Sebastian de Ferranti
Chairman of his family’s electronics firm who planned and built Henbury Hall in the Palladian spirit
SEBASTIAN DE FERRANTI, who has died aged 88, was chairman of the pioneering electronics company founded by his grandfather, and the creator of one of Britain’s finest 20th-century country houses, the neo-Palladian Henbury Hall in Cheshire.
De Ferranti became managing director of the family firm – notable in that era for its development of the first valve-driven computers – in 1958, and succeeded his father Sir Vincent in the chair in 1963. Though the fledgling computer business struggled to compete against IBM, Ferranti became increasingly prominent in the field of defence manufacturing. A £12 million contract for Bloodhound missiles brought Sebastian into an uncomfortable public spotlight early in his tenure at the top.
The company was accused in parliament of making excessive profits from the order, and obliged after an inquiry in 1964 to repay £4.25 million – to which the 36 year-old chairman responded with a tirade against “rotten politicians … If you accept a risk contract and if you deliver the equipment on time, and export it all over the world against international competition, you will be knocked on the head for doing so.”
His firm continued to win lucrative government contracts. But financial results were volatile and in the difficult industrial conditions of 1974, Ferranti ran into a cash flow crisis and lost the support of its banks. Sebastian and his brother and co-director Basil were criticised for being “more interested in science than profits” and for maintaining the idiosyncratic management style and attitudes to risk of what was still very much a private company.
Bankruptcy and job losses threatened and a £15 million bail-out was pushed through by Tony Benn as industry minister, giving the government a controlling interest to be managed through the National Enterprise Board. An outsider, Derek Alun-Jones, was appointed to succeed Sebastian as managing director. In 1978 the firm reported record profits and two years later it returned fully to the private sector through a placing of the government shareholding with City institutions. In 1982 Sebastian, who was less comfortable in a nonexecutive role, passed the chairmanship to Basil and left the company to become a director of its rival GEC, under the leadership of Arnold Weinstock.
He remained a significant Ferranti shareholder, however, and expressed opposition to Alun-Jones’s 1988 takeover of a US company, International Signals & Control – which was later discovered to be riddled with fraud at a cost to Ferranti of some £215 million, a blow from which it never recovered. Ferranti went into receivership in 1993, after GEC withdrew a takeover bid.
Sebastian Basil Joseph Ziani de Ferranti was born on October 5 1927, the elder son of Sir Vincent de Ferranti MC and grandson of Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti, a Liverpudlian engineer of Venetian descent who was a pioneer of the electricity supply industry in late 19th-century London. Under Vincent’s leadership from 1930 to 1963, the Ferranti company flourished as a manufacturer of a wide range of electronic products, from powerstation transformers and television sets to airborne radar systems.
Sebastian was educated at Ampleforth and did National Service in the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards followed by attachments with two leading European engineering firms, Brown Boveri of Switzerland and Alsthom of France, before starting work at Ferranti in 1950.
He joined the board in 1954 and dedicated himself to the business while his brother Basil pursued an intermittent political career as a Conservative MP and MEP. Sebastian, like his father and grandfather before him, always showed the greatest concern for his employees and inspired affection and loyalty in the company at all levels.
He was later also a director of British Airways Helicopters and the National Nuclear Corporation, and chairman or president of numerous industry associations.
In 1957, Sir Vincent had bought the Henbury Hall estate near Macclesfield, demolished its 18th-century mansion and made his home in the converted stable block – while Sebastian spent many years planning the building of a new house on the site. A key figure in this project was the painter Felix Kelly, who transformed a cottage on the estate into an eye-catcher and made a painting of a domed Palladian temple in place of the old hall to show how it might look.
Sir Vincent died in 1980, and in 1983 Sebastian commissioned Julian Bicknell, who had worked at Castle Howard, to design a house based on Palladio’s Villa Rotonda near Vicenza. Using an elaborate wooden model as their guide, de Ferranti and Bicknell collaborated closely in every decision of material, proportion and decorative detail to create a building which was neither replica nor pastiche, but combined the Palladian spirit with the needs of a modern country home.
Impassioned equally by arts and sciences, Sebastian de Ferranti was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, chairman of the Civic Trust for the North-West, a governor of the Royal Northern College of Music and chairman of the panel of assessors which oversaw an extension to Manchester City Art Gallery in 1995.
As chairman of the Hallé Concerts Society, he also presided over the £42 million fundraising for the Bridgewater Hall, which opened in 1996 as a new home for the Hallé, Britain’s longest-established professional orchestra. He was high sheriff of Cheshire in 1988, and a deputy lieutenant of the county.
Sebastian de Ferranti was Life President of the Cheshire Polo Club and a keen polo player and hunting man. When too old for these pursuits he took up carriage driving.
In 1953 he married, first, Mona Cunningham. They had a son and two daughters. The marriage was dissolved and Mona died in 2008. He married, secondly, in 1983, Naomi Rae (née Pattinson), with whom he had a daughter. Naomi died in 2001.
His third wife, Gillian Brown (née France), whom he married in 2011, survives him with his children and stepchildren.
Sebastian de Ferranti, born October 5 1927, died October 15 2015