Sir Derrick Holden-brown
Unflappable boss of Allied Lyons who expanded its portfolio while seeing off ‘impudent’ takeover bids
SIR DERRICK HOLDEN-BROWN, who has died aged 95, rose to be chairman of the food and drinks conglomerate Allied Lyons after wartime adventures as a “Dog Boat” commander in the Adriatic.
Allied Lyons was formed in 1978 when Allied Breweries – which owned a wide range of beer, spirits and wine labels and of which Holden-brown was vice chairman – acquired J Lyons, which made cakes, ice cream and other food products. Holdenbrown was chief executive from 1982 to 1988, and chairman from 1982 to 1991.
His broadly successful tenure of a diversified group valued at some
£4.5 billion was interrupted in 1985 by a takeover bid from an aggressive Australian brewery group, Elders IXL, threatening potential dismemberment of Allied Lyons.
Holden-brown sought to dismiss Elders as “impudent”; the chairman of Elders, John Elliott, retorted by calling his reaction “somewhat hysterical”. But the debt-laden Elders withdrew in March 1986, having turned a handy profit on its Allied shares.
Holden-brown remained wary of predators at a time when conglomerates were often targeted for takeover, but went on the front foot to expand Allied’s brand portfolio by buying the spirits and wines division of the Canadian group Hiram Walker, producers of Canadian Club whisky, for whom he had worked in his youth. In 1988 another Australian threat loomed, this time from the high-flying dealmaker Alan Bond – but no bid transpired.
Good-humoured and unflappable, though a stickler for detail, Holden-brown was highly regarded by his industrial peers. But his career ended on a low note in 1991, when he stood down after Allied Lyons revealed £150 million of foreign exchange dealing losses.
The executives responsible also departed, but Holden-brown regarded the issue, honourably, as a matter of where the buck stopped. “Quite a lot of people suggested that I should not go but… I think I will live with myself more easily,” he said.
Derrick Holden-brown was born on St Valentine’s Day 1923; his father Walter, a director of United Drapery Stores, persuaded his mother, Beatrice, not to name the baby Valentine. Childhood years were spent at Westcliff-on-sea, where Derrick was educated at the High School and enjoyed dinghy sailing in the Thames Estuary with his older brother.
In 1941 he joined the RNVR, serving first as an ordinary seaman in a minesweeper in the North Sea. He was commissioned, and spent the rest of the war with Coastal Forces, in home waters and later in the Mediterranean. Initially as navigator and first lieutenant in MGB 663, he was part of the 56th flotilla of gunboats and torpedo boats (of the Fairmile D design, known as Dog Boats), under the command of an intrepid Canadian, Douglas Maitland.
Their role was to harry enemy shipping off the west coast of Italy and later among the Dalmatian islands in the Adriatic.
In August 1944 the flotilla was engaged in the “battle of Mljet channel”, in which six enemy craft were destroyed, hastening German evacuation of the islands.
A month later MGB 663 was mined close to Venice. Unscathed, Holden-brown was appointed to command MTB 655 – but on the night of March 22 1945, in the Kvarner channel off the Croatian coast, his vessel struck a mine amidships and broke in two, with the loss of almost half its crew.
Holden-brown suffered a broken leg and burns, and spent an hour and a half in the water – fortunately upwind of blazing fuel on the surface – before he was rescued. He spent a long period in hospital followed by a desk job at the Admiralty before he was invalided out in 1946.
Having qualified as a chartered accountant, in 1949 Holden-brown joined the London office of the Canadian drinks group Hiram Walker.
From there he moved on to a succession of management roles in what became, in 1961, Allied Breweries: he was a director of its Ind Coope beer subsidiary and chairman of Victoria Wine before becoming group finance director in 1972 and vice chairman from 1975 to 1982. He was knighted in 1979.
Holden-brown, who was chairman of the White Ensign Association and Portsmouth Naval Heritage Trust, worked tirelessly to maintain a network of contact and support among Coastal Forces veterans, and in 2015 made a return to his former naval base at Komiza on the Croatian island of Vis.
A keen offshore sailor, Holden-brown named all his boats Aqualeo – on the basis that he and his first wife were both Aquarians and his children were both Leos. “No tempers are ever lost on my boat,” he told an interviewer.
He married Patricia Mackenzie, a Canadian, in 1950, after “she walked into my office … looking for some Canadian Club whisky”. She died in 2001 and he married secondly, in 2005, Farideh Pelham, who survives him with a daughter of his first marriage and two stepdaughters. A son of his first marriage predeceased him.
Sir Derrick Holden-brown, born February 14 1923, died March 6 2018