Farewell to a giant of SA business
● A giant of South African business, Sir Donald Gordon, has died in Plettenberg Bay aged 89.
Gordon founded Liberty Life, shaking up a life assurance industry which at the time was dominated by two mutual life assurers — Old Mutual and Sanlam — and built a group which became one of SA’s largest listed companies that also controlled companies such as SAB, Edgars, Standard Bank and Gold Fields. He went on to found successful UK property businesses in Liberty International and Capital & Counties.
The philanthropic Donald Gordon Foundation, which he established in 1971, funded iconic projects such as the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre and the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Johannesburg, as well as many community and welfare projects.
His son-in-law Hylton Appelbaum, who ran the foundation, said his entrepreneurial flair was combined with an ability to create and run very large businesses.
His support for the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden was one of the factors that saw him knighted for services to the arts and business.
He retired from Liberty Life and moved to the UK in 1999, when the family sold its interest in Liberty to Standard Bank.
“Donald started off with nothing and built a finance services empire. In his day he was the most famous entrepreneur in SA,” said Liberty chairman and former Standard Bank CEO Jacko Maree, who worked closely with Gordon and describes him as both incredibly kind and incredibly tough.
Adrian Gore, who started his career as an actuary at Liberty Life before founding Discovery, says the scale of Gordon’s success was inspirational: “He was a substantial thinker of incredible financial ability who brought an entrepreneurial spirit and excellence to a fairly stodgy industry.”
Former Liberty and JSE CEO Roy Andersen said Gordon had the most amazing business intuition. “We would sit and analyse a deal and he would grasp the issue within five minutes and instinctively knew the answer.”
Liberty was one of the first life companies to be a for-profit JSE-listed company at a time when most players in the industry were mutual. Among Liberty’s innovations were some of SA’s earliest unit trusts and it was also one of the first to create life policies that were directly linked to equities and to property — it built SA’s first major shopping mall, Sandton City, in partnership with construction company Rapp & Maister.
The SA Jewish Board of Deputies described Gordon as a far-sighted business leader and a generous philanthropist.
Gordon started his career as a chartered accountant, at audit firm Kessel Feinstein (now Grant Thornton) where his audit of an insurer, Generali, gave him the idea to start up his own life assurance company.
He is survived by three children and six grandchildren.