The patron saint of lost causes

By CAHAL MILMO and ANDREW GUMBEL

Philip Anschutz, the reclusive oil and sports magnate named this week as the rescuer of Britain's unloved Millennium Dome, has a penchant for lost causes.

The 62-year-old has made much of his £11 billion ($38.8 billion) fortune through buying or investing in failing ventures and turning them into thriving elements of a global entertainment empire.

With the announcement of a public-private partnership with his Meridian Delta Ltd to invest £4 billion in the Greenwich site, Britain's whitest elephant is planned to be what America's sixth-richest man envisages as the "Madison Square Garden of Europe".

The mild-mannered Mr Ordinary from Denver, Colorado, with a liking for ice hockey teams, has a reputation for hard-nosed persistence to turn dulled monoliths into gold.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the widely criticised Dome minister at the head of a sale process that led to a £21 million mothballing of the £794 million structure for 11 months, would appreciate his business motto: "It is only by sticking to an objective through adversity that a goal can be realised." After 150 expressions of interest in the Dome, 22 serious approaches and two disastrous attempts to name a "preferred bidder", the sentiments are likely to encourage the embattled peer.

The former Kansas grocery packer lives in a modest ranch, wears a cheap Timex and blue jeans. He has attended the same Presbyterian church for 19 years and enjoys the odd round of golf. Eighteen months ago Fortune magazine called him "the richest American you've never heard of".

In the 60s, he had been planning a career as a lawyer but was called in to run the ailing family oil-drilling business in Kansas. At 27, he set up on his own. One of his first moves was to explore for oil in Wyoming. He bought an entire field at a knockdown price after striking oil at an exploratory well and moving in with his cheque-book before word got out. He made millions. In the 80s he bought the Southern Pacific Railroad and brought it into profit and set up Qwest, an internet telecom company, and media, real estate and sports ventures.

The British Government clearly believes that through Meridian Delta and its 20,000-seater sports and music venue, Anschutz can sprinkle that same stardust over its Greenwich monolith.

Anschutz has already revived one blasted piece of urban landscape and he is in the throes of doing it again in Los Angeles, where his business interests range from land and railway tracks to sports teams (he owns the LA Lakers basketball and the Kings ice hockey franchises).

The parallels with the Dome's Greenwich site and the new public-private partnership (PPP) are multiple. Both projects in Los Angeles have begun on a stretch of bare asphalt on the western edge of the city centre abandoned to urban blight. Both have involved the support of influential local investors and power brokers - from Rupert Murdoch, a major shareholder, to leading city councillors and even the Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahoney.

First out of the blocks was the Staples Centre, an arena-cum-convention centre-cum-sports and concert venue that opened two years ago and has proved a roaring success. Bruce Springsteen sang on opening night, the Lakers and the Kings found a permanent home there, and within a year it had hosted the Democratic National Convention, despite the staunchly right-wing politics of its owner.

Now Anschutz and his partners want to expand the Staples project over the surrounding 11ha and create their LA version of New York's Times Square, with a skyscraper four-star hotel, a 7000-seat theatre for musicals and awards ceremonies, flats, shops and restaurants.

The Staples Centre cost $US350 million, and the expansion is expected to come in at $US1 billion. Anschutz and his partners, lobbied hard for public funds and subsidies. The tactic is likely to be repeated with the Dome project.

A secret of Anschutz's success, say his friends and commentators, is a knack for bundling his ventures together for greater profit. Half a mile or so from his new Thames-side acquisition lies the London Arena, east London's largest concert venue and home to the London Knights ice hockey team. They are among 10 ice hockey, baseball and basketball teams in America and Europe wholly or partly owned by Anschutz.

But industry experts believe Anschutz is building his own media empire. He has used his railway interests to create a network of trackside optical fibre cables capable of feeding television pictures to millions of homes in America via his interests in Qwest. The only problem is that the network is underused, and Anschutz needs to provide content.

- INDEPENDENT