Lord Swraj Paul obituary: Made his mark in UK for philanthropy, business acumen

Lord Swraj Paul, the Indian-born industrialist, first came to London in 1966 to find medical treatment for his three-year-old daughter Ambika, who was suffering from leukaemia.

Unfortunately, little Ambika did not survive, but Swraj Paul decided to stay on in London and make the UK his home. Incidentally, he passed away at the same Ambika House, his residence in London, a stone’s throw from the BBC’s offices in Oxford Circus. He was 94.

Started with Caparo Group

Long before Non-Resident Indians began to dominate the business world, Lord Swraj Paul was the first major Indian industrialist to establish a presence in the UK after independence. In 1968, he started the Caparo Group, the steel company, with a bank loan of £5,000 and the business grew to have revenues of more £500 million by the turn of the 21st century. He became one of Britain’s richest Asians with a wealth in excess of £1 billion.

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Swraj Paul was born in Jalandhar, Punjab, on February 18, 1931 in what was then British India. He inherited his interest in steel from his father Payare Lal who ran a small foundry that made steel buckets and farming equipment in Jalandhar. Paul did his high school at Labbu Ram Doaba School and then went on to Doaba College and Forman Christian College in Lahore. He obtained his Bachelor’s in Science from Punjab University in 1949 and then went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States to study Mechanical Engineering.

Returning to India

After leaving MIT, he returned to India to work for the family business, the Apeejay Group, which his father had founded and was then managed by his two older brothers. But he came into his own in the business world with Caparo. The group, headquartered in London, operated internationally from over 40 sites and served customers globally.

Paul passed ownership of Caparo to his son Angad Paul in 1996 but Angad died in November 2015 after falling from his penthouse flat in London. He was only 45. This was the second personal tragedy in Paul’s life. Caparo, currently employs 8,500 people worldwide and is managed by Paul’s three children Ambar, Akash and Anjli. It is one of the largest 100 percent single family-owned businesses. The company is a leading diversified business group with interests in design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of value-added steel and niche engineering products for the automobile and engineering industries. Its operations are primarily based in the UK, North America, India and the Middle East.

Never forgot Indian roots

Though Paul took British citizenship he never forgot his Indian roots and in 1975 founded the Indo-British Association to promote better understanding between India and Britain and served as its chairman. Paul had a close relationship with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and in 1983, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan.

In the early 1980s, Paul mounted takeover bids on Escorts and DCM – these were among India’s first hostile takeover attempts – but when they failed, he withdrew from India and began to focus on his businesses abroad. However, the bids exposed the vulnerabilities in corporate governance in India and prompted key regulatory reforms in NRI investment and corporate control.

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Pilanthropy and a stint with Labour Party

Apart from being a business magnate, Paul was also active in the political and social circles in the UK and became known for his philanthropy. He became a member of the House of Lords in 1996 when he became a life peer with the title Baron Paul of Marylebone, in the City of Westminster, the area where Caparo had its offices and in which the Pauls lived. Though his life peerage was awarded by former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major, Paul was always close to the Labour party. An admirer of the former Labour leader Michael Foot, Paul admitted he joined the Labour Party after meeting Foot. A big supporter of Gordon Brown too, Paul was one of the largest donors to Brown’s election campaign.

Share of controversies

Unfortunately, Lord Paul was also embroiled in several political controversies. In 2010, he was suspended from the House of Lords for four months for wrongly claiming thousands of pounds in expenses. He registered an Oxfordshire flat as his main home – even though he never slept there – while claiming money in overnight expenses for a London property. Paul repaid over £42,000. He was also found to be one of the high-profile individuals to hold Swiss bank accounts through HSBC, although Paul maintained he had done nothing wrong and was fully compliant with the UK’s tax laws.

However, it is probably through his philanthropy that Lord Paul will best be remembered in the UK. When the famous London Zoo was threatened with closure, Lord Paul saved it with a massive donation and investment in the children’s zoo. He paid to build the Ambika Paul Children’s Zoo at the London Zoo and the Ambika Paul Memorial Gardens, as he had fond memories of taking his daughter Ambika there in between her cancer treatments.