LAGOS, Nigeria (Voice of Naija) – Mohamed Al Fayed, former owner of Harrods and father of Dodi Fayed, who was killed in a car crash alongside Princess Diana, has died at the age of 94.
Mohamed Al-Fayed was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1929. He later moved to the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s, where he would eventually amass a great fortune in a variety of business ventures.
Al-Fayed’s most well-known business venture was his ownership of Harrods department store, which he purchased in 1985 for a substantial sum and sold to Qatar in 2010 for a staggering $2.4 billion. This sale marked the end of his tenure as the iconic store’s owner. Additionally, he possessed the Ritz Paris Hotel and Fulham Football Club.
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In 2013, Mohamed Al-Fayed ended his tenure as the owner of Fulham Football Club when he sold the team to Shahid Khan, an American billionaire and the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team for $300million.
Al-Fayed’s eldest son, Dodi, and Princess Diana shared a deep friendship that eventually blossomed into romance during a holiday in the south of France. The world was shocked when their lives were tragically cut short by a fatal car crash in Paris.
In 1966, he became an adviser to one of the world’s richest men, the Sultan of Brunei.
He married Samira Khashoggi in 1954, and their union bore one son, Emad, who was also known as Dodi. The couple separated in 1956.