AThe Baltimore Sun Baltimore, Maryland Saturday, July 08, 1972 - Page 4
Slater Plays Business as Chess -- Fanatically
London (AP)—James Slater, the British businessman who helped finance the Fischer-Spassky chess championship duel, built up a worldwide business empire with the skill of a chess master whittling away an opponent's defenses.
“Chess and investment both require the same mixture of science and art, intuition and analysis,” he once said.
Mr. Slater should know—he is a chess fanatic who once was expected to be a schoolboy champion. Checks got the better of checkmate, but he still plays and gets his kicks subsidizing tournaments in Britain.
$130,000 Offer
He finds time to play on a chessboard in his office—usually against himself—while he plots his next million.
Mr. Slater, 43, put up $130,000 to lure Bobby Fisher, the American chess champion, to Reykjavik to play world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union after the challenger complained the stakes were not high enough.
The multimillionaire said he just wanted to see the controversial game of the century take place.
That $130,000 was the same amount of money Mr. Slater had when he quit his job as an auto corporation executive eight years ago.
Within a year, Mr. Slater had wheeled and dealed that stake into a half million pounds. Today, he masterminds an investment empire worth more than $500 million on the stock exchange.
Business Is Like Music
He has a knack for spotting badly run companies with big potential, piling up strategic share holdings, taking them over and transforming them into profit-making concerns.
So far, Mr. Slater has notched about 20 corporate scalps with almost casual ease and left old pros of London's financial district open-mouthed in wonder and waiting for a big fall. But soft-spoken Mr. Slater is not fazed by the prophecies of doom.
“I mean to be around for a long-time and make this company a great deal bigger—and that won't take long to do,” he said.
He is able to pile up profits of more than $30 million a year through his ability to scan pages of complex figures and grasp crucial points in a matter of minutes.
Care, Dare More
“Looking at a page of figures is to me what listening to a concerto is to a musical person,” Mr. Slater says. “A mistake, or an opportunity or an exciting situation jumps right out and hits me in the eye, just as a wrong note or a well-played passage can be heard at once by a musician.”
Everyone from directors to doormen owns shares in his empire. He explains: “It makes them care more. It makes them dare more. They soon realize that calculated risk-taking is what business is all about.”
Like the chess masters he is financing, he does not leave himself exposed if he can help it. He has insured his life for about $25 million, and his five directors each for a tenth as much, to give his empire a cash boost if he and his lieutenants die.
Golf, Pool Chess
Mr. Slater lives in a modest mansion he built in his bachelor days. He is married now and has two sons and two daughters.
He usually spends only three days a week in his office atop the skyscraper headquarters of his empire, near St. Paul's cathedral.
The son of a smalltime businessman who died when Mr. Slater was at school, the tycoon spends Fridays working at home just so he can be with his family.
Weekends he plays golf, swims in the pool at his home—plays chess.
He became hooked on the game when he was 11 and was soon playing against British champions. At 16, he stopped playing seriously to study accounting.
“The game was too time-consuming,” he says.
He sponsors an annual international tournament at the coastal resort of Hastings. He has financed next year's world under-21 championships to encourage young players.
Now he has paid a small fortune for the most expensive chess game in history, but he will not be there to watch. He will follow it in the papers.
There is one thing even he cannot afford—the time.
Slater Plays Business as Chess -- Fanatically 08 Jul 1972, Sat The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) Newspapers.com
