Kenneth Thomson: Kenneth Thomson became Canada's richest man - and the ninth richest in the world - by turning a chain of newspapers inherited from his father into one of the world's biggest distributors of financial data.
He died last Monday at the age of 82 after an apparent heart attack at his Thomson Corporation office in Toronto.
Under his leadership the business, first built around radio stations and newspapers by his dynamic father, evolved into an international electronic information enterprise with an annual turnover of $9 billion (€7.12 billion).
This year Forbes magazine rated him the ninth wealthiest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $19.6 billion.
On stepping down as company chairman in 2002, he handed the reins to his eldest son, David, but had continued to work.
Kenneth Thomson was the third child and only son of Roy Thomson, creator of a business empire that began in 1930 with a tiny radio station in northern Ontario and grew to embrace Canada's dominant newspaper group and other interests ranging from North Sea oil to travel agencies and the Times of London.
In 1934 Roy Thomson bought his first newspaper, the weekly Timmins Press, also in Northern Ontario, for Can$2,600 (€1,831) and turned it into a daily. Twenty-five years later, he acquired 15 British newspapers, including the Sunday Times, and then took the company public in 1965. Thomson continued his acquisition spree in Britain, buying the Times of London in 1967.
"Young Ken", as he was called, took over the empire after his father died in 1976. But in a move that would presage the eventual sale of much of the original source of the family's fortune, Kenneth Thomson sold the Times to Rupert Murdoch in 1981. A series of difficult strikes and stoppages at the Times had persuaded Kenneth that his time would be better spent on other ventures, and unlike his father he did not enjoy life in Britain.
He was born on September 1st, 1923 in Toronto. After serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the second World War, where he worked in its public relations departments, he attended Cambridge University, where he graduated with an MA. His father, keen to involve him in the family business, sent him back to Canada where he was given a job as a reporter on the Timmins Daily Press. As Roy Thomson acquired the Scotsman, the Times and the Sunday Times in Britain, bringing the latter two together into one company in 1966, Ken was brought back to London again to be vice-chairman and later chairman of the new enterprise. Throughout a loss-making period the Times was funded by Thomson family money.
The sale of the titles to Murdoch was controversial in Britain, but for Thomson it meant escaping back to Canada to concentrate on the family businesses there.
In the years that followed, Thomson Corporation moved out of the newspaper business. Most of the company's newspapers and other holdings were sold to concentrate on providing specialist information to legal, investment, medical and other professionals, largely in electronic formats.
The company's businesses now include Thomson Financial, an electronic provider of financial information, and the legal information company Westlaw.
At the time of his death Thomson Corporation had more than 40,000 employees and Thomson himself controlled about 70 per cent of its shares.
The intensely private Thomson was described as a shy, shrewd businessman with an aloof nature. He was also an art lover and an avid collector of the 19th century Canadian landscape artist Cornelius Kreighoff.
In addition to his son David, Thomson is survived by his wife, Marilyn, and children Peter and Taylor.
Kenneth Thomson: born September 1st, 1923; died June 12th, 2006