Julian Ogilvie Thompson, 1934-2023: Death of an Anglo titan

For well over two decades, Julian Ogilvie Thompson was a fixture in this magazine. He appeared weekly — in appraisals of annual results, profiles, blow-by-blow accounts of takeovers, rumours of management battles and even in titbits of social gossip (a three-line news note cited him visiting the Johannesburg Art Gallery). In his trademark strong-rimmed spectacles, Ogilvie Thompson was also a recurring FM cover star.

This celebrity-like treatment was unsurprising, since  he was a giant in South African business. He died last week in Joburg aged 89.

He was executive chair of Anglo American and De Beers in the heady and politically volatile world of the 1980s and 1990s. His was the most powerful business position in South Africa for a time.

Ogilvie Thompson, a Rhodes scholar, was born and raised in Cape Town and educated at Bishops and Worcester College, Oxford.

He began his career in the Oppenheimer empire as a personal assistant to Harry Oppenheimer in 1957. Over a career spent working for HFO (as Oppenheimer was known to his intimates) and the family, other positions JOT (as Ogilvie Thompson was similarly known) held included executive director of Anglo American and chair of the group’s non-African, non-diamond business, Minorco, which he later merged with Anglo.

Ogilvie Thompson’s wife, Tessa, died in 2020. The couple had four children, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Inspiring leadership

Gary Ralfe, his long-time colleague and former MD of De Beers, sent the following tribute: 

In 1970, JOT led a team to Sydney, Australia, to do in-depth diligence of a takeover target, a mining company called VAM. I was drafted in as an extra hand from the small Anglo American office in Melbourne. I got to know JOT during the week we were cloistered in a Sydney hotel, with me acting as his personal assistant.

My next secondment was to Charter France in Paris, clearly at the recommendation of JOT. Years later, in a public speech, he recounted that Anglo’s French business had not been successful but it had yielded one significant dividend, namely Marie-France (my wife).

On my return from Paris, I was invited by JOT to join the diamond section of the chairman’s office in 44 Main Street. He was the effective CEO of De Beers under the chairman, HFO. For the next four years I worked closely for JOT, particularly on the financial modelling of the Orapa and Jwaneng mines. Nobody could have given me a better apprenticeship in business, finance and negotiation.

By virtue of his height and bulk, JOT had a commanding presence. His intellect was formidable, his memory elephantine, his leadership inspiring and his industriousness legendary (often two stuffed briefcases for the weekend).

Because he was closer to the diamond business than other branches of Anglo American, we diamond boys were always the last to meet him in the evening. It often meant getting home at about 8pm. He saw De Beers and us diamond boys as family, was interested in our personal problems and got to know our families.

JOT and Tessa were generous hosts, which often included board and lodging of waifs and strays from London.

De Beers held its quarterly board meetings in Kimberley. At least once a year this was combined with a weekend when Julian and Tessa hosted us in Cecil Rhodes’s old shooting box on Rooipoort outside the city.

The drill was that when JOT stood up from the breakfast table and said, “I am ready, let’s go”, we all scrambled into our allotted vehicles. JOT would be wearing knee-length leather gaiters and a colonial pith helmet.

Between hunting for elusive guinea fowl and al fresco lunches along the Vaal River, we would discuss De Beers’s profit and loss and what dividend it should pay. On Monday morning, back at work, we were prepared for our meeting with HFO.