval Crosby Hall in Cheyne Walk into his London home. And he owns 50sq miles of fine Scottish grouse moor.

Would he return - by, say, standing for the Lloyd's council? 'I will not go back in unless the ground-rules are clearly laid out. Wait and see.'

TIME for yet another chapter in the saga of Tiny Rowland and Mohamed Al Fayed.

Tom Bower, who wrote The Outsider about Robert Maxwell, has turned his sights on the equally redoubtable Lonrho boss in his forthcoming book, Tiny Rowland: The Rebel Tycoon.

A clearly delighted Fayed has told Bower he will lay on the Coldstream Guards band for a book-signing session in Harrods. The department store boss has also been filmed by Bower for a BBC documentary about Rowland. He was interviewed in the famous Food Halls, standing beneath a hanging shark with the name Tiny written on it.

Lonrho's lawyers are believed to be anxious to get their hands on a copy of Bower's book, which includes the fruits of interviews with several ex-Lonrho directors . . .

(Photograph omitted)

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