Leading business figure Latifur Rahman passed away on Wednesday morning at his ancestral home in Cumilla’s Chauddagram, his family and office sources said. He was 75, reports BSS.
“He breathed his last at around 11 in the morning while he was asleep,” a source close to his family said.
The Daily Star and Protjhom Alo, the publications of Media World and Mediastar, which he owned alongside the Transcom Group, reported Rahman was suffering from lung related illness for a long time.
It said the body was brought to Dhaka to be buried at Banani graveyard after namaz-e-janaza at the Azad Masjid after Esha prayers.
He was chairman and CEO of Transcom Group which deals with beverages, electrical and electronics products, pharmaceuticals, fast food, snacks and breakfast cereals, print media, FM radio and tea plantations.
Rahman was a member of the executive board of ICC-Paris, vice president of ICC-Bangladesh and member of BRAC’S governing body. He was a member of the Bangladesh Better Business Forum and Advisory Committee on World Trade Organization.
He was also president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Dhaka for seven terms and of Bangladesh Employers’ Federation.
He was also chairman of the Bangladesh government’s Trade Body Reforms Committee and a member of Bangladesh Bank’s executive board.
Rahman was an honouree of “Oslo Business for Peace Award 2012” and was awarded Business Executive of the Year 2001 by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh.
He had also been honoured with the “SAARC Outstanding Leader” award and Lifetime Achievement Award which was presented by the UK Bangladesh Catalysts of Commerce and Industry.
Born in the then undivided Indian sub-continent’s Jalpaiguri district of what is now West Bengal, Rahman made his debut as a business executive in 1966 at a jute mill owned by his family in Chandpur and emerged as a pioneering entrepreneur in post independent Bangladesh establishing his Transcom Group in 1973.
In the 1990s, he bought Smith, Kline & French, a US-based pharmaceutical, later known as Eskayef.
He was married to Shahnaz Rahman. Together they have three daughters Simeen Hossain, Shahzreh Huq, (late) Shazneen Rahman and a son, Arshad Waliur Rahman.
