My last interaction with late business icon Donny Gordon was in 2002 (above with his daughter, businesswoman Wendy – pic from son in law Hylton Appelbaum’s Facebook page).
Then 72, he was in great spirits, celebrating the entry of his UK property company Liberty International into the London Stock Exchange’s prestigious FTSE 100. The interview stuck in my memory: the man who had revolutionised SA’s financial sector said had he first discovered property, he would never have bothered starting life assurance giant Liberty Life. I’m not sure he was joking. His road wasn’t easy.
Friday’s news of 89 year old Gordon’s death got me pulling out his appropriately named biography Larger Than Life, by Ken Romain, something of an institution himself during 20 years with the Financial Mail. The book chronicles the hard yards Gordon had to cover when building the great disruptor of his era – collapsing an Old Mutual/Sanlam duopoly dominant for decades.
As university was outside the financial means of this son of Lithuanian immigrants, the KES matriculant never got to follow his chemical engineering dream. Instead, Gordon followed articled clerkship at Kessel Feinstein and part-time study for his CA. At 27, after auditing assignments exposed him to a “dozy and inefficient” insurance sector, he determined to create a business to challenge the status quo by focusing on innovation and cost consciousness.
Although for Gordon the opportunity was obvious, it took nine months of pavement pounding and a 98% refusal rate from SA’s most respected businessmen before he raised the minimum capital an insurance licence required. Romain’s 1989 book notes that each R1,000 invested with Gordon at Liberty’s creation in 1958 had then grown to R4.2m – 31% compounded growth for 31 years. Backing genius can deliver huge rewards. Especially in disruptable industries.
