ENTREPRENEURS: Last of the Big Spenders

“Nubar is so tough that every day he tires out three stockbrokers, three horses and three women.” Thus did a Cambridge friend many years ago describe Nubar Gulbenkian, the high-loving millionaire who died last week at 75 in Cannes, where he was being treated for a heart ailment. Resembling a Mephistophelean Santa Clans with his portly form, thick black eyebrows, fluffy white beard and twinkling eyes, Gulbenkian spent his life in a relentless chase after pleasure. “I believe in comfort. I enjoy everything I do,” he said.

He was the son of Calouste Gulbenkian, the celebrated “Mr. Five Percent,” who helped negotiate oil contracts between Arab countries and Western oil firms and wound up owning 5% of the Iraq Petroleum Co. Nubar was born in a small village on the Bosporus at a time when the Turks were enforcing their rule by slaughtering the Armenian minority. He was spirited out of the country in a Gladstone suitcase and taken to England, where he attended Harrow and Cambridge. Though for many years he claimed Iranian nationality and in 1965 regained his Turkish citizenship, he spent most of his life in England.

The elder Gulbenkian, as miserly as his son was profligate, employed Nubar for a time without salary. This arrangement ended in 1939 after Nubar billed the company $4.50 for a lunch of chicken in tarragon jelly, which he ate at his desk. His father refused to allow the expense, and Nubar sued for $10 million, which he felt was his due on grounds that his father had defaulted on a promise to give him a share of the business. The litigation was withdrawn by Nubar, and when Calouste died in 1955, he left almost his entire fortune, estimated at up to $420 million, to the Gulbenkian Foundation, based in Portugal.

Active in the oil business while his father lived, Nubar went into sumptuous retirement in his late middle years. At his death he was estimated to be worth $5 million to $6 million. His father had left him about $2.5 million in cash and in trust, and he later got an undisclosed settlement from the foundation’s management, from which he was shut out. Dividends from investments in solid securities also added to his fortune, which was amply sufficient for his extravagances. He drove about in a custom-built gold and black car, designed to look like a London taxi and powered by a Rolls-Royce engine. Cracked Gulbenkian: “I like to travel in a gold-plated taxi that can turn on a sixpence—whatever that is.”

An impeccable dresser, he almost always wore a fresh orchid in his lapel; when visiting desert countries, he had the flowers shipped in daily. For a London party, he flew in a troupe of belly dancers from Turkey. Married three times and twice divorced, he remained childless. He had a superior attitude about good food and wine. The perfect number for dinner, he said, was two—himself and a headwaiter. In all he did, Gulbenkian remained a flamboyant refutation of the notion that the burden of having money dims the joy of living.