Ronson towers over the City

“I call it my ‘f*** you’ business,” he says proudly. “Never let me down when I needed cashflow in the 1970s and 1980s and, yes, it is sentimental. But the sites are little jewels, and Gerald’s little hobby turns over £300m a year, and I think there are going to be big opportunities in petrol retailing in the next three to five years.”

He chuckles gruffly. Ronson is a dinosaur, neckless and besuited, grey hair slicked back, still sporting the same London accent that Michael Caine gave up three decades ago. But he’s also still in the game, one of Britain’s most famous property developers and a tireless worker for charity too.

He has been bust and jailed, but he has rebuilt his business and his reputation in the 20 years since his involvement in the Guinness scandal. Last week he opened a new tower in the City of London — the tallest in the Square Mile — and when we meet, he is pacing the marketing suite opposite the skyscraper, admiring its lines.

Being Ronson, within a minute he has forgotten me and is picking a fight with his PR woman over whether she can shut down the jumbo television screen on the opposite wall.

“Turn it off or I’ll go cross-eyed,” he snaps, before muttering when she can’t find the switch: “And don’t give up the day job. Thank God you’re not in charge of presentations...”

Such cruelty is classic Ronson. A minute later he is charming her. Others say he plays to the stereotype. I guess his friends just take the rough with the smooth.

More than 300 were invited to his annual Heron lunch last week at the Dorchester hotel in London. Sir Martin Sorrell, Sir Stuart Lipton, Lords Fink, Harris, Marshall and Young — the list of business notables was long. Boris Johnson, London’s mayor, was there too, and was thanked for his efforts to make the capital a better place.

Ronson’s networking is legendary, but even by his standards he has a lot riding on London right now. Heron Tower, a 46-storey office block topped by an antenna-like spike, is the first of three buildings planned for a new square off Houndsditch.

In two years he will also be opening The Heron, a plush apartment block, nearby. It will be one of the few residential options in the Square Mile. “Apart from the Barbican, which is an eyesore,” chips in Ronson, Then he smiles wickedly.

His residential tower will have 36 storeys, will house a private club and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and cost more than £200m. “And we will make a very satisfactory return. I’ve already pre-sold 60% of the apartments, could probably sell them all, but it’s not finished till 2013.”

He will wait. Meanwhile, Heron Tower is open now. “The building cost £500m if you take development into account. When fully leased you are looking at a rent roll in excess of £30m a year and an end value of more than £600m.”

Ronson is renowned for his grasp of numbers. He is also a stickler for detail and still inspects every building he owns every month. “We are very hands-on at Heron, very small team, 60 people employed, but we are focused, experienced and we have a passion for what we produce.”

That passion has always marked Ronson out, and helped him rebuild what was lost two decades ago. Convicted on charges of conspiracy, false accounting and theft, he spent six months in jail for Heron’s involvement in the share support scheme run by Ernest Saunders during Guinness’s takeover of Distillers.

His trial in 1990 was later judged unfair bv the European Court of Human Rights, and Ronson still argues that he did no wrong, advised by City bluebloods that everything was above board. And he still seethes that those same establishment figures got off the hook. As for Saunders, he calls him “a two-faced lying schmuck”.

Ever met him since? “Seen him in restaurants a couple of times. Would I shake his hand? No, he gave me a lot of aggravation. But let me tell you the biggest culprits never stood in the dock, and you know that.” So why was he picked on? “I was rich, I had all the toys, I was non-establishment and being Jewish didn’t help — therefore I was dispensable.”

Lose many contacts? “There were some toffee-nosed bankers who ... look, I don’t want to name names, it was more than 20 years ago, get it in perspective.”

But it changed him. Before the trial the Heron boss seemed brash and greedy. Yet Ronson, brought up in north London’s affluent Hampstead, the eldest son of a successful furniture maker, was never as unpolished as he pretended.

Lord Young, who has known him since the 1960s — and was secretary of state at the Department of Trade and Industry in 1990 — suggests Ronson learnt a painful lesson. And it’s what he has achieved since that counts. “Of all the people I have met in my life, I admire Gerald the most,” says Young, “because of his resilience and his desire to help the common good.”

Cynics still wonder if Ronson has simply been canny: working non-stop, avoiding publicity, using charity to restore his reputation. But colleagues say the classic entrepreneur’s mix of “magnificent ego and magnificent insecurity” has mellowed.

“Five years ago you wouldn’t have seen him on the stage at industry events,” says Stephen Hubbard, deputy chairman of property consultant CB Richard Ellis, and a long-term Ronson adviser. “You do now.”

Rebuilding Heron was part of that transformation. Its fortunes nosedived shortly after Ronson left prison. The Heron boss turned to Michael Milken, the American junk bond king, to help find a way out.

Milken’s initial plan to liquidate Heron soon flipped into a drive to expand it. He brought in a stream of top-line investors, including technology billionaires Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, property mogul Steve Wynn, and Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, owner of The Sunday Times.

They recognised a kindred spirit. As Young puts it: “In Britain, if you fail, you go home and shut up. In America, you get up and start again.” For Ronson, going home wasn’t an option. He lives to work.

Those backers ensured a more focused approach, and a new style of ownership. Ronson now controls only 25% of Heron’s shares. Milken’s brother Lowell is chairman. Ronson’s other interests, such as his garages, are kept outside the property business.

Cautious and lucrative are the key words. Heron, which operates mainly in Britain and Spain, paid out £241m in dividends from 2000 to 2008, but nothing in 2009. Ronson expects no dividend for 2010 too. “Given our development programme, it’s important we keep strong liquidity.”

Everybody acknowledges that he retains a fine instinct for the property cycle. Last week Ronson was predicting that the next boom was still four years away. “The banks have got to get rid of their toxic waste first,” he says.

But London will always offer opportunities. It’s the rest of Britain he worries about. “I see a difficult market and no good news. I don’t see any serious job creation.”

When will he stop? “I’m good for another ten years. I want to make a lot of money for my foundation. It’s got eight figures in there, I want to see nine figures, so it can give away £10m a year. I used to give away £5m in the 1980s.”

He has recently helped build a Jewish school in Barnet and is proud that anyone can attend. “I’ve got Muslim kids there. I don’t care, I’m cross-communal. Others care.” He shrugs. Ronson then tells me he rarely attends synagogue — he just likes working for the community.

But isn’t that networking too? Not any more, it’s an obsession, he says. He has raised more than £100m for charities, and personally given £40m over the years.

So does he regret that some still see him as a bully? “I have to tell you, I resent that. I am not a bully,” he says firmly. Robert Maxwell, his old friend, was a bully and a liar, he adds. He is not.

But he has seemed like one. He just stares back. “Maybe I do tell people off, but, a bit like Humpty Dumpty, I’ll put them together again. They’ll see a little glint in my eye.”

Because at the heart of it, he says, people count, not money. Others back that up. Jonathan Goldstein, Ronson’s No 2 at Heron, says his boss is misunderstood.

“He is not a control freak, he is an information freak. When you have his confidence, he doesn’t second-guess you. And his ability to connect with people — whether it’s David Cameron or a petrol pump attendant — is astonishing.”

That’s been helped by the sheer likeability of his wife Gail, appointed a dame for her charitable work. The two can work a cause like no other couple — her warmth a contrast to his bulldozing persuasiveness.

“Married 43 years; it’s a great partnership,” says Ronson proudly.

Then he wants to tell me about his four daughters. One, Lisa, works for Heron, in charge of marketing.

So what would happen if he fell under a bus? “I have a very good deputy, a very capable guy, and Lisa does all the marketing and promotions. She’s very capable too. Bit of a chip off the old block.”

He pauses. Anyway, he says, duff question, stopping is not an option. As to motivation, you have to remember that he is just a simple bloke. He opens his arms wide and smiles. “What you see is what you get.”

No it isn’t. He looks sheepish. “Yeah, Gail says that too.”

The life of Gerald Ronson

Vital statistics
Born: May 27, 1939
Marital status: married, with four daughters
School: Clark’s College, Cricklewood
First job: floor sweeper in father’s furniture factory
Pay: undisclosed — wealth estimated at £145m last year. All interests in Heron bequeathed to his charitable foundation
Home: Hampstead, north London
Car: silver Mercedes
Favourite book: The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
Favourite film: The Godfather
Favourite music: “Anything by my nephew Mark Ronson”
Favourite gadget: Olympus microcassette recorder. “Can’t get them no more”
Last holiday: Mauritius

Working day

The Heron International founder wakes at his north London home at 6.30am. “Out the door by 6.45,” says Gerald Ronson. He is at his desk in Marylebone 30 minutes later.

“I get my emails printed out and brought in every two hours,” says Ronson. He dictates answers into a microcassette recorder and the printouts go into a shredder. About 12 executives report direct to him, and many of the team have worked with him for decades. Heron has a large landbank, “including one site in Bristol that my dad bought 32 years ago. That’s the advantage of working long term.”

Most nights Ronson attends a function, but he likes to be home by 10pm, watching the news on television and enjoying a cigar. On Saturdays he visits his petrol station chain, Snax 24.

Downtime

“It’s my charities or my family,” says Gerald Ronson of his life outside work. His children all still attend Friday night supper at his home, with any guests he can rope in. “Ministers, ambassadors — my wife’s food is so good everyone likes to come.”

He is proudest of setting up the Community Security Trust, which protects Jewish interests and property across Britain. The Gerald Ronson Foundation gives money to many other charities too.