Sir Richard Greenbury
Former £3.50 a week storehand who rose to become chairman and chief executive of M & S
SIR RICHARD GREENBURY, who has died aged 81, was a formidable chairman and chief executive of Marks & Spencer until deteriorating business conditions and a series of boardroom rows in the late 1990s forced him first to split the two roles and finally to relinquish the chair; he also headed a CBI inquiry into top executives’ pay.
Greenbury spent his working life with Marks & Spencer and was dedicated to the company’s precepts: meticulous attention to quality and customer preferences, a paternalistic approach to staff welfare and the nurturing of close relationships with suppliers.
A large, forthright man with an occasionally fearsome temper, he was a keen exponent of “management by walking about”, and would spend his Saturdays dropping in on stores to conduct impromptu inspections. He demanded impeccable standards, and could surprise nearby customers by the force of his expression if he did not find them.
The M& S chairmanship is, by tradition, an autocratic role, and Greenbury himself spoke of “inheriting” the company when he took over from Lord Rayner in 1991. The Rayner era had been a period of bold expansion, but in the economic climate of the early 1990s a return to a more nuts-andbolts management style was called for, and Greenbury was the man for the job.
For the first time in the history of M& S, redundancies had to be made, and Greenbury was labelled “hatchet man” by the press after dispensing with 600 middle managers. He steered the business through the recession by vigorous attention to cost control, but rumours that he had slashed traditional staff benefits – which included free hairdressing and chiropody – turned out to be largely exaggerated.
Greenbury resented suggestions that that he was less of a strategic thinker than his predecessors. “I may not be the greatest intellectual in the world,” he once said, “but I know every wrinkle of this business.” He often likened himself to President Harry Truman both for the way in which he had emerged from the shadow of his predecessor, Roosevelt, and for his famous catchphrase: “The buck stops here.”
For the first phase of his tenure at the top, the company’s performance was solidly impressive. Greenbury was, therefore, a natural candidate to chair the CBI’S 1995 inquiry into executive pay, which had been called for by the prime minister, John Major, in an attempt to defuse public discontent over the lavish rewards given to directors of privatised utility companies.
Always uncomfortable in his dealings with the media, Greenbury was incensed by coverage, midway through the inquiry, of his own 17 per cent pay-rise, which had taken his salary to £807,000. Although in line with the company’s profit improvement, the award was presented by the tabloid press as comparable to the excesses of the utility chiefs.
In due course the Greenbury committee proposed new guidelines to ensure that executive rewards bore a closer relationship to corporate performance, including a recommendation for stricter tax treatment of share options, which was immediately adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke.
Within days, however, it became apparent that the change affected, unintentionally, share schemes granted to some lowerpaid workers. Greenbury asked the Chancellor to drop the new rule, but Clarke declined to do so. Bruised by the experience, Greenbury declared that he would never again involve himself in public policy debate.
It was his misfortune, however, to become something of a corporate-governance test case himself, in the course of a long and undignified battle over his dual role of chief executive and chairman and the choice of his successor. In May 1998, after announcing profits for the previous year of more than £1 billion, Greenbury raged at a City journalist who dared ask him when he planned to retire and who might take over. The remainder of his time at M& S was punctuated with similar questions and responses – often featuring vitriolic letters to editors which became known as “Rickograms”.
Greenbury’s difficult relationships with the media and with some of his senior colleagues became even worse as M& S’s performance began to decline and a perception spread that the chain was too stuck in its ways. Matters came to a head in November 1998 when Greenbury cut short a business trip in order to fight off what he saw as an attempt by an ambitious deputy chairman, Keith Oates, to unseat him.
In the resulting boardroom battle, Oates departed and Greenbury agreed to become non-executive chairman, with another long-serving M& S man, Peter Salsbury, as his chief executive. Having previously been on good terms, Greenbury and Salsbury rapidly fell out as the latter established his authority and business continued to deteriorate. In June 1999 Greenbury was prevailed upon to retire, a year earlier than originally planned.
Richard Greenbury was born in Carlisle on July 31 1936, and educated at Ealing County Grammar School – where he was often in trouble for fighting. His father was a Yorkshireman and his mother came from Newcastle.
Richard, always known as Rick, had hoped to go to university, and perhaps to pursue a career as a professional sportsman; well over 6ft tall, he qualified for junior Wimbledon and was given a trial for Arsenal. But his parents divorced and his mother became ill; not wishing to be a burden to her, he left school and opted for the security of a £3.50 job in Marks & Spencer’s Ealing store.
Greenbury’s godfather, Raymond Gardiner, was the Sieff family solicitor, and it was not long before the strapping young man, by now transferred to the flagship Marble Arch store, came to the attention of senior management. He became a protégé of Simon Marks, the firm’s fearsome patriarch, who dubbed him “the big fellah”, and at 25 he was brought into the head office as personal assistant to one of the managing directors.
He rose through the hierarchy, becoming, at 36, the company’s youngest director. In 1978 he was appointed joint managing director, responsible for clothing procurement. Later he took charge of the successful food division, and as chief operating officer in the mid-1980s was responsible for the development of some £1.5 billion of new stores. He became chief executive in 1988 and chairman in 1991.
Greenbury was knighted in 1992. He was also a director at various times of Lloyds Bank, British Gas, Metal Box, Philips Electronics, ICI and Zeneca, and was also a trustee of the Royal Academy. After leaving M& S he retired from business and public life.
Having recovered from serious back trouble in his twenties, Greenbury remained a fiercely competitive tennis player. He played for Middlesex until he was 40, represented the International Tennis Club of Great Britain and played at the All England Club, Wimbledon, every weekend without fail. He was also a fanatical supporter of Manchester United.
Richard Greenbury married first, in 1959, Sian Hughes; they had two sons and two daughters. The marriage was dissolved in 1985 and he married, secondly, Gabrielle Mcmanus, 20 years his junior. Having parted from Gabrielle in 1995, he remarried Sian the following year. Both wives had worked for Marks & Spencer.
Sir Richard Greenbury, born July 31 1936, died September 27 2017