Heartbreaking story behind seaplane crash that wiped out millionaire and his family
By Natalie Clarke
RICHARD Cousins’s announcement last September that he was to leave the arena of big business had a faint air of mystery about it.
He gave no explanation for his departure from the Compass Group, where as chief executive he had miraculously turned around the food services company’s fortunes, nor did he give any details of any future appointment. How, his colleagues asked themselves, could he give it all up? After all, in 2016, he was paid £5.6 million – comprising salary, bonus and share awards. Yet he had decided to walk away from it all and was due to leave in March.
Mr Cousins’s death on New Year’s Eve, when the seaplane on which he was enjoying a sightseeing tour crashed into the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales, means no explanation will ever be forthcoming. The 58-year-old died alongside his fiancee, Emma Bowden, 48, her 11-year- old daughter, Heather, his sons Will, 25, and Edward, 23, and the 44-year- old Canadian pilot, Gareth Morgan.
But the testimony of shocked friends makes it clear that Mr Cousins had decided to grab the second chance of life and happiness that had been offered to him in the form of Miss Bowden.
For while Mr Cousins was a rich and successful man, he had suffered tragedy, with the death of his wife Caroline in the summer of 2015 just six weeks after being diagnosed with cancer.
He had been devoted to his wife, and her diagnosis and rapid decline was shocking and devastating. It made him think, perhaps, about the fragility of life.
So when Miss Bowden, a glamorous and charming journalist, entered his life and they fell in love, he did not want to waste a minute of their time together.
And Miss Bowden, art editor at OK! magazine for the past 14 years, felt the same way.
She had come out of an unhappy relationship and was ready, like Mr Cousins, to seize her chance at happiness. The trip to Australia was to be the first of many adventures. Presumably many more would have been planned for after their wedding in July.
Days before she left for Australia, Miss Bowden spoke to a colleague about how excited she was about the trip and how happy she was with Mr Cousins.
‘Emma was so excited about the trip. It was a five-star itinerary and she couldn’t wait,’ the friend said.
‘This was just the start of it. She was thinking about going part-time so that she and Richard could go travelling together.
They had talked about going to Asia and Latin America. She was so happy. And now this. I can’t believe it.’
The carefree pictures that have emerged of Miss Bowden’s daughter, who had just started secondary school, are particularly distressing.
Heather’s father, Alex Page, 49, who separated from Miss Bowden several years ago, is in a state of profound shock.
Yesterday, his sister, Sam, told the Daily Mail her brother was so grief-stricken ‘he is unable to physically speak’.
Today arrangements are being made to return the bodies of Mr Cousins and Miss Bowden, and that of their children.
A relative of Mr Cousins has been to the house he was renting in Tooting, south-west London, with Miss Bowden, to pick up necessary documentation to take to Australia.
In Hyde Heath, the Buckinghamshire village where Mr Cousins lived with his wife, the villagers are also in shock.
John Capper, the president of Hyde Heath Cricket Club where Mr Cousins used to play, said yesterday: ‘ It’s a terrible shock. The whole village is in mourning.
‘We will miss them hugely. We can’t believe what has happened.’
A friend of the family who lives in the village said that shortly before she passed away, Mrs Cousins told her husband he must move on with his life when she died.
‘She had told him to find somebody else,’ the friend said.
Mr Cousins appears to have been that rare variety of businessman who managed to be shrewd and tough while also remaining downto-earth and approachable. He was universally liked and admired and regarded as a man of principle.
BORN in Leeds, he was brought up in Bracknell, Berkshire, where he attended a local comprehensive. He met Caroline Thorpe at Sheffield University, where he studied mathematics and she was training to become a teacher.
The pair married in 1982 in Caroline’s home town of Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. Their son, Will, was born in 1992, followed by Edward in 1994.
Mr Cousins began his career with Cadbury Schweppes in 1981, starting out as operational researcher, before moving in 1984 to the industrial conglomerate BTR as a strategy planner.
After six years he joined plasterboard supplier BPB as a corporate planner, becoming its chief executive in 2000.
Around this time, Mr Cousins and his wife moved to a large property set in two- and- a- half acres in the village of Hyde Heath, deep in the Chilterns. Mrs Cousins taught English at a nearby school.
The family immersed theselves in village life and the two boys, would often be seen tearing about on their bikes. In 2006, Mr Cousins joined
Compass Group. At the time, the company was facing allegations of corruption concerning United Nations food contracts – it was contracted to supply meals to UN peacekeepers – which it later settled.
Mr Cousins cut the number of countries it operated in from 100 to 50 and turned around the company’s fortunes. It is now the world’s largest caterer, serving five billion meals a year and boasting a stock market value of £24.8billion. Shares rose seven-fold during Mr Cousins’s tenure.
In an interview in 2011 about the astonishing turnaround in the company’s fortunes, he said in his nononsense fashion: ‘It wasn’t rocket science… it’s all common sense.’ Mr Cousins had made his fortune and was a happy man. But in July 2015, his material wealth seemed meaningless when his wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer. She died six weeks later on August 25.
Her pupils were bereft. A Facebook tribute page set up after her death said Mrs Cousins was ‘for many a
mentor and second mother – she brought happiness to all she taught and knew, and more than anything, she believed in people and their ability to achieve’.
Mr Cousins threw himself into work but felt lost without his wife.
But about 18 months ago he was introduced to Emma Bowden through friends.
‘Emma had been unhappy in her relationship and they’d split up,’ says her friend.
‘She and Richard hit it off straight away. Richard was besotted.
‘Emma was such a sweet person, very calm, very kind, the one you’d go to for a shoulder to cry on if you were upset about something.
‘She was devoted to Heather. Heather was the focus of her life.’
The relationship developed quickly and Mr Cousins moved in with Miss Bowden at her house in Tooting.
A few months later, Mr Cousins, Miss Bowden and Heather rented another property about a mile away. Last September, Heather started at a nearby secondary school, where neighbours say she had settled in well.
A large car which came to collect Mr Cousins every morning to take him to his office was the only sign that he was a man of power and influence.
And he most certainly was – he had recently been ranked the 11th-best performing chief executive officer in the world by Harvard Business Review.
But now that he had met Miss Bowden, the appeal of long hours in the office behind a desk was beginning to wane.
They discussed the future. Mr Cousins had worked hard all his life and made a lot of money. He could afford to retire early and the pair could enjoy life, see the world.
Miss Bowden had been at OK! magazine for over a decade and while she loved her job, she was excited at the opportunity to travel, and take her foot off the pedal for a bit.
‘She said she was thinking about going parttime so she could go off travelling with Richard, have a bottle of champagne up a mountain, that sort of thing,’ says a friend.
‘But with Richard it wasn’t about the money. She really loved him, she was very content, more content than I’d ever known her.
‘It really had all come together for her. That’s the awful irony.’
And, following the tragedy of his wife’s death, it had come together for Mr Cousins, too.
He was pleased to see that his sons, who possessed his fierce intelligence, had coped with their mother’s death and were doing well for themselves.
Will had been appointed head of press for Open Britain, a leading anti-hard Brexit campaign group, which is backed by several Labour MPs.
He was regarded as a leading light and in a tribute yesterday, James McGrory, executive director of Open Britain, said: ‘Will’s razor-sharp wit, easy company and generosity will be missed even more than his huge brain, peerless prose and fearless ideas.’
Will’s brother Edward graduated from the University of St Andrews in June last year. Neighbours said he was preparing to take up a position with the police.
With his sons settled and happy, Mr Cousins possibly felt more comfortable about the idea of giving up his job and taking time out to enjoy with Miss Bowden.
They were all hugely excited about the trip to Australia.
Mr Cousins, Miss Bowden, Will, Edward and Heather are believed to have flown out to Australia shortly before Christmas.
The seaplane trip was to have been one of the highlights of the itinerary.
Instead, the lives of a pretty young schoolgirl and two young men starting out in the world have been snatched away.
And the first great adventure of Richard Cousins and Emma Bowden was tragically, by some inexplicable quirk of fate, to be their last.