Former industrialist Lord Hanson, a one-time playboy who became one of the biggest figures in British corporate history, has died from cancer, the BBC reported yesterday. He was 82.
Lord Hanson, once engaged to the actress Audrey Hepburn, built the industrial group Hanson Plc into one of Britain's most powerful companies after decades of deal-making on both sides of the Atlantic.
Along with the late Lord White, Lord Hanson built an industrial empire worth nearly £11 billion (€15.9 billion) that ranged from chemicals and tobacco to energy and building.
He bought undervalued, unglamorous companies and then improved performance by ejecting managers and cutting costs.
The 1980s saw the full might of the Lord Hanson takeover machine swing into operation, with the £2.5 billion bid for Imperial Tobacco and the $930 million (€733.5 million) purchase of the SCM Chemicals group.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth knighted Hanson in 1976 and former prime minister Margaret Thatcher made him a life peer in 1983 for his services to industry.
Hanson was an outspoken right-winger and a major contributor to Conservative Party funds.
Critics saw him as a ruthless expansionist who symbolised uncaring big business in the 1980s. He was nicknamed "Lord Moneybags" by one tabloid newspaper.
During Imperial's struggle against his unwanted takeover bid, a spokesman for the company said: "Lord Hanson buys companies well and sells companies well, but he manages them very badly. He buys, squeezes and goes on to the next one."
Hanson capped his career in 1997 when he split up the company he co-founded 46 years earlier.
Born on January 20, 1922 in the northern mill town of Huddersfield, James Edward Hanson began his career at a transport company inherited from his father, a wealthy entrepreneur.
His father's patronage of young showjumpers introduced Hanson to British high society and he regularly appeared in newspaper gossip columns in the 1950s.
Hanson had highly publicised relationships with actresses Jean Simmons and Joan Collins and was engaged to Hepburn for almost a year.
He died at his home near Newbury, Berkshire, in southern England on Monday, the BBC said.
