Kenneth Keith, Baron Keith of Castleacre

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Kenneth Alexander Keith, Baron Keith of Castleacre Kt (born August 30, 1916 in Castle Acre , Norfolk , † September 1, 2004 in King's Lynn , Norfolk) was a British entrepreneur and merchant banker who was appointed as a life peer under the Life Peerages Act in 1980 1958 became a member of the House of Lords . Keith was one of the most dynamic and influential merchant bankers in the City of London for three decades , alongside people like Siegmund G. Warburg .

Life

Training as an auditor and World War II

Keith, whose father author of natural history books, was completed after attending the Rugby School trained as a chartered accountant in today KPMG belonging accounting firm Peat Marwick International and was there until the outbreak of World War II, worked 1939th

He then began his military service as a sub-lieutenant in the 8th Battalion of the Welsh Guards and was finally promoted to major . For his military services as a staff officer in France and Germany , he was mentioned in the war report ( Mentioned in dispatches ) and was awarded the Croix de guerre with a silver star. At times he was a prisoner of war .

After the war was over, Keith worked for the Foreign Office's Political Intelligence Service between 1945 and 1946 .

Rise to Hill Samuel's Chief Executive Officer

Philip Hill & Partners

He then became a partner at Philip Hill & Partners in 1946, becoming its director in 1948 and its managing director in 1951. During this time Herbert Meredith and Sir John Gilmour served as CEOs of the company, as the company's founder, Philip Hill, was killed in action during World War II.

From the beginning, Keith was instrumental in the company's expansion. In an internal memorandum of the time, he stated that the main objective was to transform the then still small and by no means completely reputable company into one of “the leading financial institutions in the City of London”, not just through a joint venture , but through the Purchase of other companies.

Philip Hill Higginson & Co

A first step came in June 1950 when a merger between Philip Hill and the respected but completely unprofitable company Higginson & Co was announced. Following the company's merger to form Philip Hill Higginson & Co , Keith served as executive director from 1951 to 1959. Within two years the new institute was built in the city and the former lieutenant colonel and previous director of Higginson & Co, George Akers-Douglas, was entrusted with the task of guiding the policy of the new company to the Governor of the Bank of England , Cameron Cobbold, 1st Baron Cobbold , who, like his predecessor, Montagu Norman , made clear his rejection of such companies, which did not prevent Keith from further company expansion. In the period that followed, Keith expanded the company's workforce not only through accountants, but also through accountants and lawyers. Since the 1950s he has earned a reputation as an unconventional banker compared to the standards of financial firms in the City of London at the time.

On August 11, 1951, he was awarded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Welsh Guards. In 1955 he also became director of the insurance company Eagle Star Insurance , whose future owner Sir Brian Mountain he had met while a prisoner of war.

Philip Hill Higginson Erlanger

1958 saw the takeover of the respected but also unprofitable bank Erlanger Ltd. whose chairman was Leo Frédéric Alfred Baron d'Erlanger . That said, the merged company wasn't big, and neither was the £ 2.5 million Keith bought for Erlanger Ltd. had paid were more than the bank was worth. However, these companies expansion meant that the new institute Philip Hill, Higginson Erlanger automatically held by Erlanger Ltd Place in the Committee on list banks ( Acceptance Houses Committee of the City of London took). After this renewed merger, Keith was Managing Director from 1959 to 1962 and subsequently Chairman of the Board of Philip Hill Higginson Erlanger between 1962 and 1965 .

In addition to his work in this company, he was also deputy chairman of the board of the state airline British European Airways (BEA) from 1964 to 1971 . As early as 1963, Keith, who had become an accepted member of influential financial firms since the mid-1960s, was one of the three spokesmen for the City of London in negotiations with the HM Treasury .

Hill Samuel

Upswing and expansion of the company

Keith's ambition to grow the company resulted in a coordinated takeover of M. Samuel , one of the City's traditional financial firms , in 1965 . The new company Hill Samuel was chaired by Marcus Samuel, 3rd Viscount Bearsted, from the family of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted . Keith himself became Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hill Samuel , and thus the actual person in charge of the financial company. He built it into one of the UK's leading merchant banking and financial services companies and held these roles until 1980.

His aggressive, ambitious corporate policies also included relationships with other companies and business executives such as Arnold Weinstock , whom Keith represented in the General Electric Company (GEC) acquisition of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) . During the crisis surrounding the 17 percent devaluation of the pound sterling on November 18, 1967, Keith was considered a supporter of Roy Jenkins, Chancellor of the Exchequer . He also played a special role in negotiating the establishment of a subdivision of the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) for the City of London, which gave the Governor of the Bank of England the impression that Keith had an alternative power base independent of the Bank of England wanted to create for the City of London.

The size of the new company, dubbed “the Whale of Wood Street” in an article from that period, was one of the reasons why Leslie O'Brien , who was governor of the 1966-1973 Bank of England warned of any further merger in the merchant banking sector. Keith himself assumed that “natural forces would bring about more mergers over time” ('natural forces are likely to bring about more mergers in the course of time') and the now merged bank is just about the size of one of the major investment banks in New York City .

On the other hand, the merger also created problems, as on the one hand most of the previous directors of M. Samuel resigned and one of the minority shareholders, the First National City of New York , sold its shares because of Keith's further growth plans .

At the same time Keith, who was beaten to a Knight Bachelor degree in 1969 and from then on had the suffix "Sir", was also chairman of the Hill Samuel group between 1970 and 1980 .

In the second half of the 1960s, Keith continued building the City of London's premier financial conglomerate by purchasing one of the major shipping brokerage groups and the innovative pension and life insurance broker Noble Lowndes . The latter purchase was a revolutionary move as merchant banking companies did not previously offer full financial services.

Downturn and financial crisis in 1974

In June 1970, Keith went too far by planning to acquire the UK's second largest real estate company, Metropolitan Estates & Property (MEPC plc). The offer was intended to increase Hill Samuel's financial strength, while MEPC previously had no relationship with any financial services company. However, MEPC's shareholders voted against the offer, with real estate agents having previously terminated their business relationships with MEPC in protest against the merger that had become known.

Keith himself warned that "separate and individual activities would be submerged in vast corporations generally controlled at the top by a smaller number of 'business crats'" top by a diminishing number of "businesscrats" '). He also publicly rejected the idea that banks should invest heavily in companies, as has been the case in other parts of Europe. In this regard, in the mid-1970s, he sharply dismissed complaints from the Labor Party government that the City of London financial firms were not investing enough in the UK economy.

As CEO of Hill Samuel Keith was most recently in 1973 in a merger with the ailing bank Slater Walker involved, the numerous financial commentators like Graham Searjeant of the weekly newspaper The Sunday Times were viewed critically because of the tight, short-term speculative basis of the operations of Slater Walker. As a result, the two banks' share prices fell faster than other financial institutions in a market that was at the beginning of a sharp decline that eventually ended in the general financial crisis of 1974. In the following period the cooperation between the two financial companies came to an end.

Hill Samuel did not fully recover from this crisis in the mid-1970s, especially since Keith, unlike Siegmund G. Warburg, did not take the other financial markets of Europe seriously. In 1980, he sought a takeover of Hill Samuel by Merrill Lynch , but without first informing his own board , which rejected Merrill's offer, whereupon Keith resigned as chairman . However, he remained chairman of the holding company Philip Hill Investment Trust until 1987 .

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rolls-Royce and STC and Member of the House of Lords

As a result, Keith was more involved in business than in the financial sector during the 1970s. He was from 1970 to 1986 further Deputy Chairman of today GlaxoSmithKline belonging pharmaceutical company The Beecham Group and was followed a year from 1986 to 1987 CEO of the company.

In 1972, Keith continued to serve as Chairman and CEO of Rolls-Royce after the company filed for bankruptcy in 1971 . In 1973 the company was nationalized and the engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce plc and the automobile manufacturer Rolls-Royce Motor Cars separated . Keith also held the position as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rolls-Royce plc until 1980.

By a Letters Patent of February 6, 1980 Keith was as a life peer with the title Baron Keith of Castle Acre , of Swaffham in the Norfolk, due to the Life Peerages Act 1958 into the nobility raised and was until his death the House of Lords as a member.

Most recently Baron Keith served as chairman of the board between 1985 and 1989 as chairman of the board of the telecommunications company Standard Telephones and Cables (STC).

family

Keith was married a total of four times. His first marriage was on April 25, 1946, Ariel Olivia Winifred Baird, the fourth daughter of John Lawrence Baird, 1st Viscount Stonehaven , who was Governor General of Australia between 1925 and 1931 . The marriage, which was dissolved in 1958, resulted in twins.

In 1962 he married Nancy Mary Raye Gross, her first marriage to the American film director Howard Hawks and her second marriage to the American film producer Leland Hayward . This marriage ended in divorce in 1972. In 1973 he married Marieluz Dennistoun-Webster, the daughter of a sea ​​captain in the Royal Navy, in his third marriage . After her death on June 20, 2001, he last married Penelope de Laszlo in 2002.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 34637, HMSO, London, June 20, 1939, p. 4157 ( PDF , accessed December 23, 2013, English).
  2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 39306, HMSO, London, August 7, 1951, p. 4257 ( PDF , accessed December 23, 2013, English).
  3. ^ The Telegraph, Lord Keith of Castleacre , Sept. 2, 2004
  4. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 48059, HMSO, London, January 7, 1980, p. 287 ( PDF , accessed December 23, 2013, English).
  5. ↑ London Gazette . No. 48093, HMSO, London, February 11, 1980, p. 2197 ( PDF , accessed December 23, 2013, English).
personal data
SURNAME Keith, Kenneth, Baron Keith of Castleacre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Keith, Kenneth Alexander, Baron Keith of Castleacre (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British manager and banker
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Castle Acre , Norfolk
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 2004
Place of death King's Lynn , Norfolk