Sir Denys Henderson
The former ICI boss, who has died aged 83, “was no revolutionary”, says the FT. But if “events turned against him, he fought like hell”. When the corporate raider Lord Hanson moved in on the company in 1993, “Henderson was furious and his defence spectacular”. He not only stalled the potential bid, notes Jeremy Warner in The Sunday Telegraph, but fought a “vicious, clandestine campaign to blacken Hanson’s name” – and he largely succeeded. Hanson was never quite the same after his “mauling”, and a few years later his company was broken up. But the encounter also marked the end of ICI, which underwent a similar fracturing. All that’s left of the once-mighty industrial powerhouse that was Imperial Chemical Industries is the pharma AstraZeneca.
Sanjiv Mehta
When diamond merchant Sanjiv…
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The Week United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, V. 1076