Robert Maxwell

Ian Robert Maxwell, MC (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovakian-born British media proprietor and Member of Parliament (MP). He rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire. After Maxwell's death, huge discrepancies in his companies' finances were revealed, including his fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror Group pension fund.

Early in his life, he escaped from Nazi occupation, joining the Czechoslovak Army in exile in the Second World War and was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to a major publishing house. After six years as an MP during the 1960s, he again put all his energy into business, successively buying the British Printing Corporation, Mirror Group Newspapers and Macmillan, Inc, among other publishing companies.

Maxwell had a flamboyant lifestyle, living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford from which he often flew in his helicopter, and sailing in his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. He was notably litigious and often embroiled in controversy, including about his support for Israel at the time of its 1948 Palestine war. In 1989, he had to sell successful businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean having fallen overboard from his yacht. He was buried in Jerusalem.

Maxwell's death triggered the collapse of his publishing empire as banks called in loans. His sons briefly struggled to keep the business together, but failed as the news emerged that Maxwell had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his own companies' pension funds. The Maxwell companies applied for bankruptcy protection in 1992.

Early life

Maxwell was born into a poor Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish family in the small town of Slatinské Doly (now Solotvyno, Ukraine), in the easternmost province of (pre-Second World War) Czechoslovakia. His parents were Mechel Hoch and Hannah Slomowitz. He had six siblings. In 1939, the area was reclaimed by Hungary. Most members of his family died in Auschwitz after Hungary was occupied in 1944 by its former ally, Nazi Germany, but he had already escaped to France. In Marseille he joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile in May 1940.

After the defeat in France and the retreat to Great Britain, Maxwell (using the name "Ivan du Maurier") took part in the protest against the leadership of the Czechoslovak Army, and with 500 other soldiers, he was transferred to the British Pioneer Corps, and later to the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1943. He was then involved in action across Europe, from the Normandy beaches to Berlin, and achieved the rank of sergeant. He gained a commission in 1945, and was promoted captain. In January 1945, he received the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. Attached to the British Foreign Office, he served in Berlin during the next two years in the press section.

In 1945, he married Elisabeth "Betty" Meynard; a French Protestant, with whom he had nine children, with the goal of "recreating the family he lost in the Holocaust". Five of his children were later employed within his companies. His three-year-old daughter Karine died of leukemia and his eldest son, Michael, was severely injured in a car accident in 1961 (at the age of 15) while being driven home from a post-Christmas party. His driver fell asleep at the wheel, and Michael never regained consciousness. He died seven years later.

After the war he used various contacts in the Allied occupation authorities to go into business, becoming the British and United States distributor for Springer Verlag, a publisher of scientific books. In 1951 he bought three quarters of Butterworth-Springer, a minor publisher; the remaining quarter was held by the experienced scientific editor Paul Rosbaud. They changed the name of the company to Pergamon Press and rapidly built it into a major publishing house.

In 1964, representing the Labour Party, he was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Buckingham, and re-elected in 1966. He gave an interview to The Times in 1968, in which he said the House of Commons provided him with a problem. "I can't get on with men", he commented. "I tried having male assistants at first. But it didn't work. They tend to be too independent. Men like to have individuality. Women can become an extension of the boss." Maxwell lost his seat in 1970 to the Conservative William Benyon.

At the beginning of 1969, it emerged that Maxwell's attempt to buy the News of the World had failed. The Carr family, which owned the title, had been incensed at the thought of a Czech immigrant with socialist politics gaining ownership, and the company's board had voted against his bid without any dissent. The News of the World's editor Stafford Somerfield wrote about the corporate disquiet in an October 1968 front page leader article, in which he referred to Maxwell's Czech origins and used his birth name. "This is a British paper, run by British people," he wrote. "Let us keep it that way." The tycoon who had gained control was the Australian Rupert Murdoch, who later the same year acquired The Sun, which had also interested Maxwell.

Pergamon lost and regained

In 1969 Saul Steinberg, head of "Leasco Data Processing Corporation", was interested in a strategic acquisition of Pergamon. Steinberg claimed that during negotiations Maxwell had falsely stated that a subsidiary responsible for publishing encyclopedias was extremely profitable. At the same time, Pergamon had been forced to reduce its profit forecasts for 1969 from £21⁄2 million to £2.05 million during the period of negotiations, and dealing in Pergamon shares was suspended on the London stock markets.

This caused Maxwell to lose control of Pergamon, and he was expelled from the board in October 1969, along with three other directors in sympathy with him, by the majority owners of the company's shares. Steinberg purchased Pergamon. An inquiry by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) under the Takeover Code of the time reported in mid-1971: "We regret having to conclude that, notwithstanding Mr Maxwell's acknowledged abilities and energy, he is not in our opinion a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company." It was found that Maxwell had contrived to maximise Pergamon's share price through transactions between his private family companies.

At the same time, the U.S. Congress was investigating Leasco's takeover practices. Justice Forbes in September 1971 was critical of the inquiry: "They had moved from an inquisitorial role to accusatory one and virtually committed the business murder of Mr. Maxwell." He further continued that the trial judge would probably find that the "inspectors had acted contrary to the rules of national justice." The company performed poorly under Steinberg; Maxwell reacquired Pergamon in 1974 after borrowing funds.

Maxwell established the Maxwell Foundation in Liechtenstein in 1970. He acquired the British Printing Corporation (BPC) in 1981, and changed its name to the British Printing and Communication Corporation (BPCC) and then to the Maxwell Communications Corporation. The company was later sold in a management buy-out, and is now known as Polestar.

Later business activities

In July 1984, Maxwell acquired Mirror Group Newspapers from Reed International plc. for £113 million. MGN, now part of Trinity Mirror, published the Daily Mirror, a pro-Labour Party tabloid, and other popular newspapers in England and Scotland. At a press conference to publicise his acquisition, Maxwell said his editors would be "free to produce the news without interference". Meanwhile, at a meeting of Maxwell's new employees, Mirror journalist Joe Haines asserted that he was able to prove that their boss "is a crook and a liar". Haines quickly came under Maxwell's influence and later wrote his authorised biography.

In June 1985, Maxwell announced a takeover of Sir Clive Sinclair's ailing home computer company, Sinclair Research, through Hollis Brothers, a Pergamon Press subsidiary. The deal was aborted in August 1985. In 1987 Maxwell purchased part of IPC Media to create Fleetway Publications. That same year he launched the London Daily News in February, after a delay caused by production problems, but the paper closed in July after sustaining significant losses contemporary estimates put at £25 million. At first intended to be a rival to the Evening Standard, Maxwell had made a rash decision for it to be the first 24-hour paper as well.

By 1988, Maxwell's various companies owned, in addition to the Mirror titles and Pergamon Press, Nimbus Records, Macmillan, Inc (of which Collier books was a part), Maxwell Directories, Prentice Hall Information Services, and the Berlitz language schools. He also owned a half-share of MTV in Europe and other European television interests, Maxwell Cable TV and Maxwell Entertainment. Maxwell had purchased Macmillan, Inc, the American publishing firm, during 1988 for $2.6 billion. In the same year he launched an ambitious new project, a transnational newspaper called The European. In 1991, he was forced to sell Pergamon Press and Maxwell Directories to Elsevier for £440 million to cover his debts; he used some of this money to buy an ailing tabloid, the New York Daily News. Also in 1991, Maxwell sold 49% of the stock of Mirror Group Newspapers to the public.

Maxwell's links with Eastern European totalitarian regimes resulted in several biographies (generally considered to be hagiographies) of those countries' then leaders, with interviews conducted by Maxwell, for which he received much derision. At the beginning of an interview with Romania's Nicolae Ceaușescu, then the country's Communist leader, he asked: "How do you account for your enormous popularity with the Rumanian people?"

Maxwell was also the chairman of Oxford United, saving them from bankruptcy and attempting to merge them with Reading in 1983 to form a club he wished to call "Thames Valley Royals". He took Oxford into the top flight of English football in 1985, and the team won the League Cup a year later. Maxwell bought into Derby County F.C. in 1987. He also attempted to buy Manchester United in 1984, but refused owner Martin Edwards's asking price.

Maxwell was known to be litigious against those who would speak or write against him. The satirical magazine Private Eye lampooned him as "Cap'n Bob" and the "bouncing Czech", the latter nickname having originally been devised by Prime Minister Harold Wilson (under whom Maxwell was an MP). Maxwell took out several libel actions against Private Eye, one resulting in the magazine losing an estimated £225,000 and Maxwell using his commercial power to hit back with a one-off spoof magazine Not Private Eye.

Death

On 5 November 1991, he was last in contact with the crew of the Lady Ghislaine, his yacht, at 4:25 a.m. local time, but was found to be missing later in the morning. Maxwell was presumed to have fallen overboard from the vessel which was cruising off the Canary Islands, and his naked body was subsequently recovered from the Atlantic Ocean. The official ruling at a Madrid inquest held in December 1991 was death by a heart attack combined with accidental drowning, although three pathologists had been unable to agree on the cause of his death at the inquest; he had been found to have been suffering from serious heart and lung conditions. Murder was ruled out by the judge and, in effect, so was suicide. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

Then Prime Minister, John Major, said Maxwell had given him "valuable insights" into the situation in the Soviet Union during the attempted coup. He was a "great character", Major added. Neil Kinnock, then Labour Party leader, spoke of him as a man with "a zest for life" who "attracted controversy, envy and loyalty in great measure throughout his rumbustious life."

Production crew researching for Maxwell, an eponymous biographical film by the BBC, uncovered tapes stored in a suitcase owned by Maxwell's former head of security John Pole. Later in his life, Maxwell had become increasingly paranoid of his own employees and had the offices of those he suspected of disloyalty wired so he could hear their conversations. After Maxwell's death, the tapes remained in Pole's suitcase and were only discovered by the researchers in 2007.

Israeli connection

1948 war

A hint of Maxwell's service to the Israeli state was provided by John Loftus and Mark Aarons, who described Maxwell's contacts with Czech anti-Stalinist Communist leaders in 1948 as crucial to the Czech decision to arm Israel in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Czech military assistance was both unique and crucial for the fledgling state as it battled for its existence. It was Maxwell's covert help in smuggling aircraft parts into Israel that led to the country having air supremacy during their 1948 War of Independence.

Mossad allegations; Vanunu case

Shortly before Maxwell's death, a former employee of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate intelligence agency Ari Ben-Menashe, had approached a number of news organisations in Britain and the United States with the allegation that Maxwell and the Daily Mirror's foreign editor, Nicholas Davies, were both long-time agents for Mossad. Ben-Menashe also claimed that in 1986 Maxwell had told the Israeli Embassy in London that Mordechai Vanunu had given information about Israel's nuclear capability to the Sunday Times, then to the Daily Mirror. Vanunu was subsequently kidnapped by Mossad and smuggled to Israel, convicted of treason and imprisoned for 18 years.

Ben-Menashe's story was ignored at first but eventually The New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh repeated some of the allegations during a press conference in London held to publicise The Samson Option, Hersh's book about Israel's nuclear weapons. On 21 October 1991, two Members of Parliament, Labour's George Galloway and the Conservative's Rupert Allason (also known as espionage author Nigel West) agreed to raise the issue in the House of Commons (under Parliamentary Privilege protection) which in turn allowed British newspapers to report events without fear of libel suits. Maxwell called the claims "ludicrous, a total invention", and sacked Nicholas Davies, known also as Nick Davies. A year later, in Galloway's libel settlement against Mirror Group Newspapers (in which he received unknown damages), Galloway's counsel announced that the MP accepted that the Group's staff had not been involved in Vanunu's abduction.

Aftermath; collapse of a publishing empire

Maxwell's death triggered a flood of instability with banks frantically calling in their massive loans. His two sons Kevin and Ian struggled to hold the empire together, but were unable to prevent its collapse. It emerged that, without adequate prior authorisation, Maxwell had used hundreds of millions of pounds from his companies' pension funds to shore up the shares of the Mirror Group, to save his companies from bankruptcy. Eventually, the pension funds were replenished with monies from investment banks Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs, as well as the British government.

This replenishment was limited and also supported by a surplus in the printers' fund which was taken by the government in part payment of £100m required to support the workers' State Pensions. The rest of the £100m was waived. Maxwell's theft of pension funds was, therefore, partly repaid from public funds. The result was that, in general, pensioners received about 50% of their company pension entitlement.

The Maxwell companies filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992. Kevin Maxwell was declared bankrupt with debts of £400 million. In 1995, Kevin and Ian Maxwell, and two other former directors, went on trial for conspiracy to defraud, but were unanimously acquitted by a twelve-man jury in 1996.

In November 1994, Robert Maxwell's wife Elisabeth published her memoirs, A Mind of My Own: My Life with Robert Maxwell, which sheds light on her life with Maxwell when the publishing magnate was ranked as one of the richest people in the world. She had devoted much of her life to researching the Holocaust and to Judeo-Christian dialogue. She died on 7 August 2013.

Depictions in drama

A BBC drama, Maxwell, covering his life shortly before his death starring David Suchet and Patricia Hodge, was aired on 4 May 2007. Suchet won the International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Maxwell. A one-person show about Maxwell's life, Lies Have Been Told, written by Rod Beacham, was performed by Phillip York at London's Trafalgar Studios in 2006.