Scottish businessman and philanthropist.
Laidlaw turned a small US publishing company bought in 1973 into the Institute for International Research (IIR), the world’s largest conference organiser. After calling off a £500m flotation in 2001 when the market plunged, he sold in 2005 for a sum believed to be in the order of £768m. HE previously owned and raced a Jaguar, which won Le Mans a number of times throughout the 1950s, along with a number of other vintage cars, including a 1962 Ferrari GTO. He recently sold a collection of classic sports cars to raise £17 million.
In 1988 Laidlaw founded Abbey Business Centres, a subsidiary of IIR providing serviced office space, meeting room facilities and virtual office packages in 13 business centres in Great Britain. The first business centre opened in Glasgow, and soon the company opened up another centre in Slough, Berkshire. Other centres were added, and in 2009 a total of 13 centres made up the organisation.
One of the largest financial backers of the UK’s Conservative Party, Laidlaw was made a life peer as Baron Laidlaw, of Rothiemay in Banffshire on 14 June 2004. According to the records of the UK Electoral Commission, on 27 November 2007, Laidlaw gave a donation of £2,990,532.20 to the Conservatives. Laidlaw donated £25,000 to the 2008 London Mayoral election campaign of Boris Johnson.
Lord Laidlaw was described by The Guardian as a “Monaco-based tax exile” and was criticised in April 2007 in the press for failing to become UK tax resident despite being appointed to the House of Lords. In 2004, Laidlaw said that he would over the next 20–30 years donate most of his fortune to helping disadvantaged young people. His main vehicle was the Laidlaw Youth Project, which supported a range of charitable work for disadvantaged youngsters in Scotland from 2004 to 2007 when it became the Laidlaw Youth Trust.
In April 2008, Laidlaw was the target of a sting operation staged by the British tabloid The News of the World, which revealed that Laidlaw hires up to five £3,000 vice girls at a time for all-night orgies involving spanking, bondage and lesbian sex at his Monaco home. After submitting a written confession to the newspaper in which he allegedly confesses a lifetime fighting sex addiction, Laidlaw reportedly checked himself into a six-week residential sex addict programme in South Africa, and donated £1 million to help fellow sufferers.
Link to Wikipedia