Mr Dome gets New Labour's greatest folly

HE DOESN'T give interviews, he's rarely pictured. Forbes, the American business magazine, dubbed him 'the richest American you've never heard of'. We are, though, due to become extremely familiar with Philip Anschutz's company, Anschutz Entertainment Group or AEG.

Whether we like its plans is a different matter - and there seems little point in attempting to air our views to the firm's reclusive multi-billionaire owner. For AEG is the company that has taken the Dome at Greenwich off the Government's hands.

This week, in an indication of where the huge edifice - originally intended as an educational showcase for the millennium, emphasising all that is best in Britain - is headed, AEG sold the name to a mobile-phone group. Henceforward, thanks to £6m, the great white tent becomes The O2.

The centrepiece of the complex, due to reopen in 2007, will be the O2 Arena, holding 23,000 people and hosting 150 pop concerts and sports events a year. Alongside it will be seven bars and 10 restaurants, another, smaller music venue, an exhibition hall, a 2,000-seat Las Vegasstyle theatre and, AEG hopes, a 'supercasino'.

For the taxpayer, while there is a sense of relief that a project that achieved the remarkable distinction of becoming a white elephant even during the one year it was open is now somebody else's responsibility, there must also be a twinge of regret. What was launched on a fanfare of artistic and scientific promise will become another corporate-sponsored entertainment centre, albeit on a vast scale.

And while AEG chief executive Tim Leiweke maintains the Dome is 'the number-one project in the company', there is bound to be an unavoidable sense for AEG of having done it all before.

The O2 joins the Staples Centre in Los Angeles, an auditorium used for rock shows and Lakers basketball matches, the Berlin Arena, Manchester's MEN Arena, the Colosseum in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and Union Pacific Railway in Anschutz's portfolio of global capitalist domination.

Sitting on top of it all is an intensely driven, Right-wing, Bush-supporting, Christian evangelist who channels some of his wealth into an organisation that is vehemently anti-gay and blames homosexuals for the spread of paedophile activity.

Meet Philip Anschutz

Anschutz is a most unlikely bedfellow for New Labour, but then Tony Blair has proved to be no adherer to political principles where mega-businessmen are concerned - and besides, the Prime Minister's desire to see the removal of a £800m (for that's what it consumed in Lottery cash) hangover from his first term, far outweighed any thoughts of being choosy.

Anschutz was born in 1939 in Kansas. His father was a wildcat oilman and the son seemed destined to join him in the family business. In 1967, after graduating from the University of Kansas with a degree in finance, he found a gusher, a well rich in oil. His natural business instincts told him to borrow heavily and to buy up as much of the land surrounding the drill hole as possible.

Then disaster struck - the well caught fire. He wanted Red Adair, the famous troubleshooter, but couldn't afford him. So, in a stroke of pure genius, Anschutz suggested to Universal Studios, which was making a film about the fire-fighter, that it buy the rights to Adair extinguishing the flames at his well.

They did, for $100,000, Adair did his stuff, and, 15 years later, Anschutz sold a share of his oil interests to Mobil for $500m.

From oil he moved into railways and then telecommunications and entertainment. Along the way he aroused controversy - not just for his fiercely held conservative views (he backs traditionalist organisations Colorado for Family Values and the Institute for American Values).

He became embroiled in a row between Qwest, his communications firm, set up to lay phone lines under railway lines, and Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank.

Analysts at Morgan accused Anschutz of overvaluing Qwest's pension fund and a stake it held in a European venture, KPNQwest. They said the latter was worth $2bn when Anschutz wrote it up as $7bn. In the end, Anschutz conceded defeat and went even further, cutting the valuation to $1.3bn.

Allegations of false accounting continued to dog Qwest, which saw its share price collapse. Matters were not helped by the claim that Anschutz and some of his senior executives had off-loaded stock while encouraging workers to keep shares in the company.

Separately, Anschutz was investigated by Eliot Spitzer, the US attorney, as part of his attempt to clean up Wall Street. The Dome owner was charged with 'spinning', a practice rife in the dotcom boom, where executives were awarded shares in flotations of companies by banks in exchange for letting the banks handle the flotations. Anschutz agreed to pay $4.4m to settle Spitzer's suit.

Typically, Anschutz himself has said little about the criticism that has shadowed him. He stays behind the tight security of the Polo Club, an enclave in Denver, Colorado, where he lives on a five-acre plot with his wife, Nancy (they were teenage sweethearts).

But can he talk the talk?

BUYING such a public symbol as the Dome, though, has meant that others have been forced to talk for him. Day-to-day running of the centre, sorry O2, is in the care of AEG chief Tim Leiweke, a fast-speaking, hard-nosed American ¸ber-salesman.

Superlatives pour forth from his lips. 'We will be the best, world-class, probably the best in the world. Nothing, anywhere, can touch this building. It will have the best content in London, the best in light entertainment. It's always amazed me that London does not have a great facility - now we're providing one. London deserves this.'

On his mysterious boss, Leiweke is uncowed. 'I wouldn't work for him if he wasn't honourable.' Anschutz, adds his colleague 'owns Union Pacific, the largest railroad in the world, but I don't hear anyone worrying about that.

'Likewise, there were lots of lawsuits, which were all settled and resolved. You never hear when suits are pulled, only when they are filed.'

Under the deal, AEG has got the Dome and the site for nothing, but in return must put in £250m for its redevelopment. The Government gets a percentage of the profits from the O2 Arena and what Leiweke calls 'the surrounding entertainment district'.

AEG is pressing ahead with lobbying for the 'supercasino' and O2 is excitedly planning special ticket deals for subscribers to its network. It wants to build a pier on the river in the shape of a '2' to go with the 'O' of the Dome, to form one giant corporate logo.

In a way we should be glad. The Dome is no longer our problem. It's being run by serious professionals now and nobody doubts they will make it happen.

But cast your mind back to what it was meant to be, and all the claims that were made on its behalf - and look where we've come. Maybe it was misconceived from the start, perhaps it was badly managed, probably it never had a prayer. One thing is for sure: Philip Anschutz doesn't care.