Head to Head

Oliver Hill was, and is, a maverick. Born to an Establishment South African family - his father was an Anglo director - his future was pre-determined; a top school (Bishops), a first class degree at Wits University, on to Oxford, and then the steady climb up the Anglo-American corporate ladder.However, his parents recognised the rebel in Ollie and sent him to America where, with a first class degree in chemistry, he went to work for the famous "e;platinum king"e;, Charlie Engelhard, while waiting to see whether his application to Harvard Business School would be successful. He was accepted- although in the early 'Sixties Harvard Business School was accepting no more than 20 foreign applicants a year. Ollie graduated with four distinctions - plus a lifelong passion for free thinking and, in particular, free markets.Returning to South Africa with a wife and daughter, and another child on the way, Ollie joined forces with a successful engineer, John Hahn, and together they founded a formidable independent force in the Southern African mining and chemicals industries.