Arnold Weinstock, Baron Weinstock

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Arnold Weinstock, Baron Weinstock (born July 29, 1924 in Stoke Newington , London , † July 23, 2002 ) was a British entrepreneur and economic manager who was Britain's first leading industrialist after World War II and in 1980 as a life peer member of the House of Lords has been. As Managing Director of the General Electric Company (GEC), he was at the helm of one of the largest and most successful industrial companies in the UK for more than three decades, during a period in which industrial production was steadily declining. His early planning laid the foundations for Britain's leading role in global energy and a research-based defense industry . During this time he was also a recognized advisor to four Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson , who saw in him the personification of a "white-hot technology", to Margaret Thatcher , who saw him as a powerful representative of a considered modern capitalism , although both often disagreed with Thatcher's drive for privatization and defense treaties.

Life

Family origins, studies and World War II

Weinstock came from a Jewish family who immigrated to London from Poland in 1904 and was the youngest of six sons of a master tailor who made women's jackets and coats for Hitchcock & Willis in the West End . When he was born, his father was already 50 years old and his mother 46 years old, while his oldest brother was already 24 years old and his next older brother Harry was already 15 years old.

When he was five years old, his father in 1929 died as a result of acute pneumonia , and after his mother in 1934 breast cancer died, Weinstock was at the age of ten years for orphans . In the following years he lived alternately with one of his older brothers and received his education at the Stoke Newington Central School (SNCS), which was moved to Warwickshire in August 1939 .

After completing his schooling, he won a scholarship to the London School of Economics (LSE), which was housed in the Peterhouse at the University of Cambridge during the Second World War . One of the lecturers was Friedrich August von Hayek , whose teaching later formed the intellectual basis for Thatcherism .

post war period

After completing his studies with a Bachelor of Science in Economics (B.Sc.Econ.) Weinstock was called up for military replacement service in 1944, which he performed as a statistician in the production and priority department of the Admiralty in Bath . After three years of employment, he returned to London in 1947, where, with the help of his brother Jack Weinstock, he found employment with Louis Scott, a property owner from London's West End.

At this time he received an invitation from Maxwell Joseph , founder of the Grand Metropolitan hotel company , to a charity ball at the Dorchester Hotel , where he met his future wife Netta Sobell, daughter of Michael Sobell , owner of a radio factory. In 1954 Weinstock joined Sobell's Radio and Allied Industries as a manager , which he expanded into a large company, and finally became the official owner of this company in 1958.

Managing Director of GEC

Corporate mergers in the 1960s and 1970s

After the larger General Electric Company (GEC) ran into financial difficulties in 1961, Sobell's Radio and Allied Industries was encouraged to take over the company. Weinstock then became Managing Director of GEC. Less than six weeks earlier, future Prime Minister Harold Wilson was elected chairman of the Labor Party.

In the following period there was repeated collaboration between the manager Weinstock and the politician Wilson, whose Labor Party, contrary to its policy of radical rationalization, decided to take over Amalgamated Electrical Industries (AEI) in 1961 and the merger with English Electric (EE) 1968 supported. The resulting company was the largest industrial conglomerate in the country with around 250,000 employees.

This push for the amalgamation of the British electrical industry, however, led to anger within the Labor Party with the left wing of the party and the trade unions led by former technology minister Tony Benn . On the other hand, he was a cool calculating industrialist willing to shut down uneconomical factories and take on unions and the complacency of many traditional management views.

At the beginning of the 1970s he was the leading industrialist in Great Britain and was beaten for his economic services on November 24, 1970 to the Knight Bachelor and from then on carried the suffix "Sir". Shortly thereafter, in 1971, he also became a member of the Rolls-Royce Board of Management and was a member until 1973.

Expansion of the group of companies in the 1980s and recession in the 1990s

During the 1970s and 1980s, he continued GEC's successful course, both through its own production and the acquisition of other companies such as model maker Avery , health equipment company Picker , a shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness , after a bitter one Takeover of the electronics group Plessey and the electrical engineering company Ferranti, which has got into financial difficulties .

As Managing Director of GEC, he introduced close control of all areas and discussed corporate goals with employees even after they had finished work, after having carried out an account check. The thoroughness of its management, the tight control of the costs down to the smallest washing mash, enabled GEC to be successful and to grow despite the boom and downturn of the British economy in the 1970s and 1980s, while numerous British operations were in this period have been taken over by foreign companies.

Contrary to the wave of company sales initiated by entrepreneurs like James Hanson in the late 1980s , Weinstock also built up a number of collaborations with European and US companies such as Alstom in France , Siemens in the Federal Republic of Germany and General Electric in the USA.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, tensions arose with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for example because of his criticism of their privatization policy and the GEC's problems with the development of the British Aerospace Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft . When the economy went through one of the worst recessions during Prime Minister John Major's tenure from 1990 to 1992 , the GEC demonstrated rare resilience, breaking the £ 1 billion profit mark despite the problems of a high exchange rate due to the exchange rate mechanism.

The company acquisitions ended in 1995 when Weinstock acquired Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering (VSEL), the last major shipbuilding company in Great Britain. Shortly afterwards, however, he suffered a personal stroke of fate when his son Simon Weinstock, his intended successor as Managing Director of GEC and previous commercial director of the company, fell ill with cancer in 1995 and died on May 18, 1996. A few months later he resigned as Managing Director, and was replaced by George Simpson on March 18, 1996 .

Although GEC was a leader in the development of memory modules and the technology for cell phones , the company had not shown any great ambitions to exploit this commercially, so that GEC was strong in the field of the defense industry, but not in civil technology and had considerable in that regard Disadvantages in the beginning age of e-commerce and mobile phones. However, Simpson realigned the company in 1999 and concentrated on information and communication technology while renaming GEC to Marconi .

Horse breeder and member of the House of Lords

In addition to his business activities, Weinstock was also involved in horse breeding and ran the Ballymacoll Stud stud with his son Simon Weinstock in County Meath, Ireland . This was one of the few Anglo-Irish breeding companies to breed Classic winners.

The best-known breeding product of Ballymacoll was Troy , winner of the 200th  Derby in 1979, which followed the equestrian manager of Queen Elizabeth II. , Henry Herbert, Lord Porchester , for the then record sum of 7.2 million pounds was acquired.

By a letters patent dated July 17, 1980, Leonard was raised to the nobility under the Life Peerages Act 1958 as a life peer with the title Baron Weinstock , of Bowden in the County of Wiltshire, and was a member of the House of Lords until his death on.

Its official launch ( House of Lords ) on 15 October 1980 supported by Toby Low, 1st Baron Aldington and Solly Zuckerman, Zuckerman Baron .

honors and awards

For his services to the British economy, he has received numerous honorary doctorates , including an Honorary Doctor of Science (Hon.D.Sc) from the University of Salford in 1975, from Aston University in 1976, from the University of Reading 1978 and from the University of Bath 1978. In 1978 the University of Leeds also awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Law (Hon.LL.D.) and in 1981 Loughborough University an honorary doctorate in technology (Hon.D.Tech .).

He received another honorary doctorate in law from the University of Wales in 1985 . In 1991 he was appointed Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and in 1992 an Officer of the Legion of Honor . In 1994 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of University (Hon.DU) from Anglia Polytechnic University , as well as another honorary doctorate in law from Keele University in 1997 . Most recently, the University of London awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Economic Science (Hon.D.Ec.Sc.) in 1997.

Background literature

  • Stephen Aris: Arnold Weinstock and the making of GEC , Aurum Press 1998, ISBN 978-1-85410-470-0
  • Alex Brummer, Roger Cowe: Weinstock: The Life and Times of Britain's Premier Industrialist , HarperCollins Business, London 1998

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 45239, HMSO, London, November 27, 1970, p. 13037 ( PDF , accessed February 9, 2014, English).
  2. ↑ Obituary: Simon Weinstock . In: The Independent of May 21, 1996
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 48257, HMSO, London, July 22, 1980, p. 10391 ( PDF , accessed February 9, 2014, English).
  4. ↑ Entry in Hansard (October 15, 1980)
personal data
SURNAME Weinstock, Arnold, Baron Weinstock
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weinstock, Sir Arnold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur and politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Stoke Newington , London
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 2002