Nat Somers bought the land on which Southampton Airport, AND the Ford Transit factory, now stand. And a motorway. By the mid-1980's SOU carried some 1.5m passengers. But the operation was the ultimate shoe-string airport; Nat controlled all expenses, down to paper-clip purchases, by a hard-wired phone link from his office in Jersey. The terminal was an old hangar converted with the bare necessities. When it rained there was a concerted rush to get enough buckets under the known leaks in the roof.
He made a huge amount for money from selling half the land to Ford, some more, I guess for the M27, and of course from the income of the airport.
The fire service eventually reached the point in 1984/5 where unless Nat did something, like spend a bit, the CAA would close it down. So he leased the airport to Airports UK, wholly owned by BAA. BAA bought it some years later, having presumably overcome the terms of the Airports Act which would have limited their airport ownership in England to the 3 London Airports.
Passenger numbers took a dive, not only (but partly) because of BAA's management, but have since then recovered, although I don't know if they have reached the 1.5m it used to be.
Nat developed a civil jet single engine light aircraft, in the 1950's, I think. There was a lot of discussion about it on pprune not so long ago.
Nat also owned Panshangar, in the 1980s, but I haven't a clue about what happened to that. His son ran it at the time, I think.
Apart from anecdotes about Nat's meanness, which are many, there is one an uncle of mine used to tell. I cannot vouch for it, but as far as I remember it went like this; shortly after WWII my uncle, serving in the RAF, had just severely damaged a new aircraft (prototype? jet?) and himself while landing it. The Board of Enquiry, covered in gold braid, had convened round his bed as soon as he was able to speak, and had given him a very hard two hours. As they left the room, one of them hung back, and when the rest had gone pulled a bottle of whisky from under his coat. "Here", he said, "you deserve that. Not one of those fools has any idea about flying. Don't worry, I'll make sure you're OK". It was Nat Somers, and he did.