Viscount Blakenham
Chairman of Pearson and conservationist who fought off a raid by Murdoch on the Financial Times
THE 2ND VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM, who has died aged 79, was chairman of Pearson, the industrial and publishing conglomerate created by his mother’s forebears, and of its subsidiary the Financial Times – which he kept from the clutches of Rupert Murdoch and other predators.
Originally a Yorkshire brickmaker, S Pearson & Son was developed by Michael Blakenham’s maternal great-grandfather Weetman Pearson (1st Viscount Cowdray) into the great Victorian engineering venture that built the Blackwall Tunnel and Dover Harbour. Across the Atlantic, Pearson’s company led the construction of New York’s East River Tunnels and the railways of Mexico, where it also exploited rich oil discoveries.
Profits were invested in the Westminster Press newspaper group and Lazard Brothers, the merchant bank. In the postwar era, under the leadership of the 3rd Viscount Cowdray (Blakenham’s uncle), the portfolio grew to include the Financial Times and a half-interest in The Economist; book publishing through Pearson Longman and Penguin; Royal Doulton tableware; Madame Tussauds’ waxworks; Chateau Latour wine; Texas ranchland, and much besides. The parent company was floated on the stock exchange in 1969.
Michael Hare (who would inherit his father’s viscountcy in 1982, but rarely use the title) was just 40 when he became chief executive of Pearson in 1978, and was chairman from 1983. Pearson family members still owned a fifth of the shares in a group whose dynastic chiefs had hitherto been admired for shrewd stewardship of a diverse set of businesses that were largely left to manage themselves.
But in the deal-hungry stock-market arena of the 1980s, the group was sometimes criticised as a collection of “rich man’s baubles” and eyed by predators as a potential target for break-up. Most attractive of its assets was the Financial Times, where Blakenham also became chairman in 1984, succeeding his uncle (and father-in-law) Alan Hare.
But whereas Alan had also been chief executive – driving the launch of the paper’s Frankfurt edition and doing battle with print unions over the introduction of new technology, Michael’s appointment “was a reversion to the earlier ‘hands-off ’ tradition”, according to the paper’s historian, initially involving little more than the chairing of quarterly board meetings. To those who did not know him Blakenham might have seemed lightweight; diffident in manner, boyish in appearance, he was entirely without pomp. But he had judgment and integrity, and one former FT editor described him as “made of steel when necessary”.
That need arose first when he saw off an approach from the Hong Kong real-estate titan Li Ka-shing, and again in September 1987 when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp launched a dawn raid to acquire 15 per cent of Pearson’s shares. Murdoch insisted he was seeking cooperation rather than takeover, which would in any case have been subject to fierce scrutiny. But the market saw the raid – on a morning when Blakenham was in Scotland – as a hostile act.
One paper illustrated a piece headlined “Pearson in play” with a cartoon of Murdoch bursting into Blakenham’s office. When the two met a week later, the latter made plain that Pearson did not welcome new large shareholdings, but an anonymous Murdoch aide said afterwards: “They should have called the RSPCA. Murdoch ate him for lunch.”
Nevertheless Blakenham held his nerve (“Unlikely tycoon remains relaxed”, said one report) and went on to execute a series of share deals, with the Dutch publisher Elsevier and others, designed to dilute Murdoch’s stake. In April 1988, they met again: Murdoch was now confident of securing a partnership to boost FT sales in the US, telling an interviewer “you can’t ignore your largest shareholder.” But Blakenham coolly and effectively did just that, and as Murdoch’s own finances came under increasing strain, News Corp’s Pearson stake was gradually sold off. Later on Peter Mayer, chief executive of Pearson’s Penguin subsidiary, bumped into Murdoch on an aeroplane. He had underestimated Blakenham, the media mogul admitted.
Michael John Hare was born on January 25 1938. His mother Nancy, née Pearson, was one of five daughters of the 2nd Viscount Cowdray. His father John Hare (a younger son of the 4th Earl of Listowel) was a London county councillor who was elected Conservative MP for Woodbridge in 1945; having been minister of labour in Harold Macmillan’s cabinet, he became party chairman under Douglas-home and was created Viscount Blakenham, taking the title from the family’s village in Suffolk, in 1963.
Michael was educated at Eton and did National Service in the Life Guards before going on to study at Harvard. In 1961 he became a trainee at Lazard Brothers, and two years later he moved to the Standard Industrial Group, a mini-conglomerate in which Lazard had a stake and which in due course became wholly owned by Pearson. From 1972 he spent five years with Royal Doulton before joining Pearson’s top management.
Another incident that tested Blakenham’s mettle was the 1987 publication, by Pearson’s Penguin subsidiary, of the autobiography of the former MI5 officer Peter Wright, which government lawyers sought to suppress. Again, courteously but resolutely, Blakenham said “No”.
In the later phase of his Pearson tenure – he stood aside as chief executive in 1990 but remained chairman until 1997 – his strategy was to concentrate on media and entertainment interests, including new investments in television broadcasters and programme makers, while shedding some of his predecessors’ more exotic holdings. Latterly, the group has focused more narrowly on publishing and education.
He was also chairman of the property group MEPC, and a director of Sotheby’s and the French cement maker Lafarge. In the House of Lords he sat on select committees on science and technology, and sustainable development.
Michael Blakenham was a countryman at heart, and a deeply committed conservationist. At various times he was chairman of the RSPB and the trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, president of the British Trust for Ornithology and Suffolk Wildlife Trust and a member of the Nature Conservancy Council. In 2003 he took on the task of leading a review of the constitution of the National Trust, then governed by a 52-member council representing many clashing interests. Blakenham’s reasoned presentation in favour of a much smaller board won the day.
At home at Blakenham he maintained the woodland garden created by his father – and when the village was threatened in 2004 with the development of “Snoasis”, a £300 million artificial ski resort in a disused quarry which aimed to attract 600,000 annual visitors, he led the campaign of opposition which forced a public inquiry. Planning permission was eventually granted but the scheme has yet to be built.
The Snoasis battle drew him into local politics: he sat for eight years as a Mid Suffolk district councillor under the banner of “Suffolk Together”, a group which embraced Greens and other smaller parties.
He married, in 1965, his first cousin Marcia Hare, an artist and potter; she survives him with a son and two daughters. Their son Caspar Hare, who is a professor of philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, succeeds as 3rd Viscount.
Viscount Blakenham, born January 25 1938, died January 8 2018