David Garrard

Sir David Eardley Garrard is a retired British property developer.

Early life and education

David Eardley Garrard was born on 12 January 1939. He grew up in Stamford Hill, North London, where his father had a small upholstery business, and attended Battersea Grammar in South London. Garrard’s sister married Philip Rose, whose family owned the commercial property company Land Investors which had made a fortune in the 1960s property boom. Rose subsequently became a mentor to Garrard who after school began work as a commercial estate agent.

Business

In 1986, the Rose family agreed to a £71.1 million takeover of Land Investors led by Garrard in partnership with Berish Berger, grandson of the property tycoon Gerson Berger. The two men created a public vehicle for the deal, BCPH, which was majority owned by their joint venture Reliable Properties.

Berger subsequently bought out Garrard’s 25% stake in Land Investors, changing the name to Land & Property Trust. Garrard used the revenue from that sale to launch his own property company, Minerva, with his protégée Andrew Rosenfeld, whom he had recruited to Land Investors. Garrard served as chairman and Rosenfeld as Chief Executive. The pair floated the company in 1996. Three years later the Sunday Times wrote that: ‘In little more than a decade David Garrard and Andrew Rosenfeld, the duo who founded Minerva, have built up the value of the property company from £3m to £300m.’

On 31 March 2005 Garrard stepped down as Chairman of Minerva plc and was replaced by Rosenfeld, then still Chief Executive, at the same time selling a large stake in the company held through family trusts for an estimated £35 million. Along with his wife, Garrard then became a tax exile in Switzerland, living in a suite at the Mandarin Oriental in Geneva.

Minerva is valued at over £500 million.

Politics

Garrard was a Thatcherite before becoming connected with New Labour. He told the Mail on Sunday: ‘I am not a political animal, I never have been. But I did support the Conservatives because I thought Margaret Thatcher was fantastic and wonderful.’ He is reported to have provided irregular donations of £5-10K to the Conservative Party during the ‘80s and ’90, before providing £70,000 in the run-up to the 1997 General Election.

Garrard is said to have become connected to New Labour through his support for a City Academy in Bexley in which he invested £2.8m. The Mail on Sunday reports that he became friends with Andrew Adonis when Adonis was education advisor to 10 Downing Street. This would suggest that he became connected to New Labour some time after the 1997 election. The article implies that he became friends with Michael Levy during the same period via a chance encounter at the Savoy Grill (‘the favoured lunchtime “canteen” for captains of industry’). There is evidence to suggest, however, that he was connected to Levy before this time. Garrard’s property company, Minerva, for many years sponsored an annual fundraising event for Jewish Care called the Minerva Business Luncheon, the organising committee for which is reported to have been established in 1990. Levy was the chair of Jewish Care from 1992 to 1997 and Garrard’s partner Andrew Rosenfeld is a former director. Levy’s wife, Gilda, ran an inter-faith charity from Minerva’s London head office.

Garrard reportedly first met Tony Blair at a Downing Street working breakfast in 2001. A year later he met Blair at Lord Levy’s North London home where the guests discussed Iraq. After the invasion, in May 2003, Garrard donated £200,000 to the Labour Party. He told the Mail on Sunday:

I was in Israel during the first Gulf War with the Scuds raining down and the gas masks. We were disappointed that the coalition alliance did not then take out Saddam Hussein. When Tony Blair determined to join America in the second Gulf War he was doing absolutely the right thing. I was thrilled they got rid of Saddam.

He was knighted in the 2003 Honours List.

In 2005, Garrard loaned £2.3m to the Labour Party at Levy’s request and was subsequently put forward for a peerage, only for the Lord’s Appointments Committee to recommend against him being awarded a peerage. He was subsequently named in the ‘loans for peerages’ scandal and was interviewed under caution by police on 11 May 2006 at the offices of his lawyers Olswang, answering only ‘no comment’ to the police’s questions during the half hour interview. Tim Bell acted as his spokesperson during the scandal.

Loan to the Labour Party

In 2006 it was revealed Garrard had loaned the Labour Party £2.3 million. He was part of a list which included Richard Caring, Lord Sainsbury, Rod Aldridge, Chai Patel, Andrew Rosenfeld and Barry Townsley who had 'loaned' nearly £14million to the party. The move towards transparency came from a combination of pressure from the other parties and plans to introduce a new law banning secret loans to parties. A number of those who provided the party with loans were also nominated for peerages.

Donations

Date	Name of donor	Amount	Donated to	Subsidiary (parties only)
23/05/2003	Sir David Garrard	£200,000.00	Labour Party	Central Party
31/07/2008	Sir David Garrard	£352,278.00	Labour Party	Central Party
10/09/2012	The Maureen and David Garrard Foundation, 25 Harlley Street	£1,570.00	The Rt Hon Jim Murphy MP
31/10/2013	Sir David Garrard	£60,000.00	Labour Party	Central Party
	Sir David Garrard	£25,000.00	Better Together 2012
16/06/2014	Sir David Garrard	£629,570.31	Labour Party	Central Party

Affiliations

• The Maureen and David Garrard Foundation