Sir David Hardy
Executive who helped to transform London’s Docklands and chaired the National Maritime Museum
SIR DAVID HARDY, who has died aged 89, was a shipping executive and company director who played a leading role in the development of London’s Docklands and the National Maritime Museum. Hardy’s City base in his senior career was as chairman of Globe Investment Trust, where he championed the cause of the retail investor, writing a personal letter of welcome to every new shareholder.
His other passion was for building cooperation and investment connections between the private and public sectors, which he did to great effect as chairman of the Docklands Light Railway during its construction phase from 1984 to 1987, and thereafter as chairman of the London Docklands Development Corporation until 1992.
The politics of the LDDC were tortuous, and Hardy’s tenure coincided with a deep recession in the construction sector which temporarily held back its ambitions, particularly for new housing, while the light railway was often criticised as inadequate and unreliable. But other transport links into the previously derelict area were steadily improved and the rise of Canary Wharf provided a beacon for developments to come.
Despite the challenges, Hardy maintained a positive tone, declaring that “success is there to see” when he stepped in as interim chief executive at a low moment in 1990. He was very proud of the corporation’s overall record of attracting £7 of private investment for every £1 of public money spent.
Hardy’s Docklands track record and background in shipping (plus a rumoured but unproven family connection to Capt Thomas Hardy of Trafalgar fame) brought him next to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, which flourished under his chairmanship from 1995 to 2005. It opened its dramatic glass-roofed Neptune Court for the Millennium, completed a major fundraising for its Royal Observatory astronomy centre and planetarium, and embarked on the creation of a second home at Falmouth.
A colleague recalled Hardy as “far more than chairman”: a wise, goodhumoured and (at 6ft 7in) towering presence, who had no hesitation in deploying his high-level address book – and he had “that rare gift – he was utterly ego-free”.
David William Hardy was born on July 14 1930. His father, Brigadier John Hardy MC, was an officer of the King’s Own Royal Regiment, based at Lancaster, and commanded the Nile Valley during the Second World War.
David was educated at Wellington, which he greatly disliked, and he qualified as a chartered accountant with the firm of Hodgson Morris in
Liverpool before National Service in Germany with the Royal Horse Artillery. Having won the silver cane for best cadet at Mons, he was also runner-up in the army boxing championships.
Brigadier Hardy – a giant even taller than his son – had by then left the Army to become resident director of Cunard in New York, and in 1954 David went to work there for Cunard’s shipping agency, Funch, Edye & Co, going on to represent the firm in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was also honorary British vice-consul.
In 1964 he moved to the US arm of Imperial Tobacco; and in 1970, after studies at Harvard Business School, he returned to London to serve in the Heath government as a coordinator of industrial advisers. His next job was as finance director of the sugar giant Tate & Lyle, and from 1977 he was back in the shipping business with Ocean Transport & Trading, moving to Globe Investment Trust in 1983.
Hardy was saddened by the fall of Globe to a hostile takeover by its major shareholder, the Coal Board pension fund, in 1990. Through the Globe connection he also served as chairman of the Swan Hunter shipyard from 1986 to 1988, and his portfolio of other directorships at various times included the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, Waterford Wedgwood, Chelsea Harbour, Tootal in textiles, Sturge in insurance and the industrial conglomerate Hanson.
He was a long-serving board member – and briefly chairman, to help turn its finances around – of the Barrow-in-furness-based marine services business James Fisher, and was particularly proud of its role in the rescue of a stranded Russian submarine off Kamchatka in 2005.
He was also a trustee of the Sir John Fisher Foundation, created by the company’s founders to support maritime causes and community projects in the North-west, and of the Mary Rose Trust. His last major appointment was as chairman of the Transport Research Laboratory until 2007.
David Hardy was knighted for his LDDC work in 1992. To all his undertakings, whether in business, public service or life beyond, he brought huge energy and enthusiasm. He relished arduous training with the former yachtsman John Ridgway in the mountains of Scotland, loved shooting and fishing, and led adventurous family holidays to sugar plantations and even on container ships.
He married, in 1957, Rosemary Collins, whose father Sir Godfrey had been chief secretary to the government of Bombay; she survives him with their son and daughter.
Sir David Hardy, born July 14 1930, died April 9 2020