The business story
Born near Dhaka in 1951. Co-founded Beximco with his brother in 1972, building one of Bangladesh’s largest conglomerates (pharmaceuticals, textiles, ceramics, banking, media). A senior Awami League figure and MP; PM Sheikh Hasina’s adviser on private industry (cabinet rank) 2019–2024. Arrested in August 2024 after Hasina’s ouster; facing multiple pending corruption and money-laundering cases (unproven).
What distinguished Rahman from other industrialists was how closely his business and political lives were joined.
Early life and background
Salman Fazlur Rahman was born on 23 May 1951 in Dohar, near Dhaka. He attended Notre Dame College, studied physics at the University of Dhaka and graduated from the University of Karachi, an education completed in the late years of united Pakistan, before Bangladesh's independence in 1971.
Building Beximco
In 1972, with the new country barely a year old, Rahman and his elder brother, A. S. F. Rahman, set up Bangladesh Export Import Company, known as Beximco. A young nation needed builders, and the brothers aimed to be among the most ambitious of them.
Beximco grew into one of the largest private conglomerates in Bangladesh, spanning textiles and garments, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, jute, energy, financial services and media, including Independent Television and the English-language daily The Independent. Its strongest asset was Beximco Pharmaceuticals, founded in 1976, which manufactured generic medicines, exported to dozens of countries and became the first Bangladeshi company listed on London's Alternative Investment Market. In 1982 the brothers also co-founded AB Bank, one of the country's earliest private banks.
This was a real industrial footprint: factories, export earnings and tens of thousands of jobs. Any assessment of Rahman has to start there.
