A BIG DEAL.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 395, 31 March 1937, Page 8

A BIG DEAL.

£lOO,OOO SPENT. London Millionaire’s Good Deed. Mr Ezekiel Elia Shahmoon, once an office boy, now a London millionaire, stood in a Regent Street shop, London, recently, smoking a cigar, watching the wreckage of a good deed that had cost him £lOO,OOO. Two and a half years ago, Mr Shahmoon. 40-year-old bachelor, puffing gently at an earlier cigar, went into a West End furniture showroom to buy his sister a present. He liked the two young salesmen who served him, offered to put up money for a business for them. And so the firm of Leander and Co., Ltd., luxury furnishers, of Regent Street, was born. Two and a half years later, Mr Shahmoon, from a dais in the showrooms of the company, watched the staff selling oft the stock. lAt a meeting of the firm’s creditors a few days previously, it was said he had agreed to forgo a claim of £55,995 so that the other creditors could have 20/- in tie pound. “Oh, I don’t mind the £lOO,OOO so much,” he said to a London Daily Express reporter. “What does upset me is that I messed up another big deal to etart this business.

Holdings Sold. “Just before the firm started I was holding a million pounds worth of silver. I knew It would go up. I sold my holdings so that I’d have the ; liquid capital to start Leander and Co. Then up went silver, and I lost the chance of making about £300,000 profit. “I’m a retired man really. I made my money abroad. This furniture business was just a mistake.” The two young salesmen have now gone off to start on their own. “I gave them a chance because I know what it’s. like to struggle for success,” said Mr Shahmoon. “I’m a Frenchman. I started as an office boy in China. When I was 27 I put through a £4,000,000 deal with the British Government.

“I got out of a big rubber deal because of this business. That cost me a lot of money. I could have sold these premises at £lO,OOO profit before I opened the business. I didn’t do it.

“What am I going to do now? Oh, I’ll go on collecting china. That's been my hobby for 25 years. I’ve got one of the finest collections in the country. When this is all cleared up I’ll go on holiday for three months.”